February 3, 2012

EDITORIAL

Catholics must be forceful in defense of religious liberty

Last August, the Department of Health and Human Services unveiled a new regulation that, in effect, would force Catholic institutions such as hospitals, schools and social service agencies to pay the full cost of providing their employees health insurance coverage for sterilizations and all forms of artificial birth control including those that work by causing abortions, in violation of the church’s beliefs on the dignity and sanctity of life. The regulations were issued as part of the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

The Catholic bishops and other religious leaders urged the administration to broaden the religious exemptions in the regulation to allow faith based organizations to remain true to their moral and religious values, the same values that motivated them to serve the poor, heal the sick and educate the young based on need rather than religious affiliation.

But on Jan. 20, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, on behalf of the Obama administration, announced that the regulation would proceed with the narrow religious exemptions. The federal government’s only concession was to give faith-based organizations a year to adapt to the new rules. As New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, put it, “In effect, the president is saying that we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.”

This fight is no longer simply about how best to implement the health care reform law. The Catholic Church and other people of faith have been forced to defend their right to practice their religion in public. The president’s actions have trumped his soaring rhetoric on the place of religion in American society. Those actions have made it abundantly clear that in his view there is no room in the public square for religion, despite the first amendment’s protection of our right to practice our faith without government intrusion.

He’s certainly not alone. Increasingly, the culture in our country and in most of the Western industrialized nations has been hostile to any public displays of faith. We’re told we can believe what we want, but in the next breath we’re belittled for our beliefs and told to keep them to ourselves.

But as Christians, we know that our obligation is to bring our faith to the world. That’s why the Catholic Church from its very beginning has reached out to help the poor and the sick. Later, the church in its quest for truth and wisdom, laid the groundwork for the university system we know today.

Apparently, the president and so many others don’t understand the connection between our faith and our actions, or even more troubling, don’t care if there is such a connection.

Bishop David Zubik characterized the administration’s actions most bluntly in a letter to his diocese. “The Obama administration has just told the Catholics of the United States, ‘To Hell with you!’” he wrote. “Kathleen Sebelius and through her, the Obama administration, have said ‘To Hell with You’ to the Catholic faithful of the United States, to Hell with your religious beliefs, to Hell with your religious liberty, to Hell with your freedom of conscience.”

He continued: “This is government by fiat that attacks the rights of everyone – not only Catholics; not only people of all religion. At no other time in memory or history has there been such a governmental intrusion on freedom not only with regard to religion, but even across the board with all citizens. It forces every employer to subsidize an ideology or pay a penalty while searching for alternatives to health care coverage. It undermines the whole concept and hope for health care reform by inextricably linking it to the zealotry of pro-abortion bureaucrats.”

In an editorial last August, the Tennessee Register said those Catholics who convinced themselves to vote for the president despite his aggressive pro-choice policies because they believed that on balance he would pursue policies that would protect the poor, improve access to health care for all, bring sanity to the country’s immigration system, had been duped.

Many said we were too harsh in our assessment of the Obama administration, that his failures on issues important to Catholics weren’t his fault.

Today, many Catholics surely are indeed feeling duped.

Archbishop Dolan said he felt “terribly let down, disappointed and disturbed” when the president informed him that the regulation would stand unchanged. Archbishop Dolan found it difficult to reconcile the decision with what the president had told him during a meeting in November – “that he considered the protection of conscience sacred, that he didn’t want anything his administration would do to impede the work of the church that he claimed he held in high regard, particularly in the area of health care, education, works of charity and justice.”

Archbishop Dolan isn’t alone. Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne is a Catholic and frequent defender of the Obama administration. After the Jan. 20 announcement, he wrote, “Obama threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus.” Many of those allies broke with the American bishops over concerns that Americans would be forced to pay for abortions under the president’s health care reform bill. It’s not an exaggeration to say that their stand provided the political cover the president needed to win, arguably, his most important legislative victory. But the president’s actions have turned the assurances of his Catholic allies to ashes.

This is not the time for Catholics to remain silent in the face of a culture hostile to our faith and our values. Catholics must stand fast in defense of religious liberty. We need not accede to the aggression of those who see us an obstacle to progress, because we know true progress depends on respect for human dignity because that respect is the foundation of the right of all Americans to practice their religious beliefs.