Serious Catholic Divisions on the HHS Mandate

Serious Catholic Divisions on the HHS Mandate
The relentless pursuit of the truth - cinops be gone - Saturday, Oct. 27, 2012

George McKenna is a professor emeritus of political science at City College of New York. He has written a disturbing poignant article titled, “Sleeping with the Enemy.“ in the Summer 2012 edition of “the Human Life.” p. 13-14, You decide and pray for unity.

Left and Right Critics of the Bishops:
“Alas, some Catholics on the left have opted for neutrality or even sympathy with the other side, and some Catholics on the right seem to take spiteful satisfaction from the whole affair. Washington Post writer E.J. Dionne, a self-identified Catholic, at first expressed something like anguish over the mandate (“Obama threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus.”).

“But he quickly got back in line with the Administration after its empty “accommodation” of February 10, which continued but said that the insurance companies had to pay for it (pretending not to notice that the insurance companies would pass back the cost in higher premiums and that many Catholic institutions are self-insured). Now Dionne declared that the Catholic bishops must decide whether they want “to defend the church’s legitimate interest” or “wage an election-year war against President Obama.”

“Throwing down the gauntlet, he added, “do most conservative bishops want to junk the Roman Catholic Church as we have known it, with its deep commitment to life and social justice, and turn it into a Tea Party at prayer.” For him, the bishops’ protest really amounts to a threat of partisan political warfare, and he, being a good Democrat before anything else was fighting back with his own threat. If you bishops don’t shut up I will hammer you with the charge of being “the Tea Party at prayer.” Does that kind of talk frighten the new generation of Catholic bishops? I don’t think so.

“More nuanced was the reaction of the editors of America, the nation’s leading Jesuit magazine. “For a brief moment,” the editors wrote, “Catholics on all sides were united in the defense of the freedom of the Catholic Church to define for itself what it means to be Catholic in the United States.” But the editorial continues, the Administration’s “accommodation” of February 10 essentially met the bishops’ objection, and now they should talk with the Administration in “a conciliatory style that keeps Catholics united and cools the national distemper.” Instead, by continuing the struggle and getting into the fine points of policy matters, the bishops are involving themselves in matters of prudential judgment, better left to the politicians.

“The America editorial has a lighter touch than E.J. Dionne’s piece; there is even a plaintiff can’t-we-all-get-along note to it. But its innocence is far more alarming than Dionne’s thuggishness. Citing what it calls “fundamental principles of Catholic political theology,” it holds that, since that there are two competing right claims in dispute, women’s health and religious freedom, Catholic rights theory “assigns to government the responsibility to coordinate contending rights and interests for the sake of the common good.”

“And that is what government did in this case. It did “what Catholic social teaching expects government to do - coordinate contending rights for the good of all.” You may need to reread these quotes. The Jesuit editors of America are saying that “government” i.e. the Obama administration should have the sovereign authority to settle the dispute. But the government is one of the parties to the dispute! This is as like asking one of the litigants in a legal case to decide the case for the court. Yet the editors insist that this is one of the “fundamental principles of Catholic theology.”

George H. Kubeck, As a graduate of a Jesuit college, the Jesuit editors of America are full of malarkey. Our Church and people are destroyed because of a lack of information, serious divisions, and the absence of strong Catholic laity leadership who proclaim the “Catechism of the Catholic Church” as our guiding light. Catholic religious correctness is as bad as political correctness.