Bishop Lori Responds to the Editorial of "America"

Bishop Lori Responds to the Editorial of “America”

“The March 5th (Jesuit) America editorial (“Policy Not Liberty”) takes the United States bishops to task for entering too deeply into the finer points of health care policy as they ponder what slightly revised Obama administration mandate might mean for the Catholic Church in the U.S.A.

“These details, we are told, do not impinge on religious liberty. We are also told that our recent forthright language borders on incivility. What details are we talking about? For one thing, a government mandate to insure, one way or another, for an abortifacient drug called Ella. Here the “details” would seem to be fertilized ova, small defenseless human beings, who will likely suffer abortion, within the purview of a church-run health insurance program.

“What other details are at issue? Some may think the government is forcing the church to provide insurance coverage for direct surgical sterilizations such a tubal litigations is a matter of policy. Such force, though, feels an awful lot like an infringement on religious liberty.

“Still another detail is ordinary contraception. Never is ordinary conception. Never mind that the dire societal ills which Pope Paul predicted would ensue with the widespread practice of artificial contraception have more than come true. Government makes the rules and the rules are the rules.

“So, the bishops should regard providing (and paying for) contraception as, well, a policy detail. After all, it’s not like the federal government is asking bishops to deny the divinity of Christ. It’s just a detail in a moral theology – life and love, or something as that. And why worry about other ways the government may soon require the church to violate its teachings as a matter of policy?

“More details come to mind. Many if not most church entities are self-insured. Thus, Catholic social service agencies, schools, and hospitals could end up paying for abortifacients, sterilizations, and contraception’s.

"If the editorial is to be believed, bishops should regard it not as matter of religious liberty but merely policy that as providers they teach one thing but as employers they are made to teach something else. In other words, we are made to teach something else. In other works we are forced to be a countersign to church teaching and to give people plenty of reason not to follow it. The detail in question here is called “scandal.”

“Then there is the detail of religious insurers and companies that are not owned by the Church but which exist solely to serve the church’s mission. The new “accommodation” leaves them out in the cold. If I really wanted to get into the weeds … mention the conscience rights of individual employers.

“Have I forgotten any other details we bishops shouldn’t be attending to? Well, I guess we’re policy wonks for wondering if the government has a compelling interest in forcing the church to insure for proscribed services when contraception is covered in 90 percent health care plans, if free in Title X programs, and is available from Walmart (generic) for about $10., a month. Pardon me also for wondering whether the most basic freedom, religious liberty, isn’t being compromised, not by a right to health care, but by a claim to “services” which regard pregnancy and fertility as diseases. And didn’t President Obama promise adequate conscience protection in the reform of health care?”…

“March 19th issue (page 27) of America published by U.S. Jesuits” – letters@americamagazine.org – Most Rev. William E. Lori, Bishop of Bridgeport, Chairman, Ad Hoc Committee on Religion Liberty: [ghk- Sat. March 24/12]