I would put the burden on the employer to show that at the time of hiring, the employee had agreed to do what he/she now claims to be an unconscionable act of killing a human being. This admittedly is unfair to the employer where the employee make a wholly unforeseeable claim, e.g. that flowers are disguised children who should not be cut and put into a vase. But this sort of surprise will be rare, and anything else is like forcing the person with a conscience to wear a yellow star when looking for a job.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
Protecting Conscience: Coming Back to Rob
Is Obama attempting to meddle in internal Church affairs?
Over at The Catholic Thing, Austin Ruse has a column today in which he says, in part:
A reliable source tells me that someone representing the Obama administration is about to put pressure on the papal nuncio to the United States to get Archbishop Raymond Burke to be quiet. The Obama complaint is that Archbishop Burke, who is now head of the Apostolic Signatura in Rome, has supported another bishop in his chastisement of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius for her support of abortion.
A few days ago Archbishop Burke gave an interview to the San Diego-based organization Catholic Action for Faith and Family, during which he took the gloves off about Sebelius, who has been nominated to head the massive U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. He noted her “public association with some of the more notorious agents of the culture of death.” This, of course, was a reference to her hosting a party for the late-term abortionist George Tiller, currently on trial in Kansas for nineteen infractions of abortion restrictions.
* * *
Burke closed the interview by issuing a challenge to his brother bishops, most notably Archbishop Donald Wuerl of Washington, D.C.: “Every bishop is held to the same universal discipline which has been in force since the time of St. Paul the Apostle and is stated in canon 915 of the Code of Canon Law.” And then this: “Whether Governor Sebelius is in the Archdiocese of Kansas City in Kansas, or in any other diocese [italics Ruse’s], she should not present herself for Holy Communion because, after pastoral admonition, she obstinately persists in serious sin.”
* * *
And now there is word that someone who is well known among Republicans, and who has served in previous Republican administrations, is reaching out on behalf of the Obama administration to get the Holy See to quiet Burke, or at least to make it clear he speaks not for the Church, but only for himself.
* * *
By trying to stop a bishop from commenting on internal Church matters, the Obama administration wades into dangerous waters. Archbishop Burke is the head of the Apostolic Signatura, the Vatican office that is charged with interpreting the Code of Canon Law. The proper reception of Communion is proper to the Code of Canon Law, and therefore proper to any bishop, and especially to Archbishop Burke.
The pressure won't work, of course. Burke is just too smart, and tough. But Obama and his representatives are coming dangerously close to interfering in internal Church matters. More than anything else, the free exercise clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution was intended precisely to protect religious bodies from meddling by the state, even covert meddling by the White House like this. Obama and his pet Catholics should back off – and fast.
In the comments section, Ruse tells us that the Obama's emmisary is not Prof. Kmiec.
Obama at Notre Dame, Young Republicans, the Federalist Society, Etc.
Interesting post over at dotCommonweal (here). The first comment, by a Notre Dame law student, is interesting too.
Arizona Supreme Court on vouchers
More bad news on the school choice front. The Supreme Court of Arizona has held two state voucher programs unconstitutional under the state Constitution. Here. The programs involved scholarships for students with disabilities and scholarships for students in foster care. The Court found that both programs violated the Aid Clause of the state Constitution; that provision states that "[n]o tax shall be laid or appropriation of public money made in aid of any church, or private or sectarian school, or any public service corporation."
Richard M.
What would you fight for?
As MOJ readers know, I am a big fan of Notre Dame's "Alliance for Catholic Education." The other day, Fr. Tim Scully, the energy behind this great program, sent out, to former A.C.E. teachers and other friends of the program, a great e-mail (which he gave me permission to post), about a vital challenge confronting us today:
Dear Friends of ACE,
I've been thinking a lot this week about those NBC Notre Dame commercials that ask, "What would you fight for?"
In ACE, we've always fought for Catholic schools, but the recent debate over the parental choice program in Washington, DC has made it clear to me that the fight for Catholic schools and the fight for parental school choice are, in so many ways, the same fight.
Today I'd like to ask you to join me in this fight, both to keep the DC parental choice program alive and to expand our capacity to provide educational opportunities to poor families. The social justice and education teachings of the Church have always courageously asserted that parents are the primary educators of their children, and that parents must have the right to choose the school their children attend. This is the central value proposition of parental choice. This is why I am so committed to this battle.
The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program currently allows 1,700 kids in Washington to go to a school chosen by their parents, and many of those families choose Catholic schools. To qualify for these scholarships, these families’ income must be at or below 185% of the federal poverty line. The average family income is under $23,000, and 99% of recipients are minority. So we're talking about some of the poorest, most marginalized families in one of the worst school districts in America.
If we're not going to fight for them, then who will we fight for?
I asked you to get involved a few weeks ago when I learned that Congress was threatening to end the DC parental choice program. I’m deeply grateful that so many of you responded. We're now gearing up for what's sure to be a long, tough reauthorization process, and we will need your continued help. Over the coming weeks and months, we need to build a network of friends who will be ready to mobilize to fight for these children. We need tenacious advocates for kids who will be willing to write and call and e-mail folks in power on behalf of kids who have none. And we need to leverage every available resource at our disposal to make the case for parental choice to those who will determine its fate.
So what to do?
We’ve set up two websites to serve as Fellowship HQ on this issue. You can go [here] or, if you're on Facebook, you can join the ACE Fellowship group there. These spaces will be updated weekly and will provide news updates, guidance for those of you who are eager to get involved, and resources you can use to learn more about the issue and educate your friends and family. Most importantly, we’ll use these sites to mobilize our networks, provide direction, and coordinate our efforts when the time is right.
What would you fight for? I’d love to hear St. Paul answer that question. Near the end of his life, Paul tells his friend Timothy:
I have fought the good fight to the end;
I have run the race to the finish;
I have kept the faith.
For me, keeping the faith means fighting for the rights of poor and marginalized parents to seek better schools for their kids.
This is the good fight. I hope you’ll join it.
Fr. Tim
* * *
Go the the website. Get involved. Fight for Catholic schools, religious freedom, and social justice.
Response to Amy
I just realized that I failed to respond to Amy's question, here. After presenting, helpfully, different "models" for "engagement", she asked:
My question is whether within the expanse of Catholic education in the United States we might want to encourage a variety of models engagement (perhaps with a baseline and a ceiling, but with quite a bit of room for difference) with the culture. Rick, do you agree?
I do! As I see it, though, the debate about Notre Dame's decision to honor President Obama is not a debate about whether Notre Dame should "[e]mphasize dialogue with difference so as to engage the culture from a stance of openness to exchange and growth in mutual understanding." It is about whether Notre Dame's own purported mission and character, and her aspirations to be true to that mission and character, create -- in Amy's words -- a "baseline" that, in this case, given all the givens, she has not respected.
Duke v. Villanova
At times like this (if only to distract oneself from the painful task of reading the latest press release from the good people at my own University of Notre Dame), one turns, naturally, to college basketball. Tonight, my own Duke Blue Devils -- if only Notre Dame honor-dispensing mechanism had better aim, and was directed toward Coach K.! -- take on the Villanova whats-its in the NCAA mens basketball tournament. We'll see if the genius of St. Augustine is up to the task of taming the spirit of yesteryear's tobacco magnates.
No doubt, brothers Sargent and Brennan take another view of the matter . . .
More on the poverty of housing for the poor in the USA
This is a disturbing story (here).
When is a health care provider "forced" to kill?
I agree with Richard that we need to have nuanced, substantive conversations about conscience claims when crafting conscience protections. Too often, "conscience" is invoked as some sort of trump card -- a "black box" that we must either accommodate or refuse to accommodate categorically, without being able to draw any distinctions among its claims. At the same time, I fear that policy makers will more likely draw those distinctions based on political influence (exempting communion wine during prohibition, but not peyote during the war on drugs), rather than on the centrality of the particular belief to the believer.
I also agree that forcing someone to kill what she thinks is an innocent human being strikes at the heart of conscience. I would need a bit of clarification, though, about what we mean by "force." Certainly if the government uses its coercive power to force me to kill, we're at the heart of what liberty of conscience must protect. But what if I apply for the job of executioner, then ask to be relieved from the part of the job that involves killing? Or what if I work as a doctor for Planned Parenthood? What if I'm a pharmacist working at a university health center, where a huge portion of the revenue stream comes from various forms of birth control, including the morning-after pill? Should our focus be on the employer forcing me to perform the part of my job description that, in my view, involves killing, or should our focus be on whether I am forced to hold this job in the first place? Who should bear the burden of my conscience -- me (in the form, perhaps, of having to find a new job) or my employer (in the form, perhaps, of paying to have a second pharmacist on duty whenever I'm on duty, etc.)? I don't claim to have easy answers here; again, I think we need a more nuanced conversation about conscience than the current culture war rhetoric contemplates.
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Response to Rob on Conscience
Rob seems to me to make or imply two good points: First, the government should protect conscience only where there is some form of "state action" involved. Second, not every violation of conscience is equally bad (e.g. forcing Muslim cab drivers to take passengers with bottles of wine is not as bad as forcing them to eat pork).
But without in any way saying that we should be unconcerned about other violations of conscience, can't we all agree that forcing someone to kill (or help kill) what he or she THINKS is an innocent human being is to attack the very heart of conscience for every human being? On the model of "conscientious objection" to the military draft, can't we exempt those who THINK they have a duty not to kill, without yet deciding the further important issue of whether we should exempt someone from all government service because he/she is a conscientious anarchist?
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