By Mike Appleton, Guest Blogger
In Portrait of the Artist As A Young Man, Stephen Daedalus is asked by his friend Cranly whether, having forsaken Roman Catholicism, he will become a Protestant. “I said I had lost the faith,” he replied, “but not that I had lost selfrespect. What kind of liberation would that be to forsake an absurdity which is logical and coherent and to embrace one which is illogical and incoherent?”
But God works, as they say, in mysterious ways. A black man, accused of being secretly a Muslim, a socialist and an illegitimate pretender to the presidential throne, has accomplished what all of the post-Vatican II reconciliation committees and joint worship services and inter-faith conferences could not. Rev. Mike Huckabee has declared that Protestants will at last abandon illogic and incoherence. No longer will the Pope be called the Antichrist, nor Holy Mother Church the Whore of Rome. Once again, he says, we are all Catholics. My late Irish grandmother’s faith has been vindicated.
Christians have reunited under the banner of Richard “Coeur de Lion” Santorum to defeat apostasy and reclaim America for Christendom. The enemy this time? An HHS regulation requiring most health insurance plans to include FDA approved forms of contraception in coverage for preventive health services. There is, of course, an exception for churches, but not for religious institutions serving the general public. The outrage has been intense, widespread and misguided.
The newest crusade, like its historical predecessors, is largely fueled by the bad faith of its leaders and the ignorance of its foot soldiers. The President has graciously described the controversy as a difference of opinion between reasonable people, but his comments are undeservedly charitable. The argument that the requirement is an assault on religious freedom is legally frivolous. The suggestion that it raises serious questions under the Free Exercise Clause or the Religious Freedom Restoration Act is laughable, unless one is a graduate of the Michele Bachmann School of Constitutional Revisionism and Beauty Culture.
It has never been the law that the First Amendment exempts religion from all civil authority. The First Amendment “embraces two concepts,-freedom to believe and freedom to act. The first is absolute but, in the nature of things, the second cannot be.” Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303-304 (1940). Public policy demands have been found to trump freedom of religion in a number of contexts. The Mormon practice of polygamy was long ago held to be subordinate to criminal statutes. Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1879). Jehovah Witnesses have been compelled to comply with child labor laws prohibiting the sale of printed materials on public streets by minors. Prince v. Massachusetts, 321 U.S. 158 (1944). Bob Jones University was unable to prevent the loss of its tax exempt status despite its religious convictions opposing interracial dating and marriage. Bob Jones University v. United States, 461 U.S. 574 (1983). And the courts have frequently ordered the provision of emergency medical care to minors over the religious objections of their parents.
The new regulation implements portions of the Affordable Care Act intended to expand the availability of preventive health services to women by requiring insurance companies to provide coverage for those services. Meeting the public health needs of millions of women pursuant to a grant of legislative authority surely fits any reasonable definition of a compelling governmental interest. And the impact on religious expression? None. Religious institutions are not required to change their moral views on contraception. No woman will be compelled to practice birth control.
But if the regulation does not raise constitutional issues, why all the fuss? The answer is that the reaction is a contrived and cynical political attack for election year consumption by Catholics and right-wing evangelicals. It is an effort to extend the notion of religious expression to include what are clearly non-ministerial functions. It is also part of an effort to further weaken the wall of separation between government and religion. Indeed, the position of the Catholic bishops reinforces my opposition to the entire faith-based initiatives program. How is it that a religious body can assert the propriety of accepting public tax dollars to support what it asserts to be a public function, such as operating a general hospital, and simultaneously insist that the operation of that same hospital is protected religious expression for all other purposes?
The government is obligated to respect the free exercise of religion. Religious bodies engaged in the operation of public facilities are obligated to respect the rights of all employees, including those having incompatible religious beliefs, and to comply with applicable laws. Once this has been made clear to all, Christians can return to warring among themselves.
Blouise,
Sneak preview please. What’s a snark?
PS That clause “beliefs and practices” is worrisome loose.Particularly practices.
I assume that precedents have been set early, not just child labor and health.
Rafflaw,
I thought doge was some guy with one foot on the cathedral and one on the necks of people, with a lot of pigeons s……….g on his head.
Elaine M.
Late reading Ruether essay excerpt. Needed that.
Sneak previews? We are on the doge of our seats Gene!
Gene:
You’ve piqued my interest as well. I’m looking forward to seeing what you have to say. I didn’t know that guest bloggers could do sneak previews.
OS,
You might be on to something!
Swarthmore,
I would love to see Santorum as the candidate. It would be fun.
They just may go with Santorum and no contraception. There is a Rasmussen poll out tonight that shows Santorum getting 54% if Gingrich drops out.
raff, I am all in favor of contraception for Republicans. In fact, I am beginning to believe retroactive birth control should be an option for some Republican parents.
Elaine,
It is amazing that the Republicans think the contraception issue is a winner for them!
Blouise, Yep, a couple of them.
id707,
Just wait till the snark starts … you’ll figure you’ve died and gone to heaven.
We have all been very good this last week or so … it is most unnatural.
Elaine and SwM,
I figure we’ve served our time in hell … one word … anon
Gene,
“I have an article I’m considering for this weekend …”
Okay … I’m hooked … that was pretty sneaky 😉
The GOP Candidates’ War On Women’s Health Care
By ThinkProgress War Room on Feb 15, 2012
http://thinkprogress.org/progress-report/the-gop-candidates-war-on-womens-health-care/
Public backs Obama in birth control fight, poll suggests
By Olivier Knox
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/public-backs-obama-birth-control-fight-poll-suggests-205113637.html
Excerpt:
It’s not even close: By a lopsided margin of 66 percent to 26 percent, Americans support President Barack Obama’s proposal to require private health insurance plans to cover the full cost of birth control for women, according to a new CBS/New York Times public opinion poll.
Rephrasing the question to ask specifically about “religiously affiliated employers, such as a hospital or university,” barely moved the needle, to 61 percent to 31 percent.
Those numbers, which come with a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, are better for Obama than his numbers on foreign policy (50 percent approve, 36 percent disapprove), Afghanistan in particular (51 percent approve, 36 percent disapprove) and are nearly the mirror image of public opinion on his handling of the federal budget deficit, where he loses 32 percent to 59 percent.
SwM,
re; Their bumper stickers said,”Viva Bush”.
“This advertisement has been approved……”
George had heard that double-entendre since he was 13.
He’d used it many times (ho-ho) himself.
Now it was his big chance. He seriously expected to be met with it by each local potentate on his campaign rounds. Breaks the ice, you know, he said….
This place is amazing. What revelations for an agnostic guilty (me); jewish guilt, catholic guilt—–what next? Confessions of a former Republican?
Don’t think so.
I should have included the following from Margaret Carlson’s Bloomberg article:
War on President
To the extent conservative voters support the bishops, it is largely on abortion, not contraception. Evangelical doctrine doesn’t prohibit birth control. If they pursue their current course, the bishops risk looking like allies of the Republicans’ war on all things Obama: health-care reform, big government, fiscal policy and now contraception.
Balancing the desires of our varied religions without endorsing any one in particular can be messy. Should insurers tailor their policies to conform to Shariah law for Muslim employers? Should reporters at the Christian Science Monitor be deprived of health care in favor of prayer healing? If not, why should Catholic employers be allowed to deprive employees — who pay insurance premiums — of coverage for contraceptives?
The president has no obligation to yield to the anachronistic, largely unenforced policy of one religion. Americans didn’t leave the Church of England behind only to embrace a Church of the United States as defined by an overreaching Catholic hierarchy. Thank God for that.
PS Now I know:
You either wift away a fly, or you swat it.
And being kindly Jains all, you choose the former.
Catholic Bishops Join the Culture War on Obama: Margaret Carlson
2/14/12
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-15/catholic-bishops-join-the-culture-war-on-obama-margaret-carlson.html
Excerpt:
I was surprised when the bishops didn’t declare victory last week. Heeding their protests, President Barack Obama relieved Catholic institutions of the indignity of having to pay directly for contraception for their employees.
In the compromise worked out by the White House, insurance companies would instead provide contraception coverage separately and absorb the cost, which is less than paying for the alternatives.
Instead of marveling at this miraculous turnaround, the bishops raised holy hell, calling the deal an “outrage” and a “sham.” Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, said it was like letting Catholics have pornography as long as someone else paid for it.
To borrow a football metaphor, the bishops moved the pearly gates. They want the president to enforce a religious doctrine against artificial birth control that they gave up enforcing long ago.
I grew up in a devout Catholic family of three children, small for my neighborhood. My father called out numbers at Friday night bingo. My mother delivered starched linens to the sanctuary on Saturday night. But they didn’t take Communion on Sunday morning. I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach at every Mass because I was ashamed of them, though I didn’t know what they’d done wrong.
Despite the misplaced shame, I wanted to be married in the church. By 1972, many priests and most Catholic women had given up on church rules on sexual conduct. When I volunteered at my obligatory pre-wedding confession that I used the pill, the priest said that would no longer deprive me of a state of grace. I said five Hail Mary’s, took Communion and later baptized my daughter at St. Ann’s.
Good Faith Effort
Last week, the federal government made a good-faith effort to comply with a religious doctrine that isn’t taken seriously even by many of its most vocal champions. Why do the bishops want to continue this fight? Plenty of Catholics would like to rally around a church still (justly) paying a price for protecting priests who sexually abused children. Despite all, the church continues its commitment to helping the poor and the sick.
But if the controversy evolves from a conflict over religious prerogatives to one about contraception, the bishops will lose cafeteria Catholics who are accustomed to picking and choosing our doctrines.
The bishops are being encouraged by the Republican right, which is forever recruiting reinforcements for its culture wars. Rick Santorum, a Catholic with seven children and a wife who, he boasts, properly stays at home with them, outdoes the bishops. He wants no insurance coverage for contraceptives lest we live in a world where the irreligious “impose their values on somebody else.” (Only Santorum’s values should be imposed on somebody else.)
Newt Gingrich is almost as zealous — or at least pretends to be. A convert to Catholicism, Gingrich’s multiple marriages make a mockery of at least one church doctrine. His destructive politics and personal vitriol pretty much take care of the rest. Obama, Gingrich said, “will wage war on the Catholic Church the morning after he is re-elected.”
To compete with Santorum and Gingrich, Mitt Romney, the suspect moderate, grows even phonier. Providing “contraceptives, morning-after pills — in other words, abortive pills — and the like at no cost,” he said, “is a violation of conscience.” Yet a similar policy didn’t violate his conscience when he was governor of Massachusetts.