Religious Freedom and Obamacare

Kathleen Sebelius, US Secretary of Health and Human Services, announced in a letter a week ago Friday she had decided reproductive drugs and services including sterilization, birth control drugs, and the abortifacient "morning after pill" are preventive services and, as provided under Obamacare, must be covered under most health insurance policies with no deductible or co-pay. Churches are exempt. Most church affiliated institutions including hospitals and schools have one year to comply.

Traditional media outlets seem to have pretty much missed it. I googled the news for Sebelius and found very little. The Washington Post ran an editorial calling the decision wrong. Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York had a scathing op ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. No other big city newspaper and none of the TV news outlets mentioned the letter.

Archbishop Dolan felt betrayed. He thought he had President Obama's word that Catholic conscience would be respected. It was not. Catholic Health Association, the major organization representing Catholic hospitals can't feel any better. They supported obamacare thinking existing law would prevent public funding of abortions in the absence of specific language in the new legislation. It has not.

In the Diocese of Dallas Bishop Kevin Farrell had his own letter read at every Mass this weekend denouncing the policy as an unconstitutional affront to religious freedom, vowing not to follow it, and calling on Catholics to appeal to their legislators to have it overturned. I suspect something similar is happening in every diocese across the country.

The bishops are right to be concerned. So should anyone who values religious freedom. Catholics and others are being told they must pay for things they consider morally wrong. Even if you disagree with church doctrine on birth control, as many Catholics do, surely religious organizations have a right to follow their own consciences. The bishops are also right to go directly to Catholics. Else the studied silence from the media might effectively shield politicians from repercussions. Several people I spoke with after Mass this morning hadn't heard about the policy.

This was actually the second big event in two days essentially ignored by the pro-abortion media. Massive pro-life rallies on Saturday marking the anniversary of Roe v Wade also went largely unreported. There were tens of thousands of marchers in Washington DC; no mention in the New York Times, not a word.

There could be a silver lining in this. More and more young people are describing themselves as pro-life. They have become a very visible presence at rallies. That sort of activism probably won't translate to a massive rejection of contraceptives but a bone headed move like the Sebelius letter sometimes gets people's attention. Young people especially are sensitive to rights violations, even when it isn't their own rights being violated.

I expect the story to have legs. The rule will certainly be challenged in the courts. I will be surprised if it isn't over turned, one more tear in the increasingly shabby fabric of obamacare. After all, it does look like a pretty clear violation of the first amendment. The process will keep the story alive on the blogosphere regardless of what the traditional media do. We could see new energy in the whole debate; from the pro-life community,. from Catholics and other religious who may not normally be active on social issues, and from tea party conservatives who just don't like obamacare. Stay tuned.

Just Money and Finance

The global financial crisis that began in the US with the housing bubble (or was it $4 gasoline?) is well into its fourth year now with no end in sight. In October the Vatican Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace decided to, well, pontificate on the subject. They published a serious reflection on the implications of globalization generally and especially for the world’s economy, the impact on the poor, the need for more effective regulation, and a broad outline for what reform should look like. It isn’t light reading but it is a worthwhile treatment of a poorly understood topic that affects us all, and how Catholics might look at it from the perspective of our faith.

As have Popes at least since Paul VI, the Council advocates a new system of governance that will move us beyond the arrangement of sovereign nation states that has prevailed since the Peace of Westphalia ended the Thirty Years War in 1648. They are suggesting it is time to yield some of that sovereignty in favor of a global authority, one that will govern in a spirit of solidarity and subsidiarity that sounds a lot like federalism on a global scale, a scale that should include every country on the planet. The efficacy of every law and regulation would be weighed in light of the common good, with of course an appropriate preference for the needs of the poor. The new authority would step in only where individual states are unable or unwilling to adequately address the issue at hand.

The Council has a strong case, pointing out the increasing interdependence that has brought the world so much prosperity since the end of WWII. They think that is a good thing, though not without its flaws and dangers, not least in the evolving monetary and financial systems. There are still billions who have not prospered and the risks have become increasingly evident. In the 1970s we had the shock of a spike in oil prices that sent national economies reeling. Then came regional financial crises in Mexico and Asia. This one is different, spreading from America to Europe and around the world with the potential to do more damage than anything we’ve seen in decades.

The institutions established at Bretton Woods in 1944 are no longer adequate to control the enormous growth in credit and the massive flows of capital, often in the form of complex financial instruments no one fully understands or adequately regulates. Financial markets have exploded, far outstripping the growth in “real” economies, the underlying production of goods and services. The result is a vulnerability to economic collapse the world cannot long tolerate, and of course the effects are felt worst among the poor. The Council’s solution is a global authority with the power to regulate international and perhaps intranational financial transactions.

The Council is right but I can’t imaging there will be much talk of a new global “authority” in this year’s American presidential elections. If there is it will be one candidate accusing another of some sort of dark international conspiracy to undermine the US Constitution. We need to start the conversation though. We are all on this planet together and there are now seven billion of us. We need mechanisms in place to manage the risks and opportunities all those people represent. They need to be implemented for the common good, and without unnecessarily usurping the rights of regions, nations, communities, and families to govern themselves.

This new Vatican document didn’t get much publicity. The Global financial crisis didn’t make it into Faithful Citizenship, the US Bishops’ quadrennial review of issues for Catholics to consider in the election cycle. It should have.

All Things in Moderation

When did moderate become a four letter word? Republicans in red states have been running on the “I’m more conservative than you are” mantra for a while now. Rick Perry used it in the last Texas gubernatorial primary and it was enough to beat Kay Bailey Hutchison. In the general election no Democrat not named Attila stood a chance. I can’t remember another talking point in the Perry campaign and I suspect I am not alone. It seemed he couldn’t string three sentences together without using the word conservative. In the presidential race he still can’t, and neither can a half dozen other candidates vying for the label.

Now it’s being taken to a new level. Newt Gingrich is in New Hampshire accusing Mitt Romney of being a moderate, as though the offense if not intrinsically evil is at least a venal sin. And I’m seeing attack ads on television with the same charge against Texas Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, citing newspaper excerpts as evidence.

Politics is often described as the art of the possible. I remember when pragmatism was a virtue in a politician. Nowadays any compromise is selling out to the devil. Is anybody that conservative on every issue? I don’t see how. How can you be pro-life and pro-death penalty? How can you call yourself Christian and advocate deporting 12 million undocumented aliens? How do you save Medicare and cut payment rates to the point where doctors can’t afford to accept it? It’s committing intellectual suicide.

This is not a good thing. I’m criticizing Republicans because with the only contested presidential primary they are more in the news with their appeals to mindless ideology. Democrats are just as bad, and just as inconsistent with their calls for income equality to be achieved by making everyone poorer. Do they really think they can save the planet by dismantling the industrial revolution? Did anyone else notice they supported war in Iraq at the beginning, then turned against it when the going got rough? We have become so polarized that even the science of global warming is a political issue. You can pretty much tell a person’s party by whether he or she thinks it is man made.

We’ve got serious issues to deal with. We need thoughtful people to deal with them. And we need a reasoned national discussion to work out responsible approaches to them. Nothing is likely to satisfy everyone. There is no perfect solution to illegal immigration, entitlement reform, the debt crisis, or a dozen other urgent concerns. We may never reach a national consensus on gay marriage, abortion, health insurance, global warming, free trade, or even school choice. But shouting at one another over hard drawn left/right battle lines isn’t going to help.

Some pundits have commented that Barack Obama’s presidency is failing because he has tried to govern a center right nation from the left. There is probably some truth to that but I doubt that countering with a hard right strategy is any way to win an election.

Barry Goldwater famously said “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice” and “moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.” Lyndon Johnson used the quote to paint him as a war monger, beat him in a landslide, and promptly led us into war in Vietnam. I voted for Goldwater and supported the war in Vietnam but it’s time we let our politicians know once again that sort of rhetoric is not acceptable. Moderation, pragmatism, and civility in public discourse are indeed virtues where they serve to advance the cause of justice. Extremism is always a vice when it leads to unnecessary and damaging conflict, even in defense of liberty.