"The Empire of Personal Desire" and the Catholic Charities Case

If you have not already, download and read Vince's paper, "The Empire of Personal Desire" (click on Vince's name, on the right). As Vince explores in that paper, and observes below, "the Catholic notion of a communally situated individual has ramifications for how we understand ourselves as members of couples, families, and communities; how we understand our roles as parents, children, and spouses; and how we understand our obligations to those around us."

This "Catholic notion" -- and Vince's study of forced-heirship in Louisiana -- also has important ramifications, I think, for our understanding of the Catholic Charities case. The law at issue in that case -- and the extremely narrow scope of the law's exemption for "religious employers" -- proceeds from highly individualistic premises about what religion is, and what religion is for.

If one understands "religion" as being about "personal spirituality", comfort, therapy, and an individual's discrete "personal relationship" with the Divine, then a law requiring entities with health-care plans to include contraceptive coverage in those plans would seem to impose little, if any, significant burdens on the freedom of "religion," so understood. After all, California is not requiring individuals to believe anything in particular, it is not requiring individuals to act in any particular way, and it is not even (directly) requiring individuals to fund conduct that those individuals might, for "personal" religious reasons, find offensive.

Nonetheless, premises grounded in a better, richer understanding of religious freedom push us toward the conclusion that the scope of California's "religious employer" exemption is deeply injurious to the Church's evangelizing and social-justice missions. The exemption decrees to be "secular" activities engaged in by the Church, and by Christians acting together, that represent the Church's efforts to be true to the Great Commission.

Rick