What we’ve been learning, Part II, The Anchor, March 16, 2012

Last week we began our examination of what we’ve been learning as a result of the Obama Administration’s decision to force objecting religious institutions, one way or the other, to pay for abortion-causing pills, sterilizations and contraception. We learned that this is not an isolated infraction, but part of a multivalent coordinated effort to compel the Church and other religious institutions to cooperate, whether they want to or not, with the sexual revolution’s agenda of sex without responsibility and its radical transvaluation, through the pedagogical power of governmental policy and law, of abortion, contraception, sex, marriage, and family. We learned that, in stark contrast to some of his predecessors like President Clinton, President Obama and his administration seem to be willing to jettison the enormous social goods flowing from the Church’s charitable work — in hospitals, schools, and so many programs for the poor and needy — unless the Church capitulates to the secularist agenda and begins to fund and facilitate radical programs against its religious teaching. We learned that even though the Church didn’t ask for this fight, it’s a fight it cannot flee, for not only is the Church’s charitable work as a whole in jeopardy but also the Church’s constitutionally-protected right to religious freedom and believers’ right to freedom of conscience.

There are many other lessons we have been learning.

First, the administration and many of its sympathizers in the media are trying to pretend that the issue is really about Catholic teaching on contraception, but it’s about the administration’s designs to infringe on constitutionally-protected religious freedom. As one blogger wrote, the issue is no more about contraception than the Boston Tea Party was about tea. The issue is not about access to contraception, sterilization and abortifacient morning after pills — these are all available — but about compelling those who object to them to pay for them, directly or indirectly, so that those who want to use them can obtain them for free. There is no compelling government justification for why religious Sisters, for example, should be forced to subsidize Sandra Fluke’s sex life and other women’s voluntary tubal ligations, birth control and abortion-inducing pills. There is no constitutional right to free sterilizations — not to mention to force other people to make them free — while there is a constitutional protection of religious freedom. The issue isn’t about birth control, but government control.

Second, there seems to be no possibility of working cooperatively with the Obama Administration to resolve this in a way that respects religious freedom. That’s not because a true accommodation would be impossible — there would be other ways by which the government could provide free access to these items if it wanted to do so— but because the administration seems determined not to take the Church’s conscientious objection and religious freedom claims seriously. As Cardinal Dolan wrote in a March 2 letter to his brother bishops, “There was not even a nod to the deeper concerns about trespassing upon religious freedom, or of modifying the HHS’ attempt to define the how and who of our ministry. … The president invited us to ‘work out the wrinkles.’ We have accepted that invitation. Unfortunately, … the White House Press Secretary … informed the nation that the mandates are a fait accompli. … At a recent meeting between staff of the bishops’ conference and the White House staff, our staff members asked directly whether the broader concerns of religious freedom — that is, revisiting the straight-jacketing mandates, or broadening the maligned exemption — are all off the table. They were informed that they are. So much for ‘working out the wrinkles.’” All of this, he said, “doesn’t bode well for their getting a truly acceptable ‘accommodation.’”

Third, there doesn’t seem to be a realistic path to immediate redress on Capitol Hill. The failure of the Senate on March 1 to pass the Blunt Amendment and enshrine the Respect of Rights of Conscience Act showed that prospects for help from Congress won’t come as long as there is a majority of senators who agree with the policy of the administration. Even though the amendment narrowly failed 51-48, in order to become law, it would require a two-thirds majority to bypass a promised veto from the president.

Fourth, the failure of the Blunt Amendment taught us two other lessons. Democrats voted against the Respect of Rights of Conscience Act  48-3, while Republicans voted in favor of it 45-1. (Two independents voted against the amendment and one Republican supporter was absent.) An objective conclusion for those worried about respect for conscience and freedom of religion is that Republicans on Capitol Hill seem to be overwhelmingly supportive of religious freedom and conscience concerns whereas Democrats are overwhelmingly supportive of the administration’s efforts to deny such protections. This is not a partisan observation; it’s a fact. The other thing we learned about the Senate’s failure to pass the Blunt Amendment is that 13 Roman Catholic senators, including Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, voted against it. When faced with a situation in which every single U.S. bishop wrote a letter decrying the consequences of the HHS mandate on Catholic and other religious institutions, these Catholic senators — many of whom who have routinely cited their “conscience” to vote for bills in favor of abortion —still voted against the Church’s being compelled, as the legislation stipulated, to “provide, participate in, or refer for a specific item or service contrary to the provider’s religious beliefs or moral convictions.” Such a betrayal would probably even make Judas blush.

Fifth, the controversy over the HHS mandate has revealed one of the most serious problems with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). It gives unheard of authority to unelected officials and bureaucrats. This attack on religious freedom came, essentially, from a determination of Kathleen Sebelius, the HHS secretary. It was she alone who was given by the act the ability to define what constitutes “preventive care” and, after a recommendation from a faux medical advisory board stacked with those involved in the abortion business, she took it upon herself alone to determine that abortion-causing pills, sterilizations and contraception constituted “preventive care” that must be covered with no co-pay. It was she alone who determined what the definition of religious institution is. It was she who alone determined the criteria on which persons or institutions should be exempted. This problem — and the danger it brings — is not isolated. Those who have examined the text of the PPACA have noted that it contains 700 references to the secretary “shall,” another 200 to the secretary “may” and 139 to the secretary “determines.” The HHS secretary has not only been given unprecedented power over what amounts to be one-sixth of the U.S. economy, but the authority to determine all sorts of things that no unelected official should have.

That leads to a sixth point. Just as with the HHS mandate, so with the PPACA as a whole, there are way too many problems associated with it to get sucked into the weeds of trying to fix the details. As presently written, the HHS Secretary has the authority to do even more damage than Secretary Sebelius has been trying to do up until now against the conscience rights of religious institutions and individuals. If she can determine on her own today what the definition of a religious group is and force them to pay for people to have access to the abortion-causing morning after pill, ella, what’s to stop her from narrowing the definition of a religious group even further tomorrow and compelling everyone to pay for RU-486 down the road? If she can compel people to subsidize chemical abortions, why not surgical abortions, President Obama’s flimsy signing statement notwithstanding? We’ve been learning that the only way to stop the PPACA from being used to advance a radical secularist agenda against religious freedom is to get it overturned and start from scratch to seek another, less hazardous means to provide basic health care.

Seventh and lastly, religious believers have been learning that there are, sadly, many elected officials who simply do not respect religious freedom and who will use the coercive power of government to try to take away their rights and force them against their conscience to pay for and do what they believe is wrong. This is something that all religious citizens must ponder over the course of the next eight months. If a candidate for office will not defend our religious freedom, but rather trample on it, then Catholic citizens need to ask whether that candidate adequately represent our values. If not, that candidate should never be in a position where he or she can use the coercive power of government to violate our rights. In a free country, we ultimately get the leaders we deserve. We should never elect people who would use their office to take our rights away and get us to fund other’s newly-invented secularist pseudo-rights. As citizens, we have the power to correct these abuses, but we need to rise up and use that power. These are all lessons that, unfortunately, we’ve been learning the hard way.