Bishops Bash Compromise

Posted on February 8, 2013 by Jeff

I was not originally going to post on this issue, but it seems worthwhile to say a few things about the USCCB reaction to Obama’s attempt at compromise.

My first reaction is, geez, Obama keeps trying to compromise with people, and every time he gets bashed. Poor guy. And I’m no big fan of Obama, but at a certain point, one starts to cheer for the underdog. And Obama certainly seems to be that every time he tries to compromise. Also, the USCCB doesn’t come off very pretty here: they, like the Republican caucus, are trying to threaten the president’s attempt at compromise with the continued support of law suits against the health care coverage. My pappy always said, “you’ll get more flies with honey than with vinegar,” but Cardinal Dolan’s probably never heard of compromise.

And yet…

One of the bishops’ complaints is

“It appears that the government would require all employees in our ‘accommodated’ ministries to have the illicit coverage—they may not opt out, nor even opt out for their children—under a separate policy,” he said.

I’m not sure what Dolan and the USCCB expect here. How can one legitimately opt out of something completely like this? It’s as if public schools could opt out of teaching evolution because some of their science teachers don’t believe in evolution. Or, as has been said over and over in social media, a Christian Scientist could stop his child from receiving necessary medical care because of his religious beliefs? The Court has never upheld that right. But, of course, with this Court, it might do so by a 5-4 margin. And it wouldn’t mind that this puts us right back in Jim Crowe land — maybe my religion means I don’t have to serve homosexuals at my restaurant. Or my hospital. Or my church. Really, can Dolan open his eyes enough to see the problem here, or is he just so caught up in his passion for free-market libertarianism that he can’t see it?

Do you really like think I am being unfair to Dolan and the USCCB? Than how do you explain this:

Cardinal Dolan also said the proposal refuses to acknowledge conscience rights of business owners who operate their businesses according to their faith and moral values.

Yes, Dolan immediately follows that statement with another more damning one:

“In obedience to our Judeo-Christian heritage, we have consistently taught our people to live their lives during the week to reflect the same beliefs that they proclaim on the Sabbath,” Cardinal Dolan said. “We cannot now abandon them to be forced to violate their morally well-informed consciences.”

So, Cardinal Dolan, when was the last time you went to a rich donor’s house and asked that donor to give all of his wealth to the poor? When was the last time you visited a business owner and said that, regardless of the law, he must provide immediate health care coverage for all of his workers? And a fair, living wage? When was the last time you spoke with George W. Bush and said he could not kill people on death row?

I know nothing of Cardinal Dolan, so maybe he has done these things. But if so, that should be at the center of his entreaty to negotiate a compromise with Obama. Not a threat of legal action in the courts. Because, despite what my pappy said, my Lord Jesus said to turn the other cheek and to love thy neighbor as thyself. But maybe Dolan and the USCCB enjoyed going to court over and over again because of the sex-abuse scandal.

Contraceptive, Compromise, and (lack of) Consensus

Posted on February 1, 2013 by Jeff

As NPR reports, the Obama administration has offered a further compromise on the health mandate that required some religious institutions to provide coverage for contraceptives. The new condition allows religious employers to be exempt from providing contraceptive coverage if they meet the following conditions:

opposes providing coverage for some or all of any contraceptive services required to be covered under Section 2713 of the PHS Act, on account of religious objections;
is organized and operates as a nonprofit entity;
holds itself out as a religious organization; and
self-certifies that it meets these criteria and specifies the contraceptive services for which it objects to providing coverage.

I am not concerned about this set of criteria, although I think others could critique it if they want. What I am concerned about is the moral vision that underlies it. Given this exemption, employees would be able to have contraceptive coverage without additional coverage through some other means (which remain nebulous for me as I read the news release).

But what is the moral vision that underlies Obama’s attempt at pacification and compromise? Is he worried about keeping or losing the Catholic vote or being condemned by bishops, or having the whole health care law go down over this one issue because of the number of lawsuits brought forth over it?

And what is the moral vision of the American Catholic bishops who resist the HHS mandate? I remind the reader that this resistance is singularly American coming from the bishops of this country. When speaking to priests even in very religiously conservative nations like Ireland, they ask me why the bishops are making such a fuss over this. Our tradition calls for a right to health care. Should we wonder that the concern raised comes from bishops who openly reject principles of Catholic social thought?

The culture of the United States suffers from an inability to discuss these types of issues from a reasonable standpoint. All we are left with are power moves. We lack an identifiable set of criteria by which to judge what our policies should be, what the common good, and how to prioritize the goods pursued in our society. Even the American bishopric lacks this unifying idea, a symptom of the corruption of American consumerism on the Catholic church. If Catholics in the United States had to struggle like those in other nations to be Catholic, would our bishopric be so divided?

Again, the issue for me is not the lack of merit of either case here. The issue is an inability to articulate a set of moral principles by which we guide and ground social policy and action. We can cite many reasons for the lack of such a set of moral principles, from a history of religious persecution, to the fact of pluralism, to the sex, drugs, and rock-n-roll. Until we are able to overcome our divisiveness, we will be at the hands of those who know how to pull the strings of power, and we will have harder and harder times of trying to achieve a common good or our own individual goods.

Catholic Teaching and the 2012 Presidential Election

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Jeff

Last night I was part of a panel at Providence College on Catholic teaching and the current presidential election. We had a lively, if short, discussion on war, health care, environment, economy, and abortion.

I tried to emphasize in my answers that none of these things can be separated from the other. In fact, Catholic moral teaching is a seamless garment, and questions of life cannot be separated from questions of health care and environment or war.

The Christian faith is an integral unity, and thus it is incoherent to isolate some particular elements to the detriment of the whole of Catholic doctrine. A political commitment to a single isolated aspect of the Church’s social doctrine does not exhaust one’s responsibility towards the common good (Faithful Citizenship, ¶30)

So questions about the environment, for instance must be placed in conjunction with questions about abortion. In fact, I said last night and continue to hold today, if we treated our environment better we would have fewer abortions. Modern science and philosophy make a strict dichotomy between reason and nature, man and woman, etc. Our Catholic intellectual and spiritual tradition admits no such dichotomy — Francis of Assisi represents this most brilliantly in his preaching to the wolves and animals of the forest.

We as Catholics have two major tasks:

First, we must emphasize charity in our interactions with each other. Fighting over politics or religion is a discredit to our tradition and the Christian love Jesus Christ gave us.

Second, we must look beyond the two-party fetishism of American politics and find a way forward that is truly Catholic and truly moral.

Health Care laws and Thomas Aquinas

Posted on September 21, 2012 by Jeff

I have the wonderful opportunity to belong to a reading group on Thomas’ Treatise on Law. For this week’s reading, we read questions 92 and 93 of the first part of the second book of the Summa Theologicae. Question 92 concerns the effects of law while question 93 concerns the eternal law.

In the effects of law, Thomas argues that law aims to make human beings good. That is, law seeks to make human beings virtuous, either by commanding virtuous actions, forbidding vicious actions, and permitting actions which are not in-themselves vicious.

When we think about the health care law that was recently passed, we have to recognize that its original aim was to make human beings virtuous, first by commanding that human beings are able to care for their own health through affordable health care. Second, it sought to forbid the rampant and egregious increases in health care costs. Third, it sought to allow freedom to individuals to chose their own health care carrier or provider.

Each of these goals align with the idea of a law that seeks to make human beings better. We can go further still: a law that requires health providers not to drop those who have poor health from insurance is necessary. It commands the virtuous action of supporting the common good and forbidding the vicious action of placing profits over the health and welfare of individual human beings. This dual command and forbiddance should be our guide in structuring health care.

The aspect of the law most challenged was that which would require all individuals to purchase health insurance. Without such a law in place, there would not be enough individuals paying premiums to support the health of all. Rather than violating freedom, however, this mandate again encouraged or commanded the placing of the common good over the individual good. It accords with natural law, then.

One of the great problems with American society is our refusal to place the common good before the good of our individual selves. Our hyperindividualism means that we believe each person should pull him or herself up by his or her boot-straps. Natural law, on the other hand, requires us to have a more realistic picture of the frailty of human life and the commonality we share as members of one community.

Nope, I still don’t care about the Chick-fil-A controversy

Posted on July 28, 2012 by Dave

I don’t think our culture is “too political.” I just think it’s political aims have all the wrong issues in mind. Example: The Chick-fil-A controversy.

By now most people have heard that the folks in charge of Chick-fil-A don’t like the idea of same-sex marriage. As soon as news of this broke out, liberals scrambled to organize a boycott and conservatives doubled down on their efforts to eat twice as many pickle covered chicken sandwiches.

I find both sides a bit silly. But I think I find the liberal culture a little sillier this time.

Let me get this straight. Fast food chains in this country bust unions, pay sub-living wages, pollute the environment with factory farms, market directly to kids to create obesity, diabetes and other health crises, undermine the food supply and natural agriculture, deny health insurance to employees while raking in obscene profits, contribute to the ugliness of urban sprawl, and have documented records of discrimination against women and minorities in management positions.

I thought we would have been boycotting all these guys for a long time now!

It isn’t like they do anything for us. Their product can hardly be called “food.”

So why is it that there is no controversy until it comes to something related to sex?

This is true in general in our culture. What was the last major controversy? Something to do with birth control.

I am getting a little tired of the culture war when our government is perpetuating real, deadly wars all over the world.

The most likely reason for this is that the culture war of sex controversies is all that really separates the two main political parties in this country. The two parties need the culture war to keep up the illusion that we have a democracy. The ballot might as well look like this:
Republicans: Anti-environment, anti-living wage, pro-death penalty, pro-war, anti-universal health care, anti-union, pro-big business, against same sex marriage and abortion.

Democrats: Anti-environment, anti-living wage, pro-death penalty, pro-war, anti-universal health care, anti-union, pro-big business, sort of for same sex marriage and legalized abortion.

This is democracy? We are supposed to have some sort of choice?

Now, imagine if all the people boycotting Chick-fil-A got together and organized on some major issue like living wages. Suppose they decided to boycott anyplace not paying a living wage to employees. Imagine what they might accomplish!

Where were these people in 2003 when we could have stopped a war?

Apparently, Americans dying and blowing up tens of thousands of Iraqi men, women and children isn’t really worth getting excited about. What? Chick-fil-A doesn’t support same sex marriage?! Quick, to the activism cave!

Of course this means that we, the people, and not the power brokers in the two political parties, have to start dictating our priorities. We have to demand a real justice movement which is bigger than the culture war.

Hopefully the Occupy movement is the beginning of such a pro-justice spirit.

For the time being, I can care less what Chick-fil-A thinks about the culture war; I am more concerned with the thousands of documented injuries that take place every year in fast food restaurants that could have been avoided if OSHA regulations were being enforced. That’s why I call for a boycott of all fast food restaurants.

USCCB, Health Care American Style, and the Rest of the World

Posted on July 9, 2012 by Jeff

I was sitting at dinner after giving a talk on “Politics and the Common Good,” for the Centre for Catholic Studies at Durham University. Dinner was nice, and conversation turned to America since I was present. A priest from Ireland and a woman asked me what the deal was with the American bishops. My two inquisitors informed me that the work of the USCCB against Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act seemed ludicrous to those outside the US.

“Why are they against it, anyway?”

Mind you, this question came from a Roman Catholic priest.

Who teaches in a seminary!

What answer could I give? The USCCB position against the health care act hinged, at least publicly, on the coverage of contraceptives. In a country that outlawed abortions, covering contraceptives didn’t cause a stir. It was just part of what was necessary to insure that everyone had access to quality health services and care.

But American bishops are, above all, American — which means both that their discourse is shaped by American politics — rather than having their voices shape American politics — and that they were committed to various American political institutions — rather than demanding that those institutions commit to their guidance.

The conversation gave me a sense of hope for the Church. I realized that American bishops are peculiar to America and that sanity prevailed among the faithful in other parts of the world. Yes, we have a pope with dubious political and theological leanings, and we have a doctrinal institution that is more concerned with lynching nuns and girl scouts than it is with proclaiming Matthew 5. And by all accounts, the new English translation of the missal is horrendous and difficult to pray, requiring dictionaries for anyone paying attention and Ph.D.-educated parsing of sentences.

But we also have people who simple live their faith, pray the liturgy, and serve the poor.

Amen!

The Bishops Are Wrong: Their Logic Fails.

Posted on June 9, 2012 by Dave

The Bishops Are Wrong: Their Logic Fails.

By now everyone knows that the United States Bishops are claiming that the law which requires employers to provide health insurance that covers drugs and contraceptives is a violation of religious liberty. Never mind the fact that the contraceptive requirement has been in place since 2000 (the only recent change is that the law now applies to employers with fewer than 15 employees and all employers have to include drug coverage; before they could insure without drugs) and it looks suspicious that the Bishops chose an election year to finally complain about it; never mind the fact that very few if any Catholics can make any sense out of the hierarchy’s prohibition on contraception; never mind that the Bishops are unwilling to also extend their argument to religious groups like Jehovas Witnesses, who prohibit organ donation.

Never mind all of that. I am going to show, by using the blazing power of syllogistic logic, why the Bishops are simply wrong.

Let’s look at the syllogism the Bishops would probably put forward:

1. A law which requires a person to buy something which is opposed to his religion violates his religious freedom.
2. The law requires some employers to purchase contraceptives, which are opposed to some employers’ religious beliefs.
Therefore: The law violates some employers religious beliefs.

Assuming (and its a reasonable assumption) that some employers (specifically, perhaps, the bishops themselves) are opposed on religious principle to contraception, this syllogism is valid.

But it is not sound.

Why?

Because the second premise is false. Employers don’t buy contraceptives: Employees do by their own choice.

Put another way: By definition, employers pay for one thing and one thing only: Labor and services. They pay for this in two forms: Wages (monetary compensation) and benefits (such as health insurance). An employee can pay for anything he wants (provided it is legal) with his wages and benefits. In this country, we have minimum compensation laws (supported by the Bishops and Catholic tradition) that includes both a minimum wage and, in some cases, minimum health insurance packages. The employee decides how to spend both at his or her own discretion. The employee buys many things, from food to health services, by means of his or her labor and services.

Think of it this way: When you get a paycheck and buy a television, do you say “my employer bought this television?” No, of course not. You earned your paycheck by working. You also earned your health insurance by working. It is your choice how to spend both money and benefits. Your employer may not like how you spend money or benefits, but nevertheless you earned both the money and the benefits. An employer can no more say “I will pay you this amount of money only on condition that you not use it to purchase contraception” any more than he can say “I will provide health insurance provided you do not use it to purchase contraception.” The employer can’t do that because the only thing an employer pays for is your labor and services.

So the Bishops are wrong: The law is not a violation of religious liberty for the simple reason that no one is required to buy anything he or she does not want. No one is required to buy contraceptives.

But it is an election year, and we all remember the past two presidential cycles when some bishops tried to declare it a mortal sin to vote for certain candidates. Since that was too controversial, perhaps they just see this is an alternative way to make their own prejudices known.

Subversive Thomism

Living Justly and Loving Kindness in a World on the Brink of Collapse

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