Charles Honey’s column last Sunday sets the conflict between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church over the mandate to provide contraception in certain employment settings. Honey is skeptical, but he does point to the bishops report, and that is worth some comment.
Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, head of the bishops’ committee on religious liberty, recently told the U.S. Bishops Conference meeting in Atlanta the liberty campaign is no “walk in the park,” either. He said some reaction had been “hostile, sometimes unfair and inaccurate and sometimes derisive.”
He also said bishops’ concerns go beyond the health-care mandate. His committee’s report, “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty,” also cited state immigration measures, such as an Alabama law prohibiting priests from baptizing or preaching to illegal immigrants.
It is an odd thing to engage in the public square by refusing to provide either references to or third party provisions for contraception, yet such is the Church’s stance. Odder yet, to treat the federal mandate as an “unjust law” thereby requiring acts of conscience, similar to the unjust laws protested during the Civil Rights era — this is a case of intellectual (one is tempted to say “jesuitical”) abuse. It doesn’t fly.
Of course, it might fly were the core social teachings of the Church focused on sex. But they are not. These are emanations of emanations from the great teachings on social duty, in the Bible, in the Fathers, and in the actual practice of the Church. The voice and witness on these matters is a gift to not only others who make a Christian confession, but to society as a whole.
Bluntly, the hostility to artificial contraception is a product deriving from the manner of the Church’s reasoning, and so is something less ecumenical and more particular, even sectarian. Sectarian beliefs ought to be guarded within the bounds of a religious body, but when that body is employing non-adherents, hired on basis of secular merit — say like Mercy Health, the sole provider of healthcare in Muskegon County — then the case for making those beliefs integral to the institution seem strained.
The Bishops are right to be concerned about maintaining the integrity of their witness. they subvert it with the turn to the sectarian with their non-adherent, secular employees.
Update: The discussion continues on in an engaging dialogue with Kevin Rahe, an articulate lay Catholic. Continue reading “Fortnight for Freedom”