Taking Liberties

[rug]

The Editors | FEBRUARY 13, 2012

For a century and a half the Catholic Church in the United States has served the American people with health care, education and social services. Even a few months ago it would have seemed preposterous to suggest that the U.S. government would place the future of those good works at risk. That seems to be what has happened, however, with a decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to allow only a narrow conscientious exemption to the employer health care insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act, the administration’s signature health care reform law.

For U.S. Catholics as citizens, the administration’s failure to offer a broader exemption presents a grave test of the “free exercise” of religion protected by the Bill of Rights. For the narrow definition of religion in the new H.H.S. guideline is at odds with the millennia-old Catholic understanding of the church as a community of believers in service to the world. The H.H.S. definition would force the church to function as a sect, restricted to celebrating its own devotions on the margins of society. The ruling is a threat to our living as a church in the Catholic manner.

The controversial guidelines, announced on Jan. 20 by Kathleen Sibelius, secretary of H.H.S., restricts religious exemptions to those persons and institutions the administration defines as religious—namely, those that serve clear religious functions, employing primarily co-religionists and serving a largely denominational clientele. The administration rejected appeals from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and the Catholic Health Association for a broader conscience clause. Religiously sponsored institutions, like all other employers, will be explicitly required to provide coverage for contraception, sterilization and two potential abortifacients, services that are in violation of Catholic teaching. The administration has thus pushed the U.S. bishops into a destructive showdown over the future of Catholic health care, social services and higher educational institutions. It is a confrontation both sides should seek to avert.

The exemption devised by H.H.S. places Catholic institutional employers in an untenable position. The guidelines force them to cooperate, though indirectly, in grave wrongs by facilitating acts the church considers sinful. They also place dissenting institutions in the position of withdrawing health insurance benefits from their employees and from students at their colleges and universities. Employees of such institutions will have to seek out inferior and more expensive health plans on the open market, and their employers will face annual fines from the federal government for refusing to comply with the employers’ mandate.

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=13238

[glowing]

1. Sucks for them.. Either operate as a public function or forfeit public monies... makes sense to me.

They already get huge tax breaks as a "church". Why should they get public monies and be a church too?

[MarkCharles]

2. So, as I read it, Catholic Hospitals and service agencies don't wish to...

provide health insurance services for their employees which would enable the employees themselves to make their own decisions about birth control and other reproductive health services? Instead, the Catholic church, as their employer, wishes to make all the decisions about the healthful lives of their employees, including placing restrictions upon their reproductive freedoms of choice?

That's what I got from this piece of guilt-ridden editorializing.

Tell me I have this all wrong.

After all, this ruling doesn't FORCE the church to provide the services, but it forces the church to provide equal insurance coverage as it would for any other employer under the law. What is so unfair about that? Oh wait, I get it, religious people want to dictate what is right and wrong for others, again!

[cleanhippie]

3. Explain to me how this affect even one single persons religious freedom. Just one.

[darkstar3]

4. What liberty is being taken?

The writer claims that this is an encroachment on "free exercise", but fails to make the case. I will remind you that if you can't do the job, you shouldn't take it.

[Angry Dragon]

5. Why are posting this garbage??

[cbayer]

6. It's going to be really interesting to see how this plays out in the courts.

While I tend to stand with Sibelius on this, the Catholic Church's arguments deserve consideration.

You have a legal background, right? What do you think will happen here?

[rug]

7. The Church will have to divest itself from the health care industry.

I don't see it altering its beliefs to keep government contracts. The hospitals and other health care providers will spin off as independent entities.

What's interesting about the article is how much health care the Catholic Church has been providing for decades. The immediate effect I think will be a sudden shift and disruption in the delivery of health care in the industry. This goes far beyond hospitals.

The only legal challenge I see would be a stay in federal court from the implementation of this rule. I can see an argument on irreparable harm warranting a stay. The trickier part is showing a likelihood of prevailing on constitutional or statutory grounds.

It will be interesting to watch.

[cbayer]

8. I would guess that the hospitals and other healthcare systems are income

producers for the church, so they might be very reluctant to let them go. The downside for the public is that they have traditionally provided more indigent or reduced cost that the for profits.