Thanks to those who have begun to address the situation involving Belmont Abbey College and the EEOC proceedings regarding “reproductive health” coverage and the alleged “discrimination” suffered by those employees of the college who desire “medical services” that conflict with the teachings of the Church. I would think that most if not all of us share Susan’s lament. So, where might Catholic Legal Theory go with this issue? Perhaps at this stage with a simple but important identification of the problem.
In other fora and here at the Mirror of Justice, I have raised the question of the new totalitarian state from time to time. In essence, I take the position, as did Christopher Dawson in the 1930s, that the western democracy, including the United States, harbors totalitarian potential. The case of Belmont Abbey College reinforces this point. The college’s president, Dr. William Thierfelder, has noted that the college is not telling anyone how to live their lives; however, it is now clear that the EEOC and the “public interest groups” assisting the complainants are telling Belmont Abbey College what it can believe and what it cannot—how it is to live its life if you will.
The complainants and their counsel see but one kind of “discrimination”—that which will not cooperate with a malignancy that knows no limit. The malignancy of which I speak is the kind of totalitarianism that Dawson once said “demands full cooperation from the cradle to the grave.” The fact that the EEOC position discriminates against the Catholic position is immaterial. The right to contraception, abortion services, and the full panoply of “reproductive health services” is not at stake. What is at stake is the right of a Catholic institution to be and remain Catholic and not join the stable of “post-Catholic” institutions.
Dawson warned that the western democracy sooner or later could join the club of totalitarian states if it insisted on policies that “pushed [the Catholic institution] not only out of modern culture but out of physical existence.” He hastened to add when he wrote these words many years ago that this crisis was the reality in Communist countries “and it will also become the issue in England and America if we do not use our opportunities while we still have them.” I suspect that some of these thoughts entered the mind of John Courtney Murray when he discussed the all-or-nothing approach instilled by the French Revolution in his seminal 1952 article “The Church and Totalitarian Democracy.”
In November of last year, many Americans decided to vote for change. Let us hope and pray that one change will be in the policies that promote the objective that some of our fellow citizens are intent on pursuing: the eradication of the Catholic perspective and Catholic life from these shores.
RJA sj
At least several MOJ posts in the last two months have addressed the Vatican investigation of women relgious in the United States. I've tried hard to look at this in the best possible light, which I confess has not always been easy.
However, whatever one thinks of the investigation of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious and of religious orders in the US in general, what justification is there for saying the sisters will not be allowed to see the final reports that will submitted to the Vatican? (See, e.g., here.) Even if one feels some sisters are overreacting in their opposition to the investigation, it is hard to argue that they don't have a legitimate gripe about not getting to see what is being reported about them.
The EEOC's decision regarding Belmont Abbey College, which Rob addresses, is lamentable, but not surprising.
The EEOC has consistently taken the position that the exclusion of contraception coverage from prescription coverage constitutes discrimination on the basis of sex and/or discrimination on the basis of pregnancy. What is new here is that the EEOC has not in the past targeted religious employers who do not provide such coverage.
That they do now is not surprising. We are seeing in all sorts of contexts increasing lack of tolerance for conscience claims of religious institutions. And this particular issue has already been addressed at the state level to the detriment of religous employers: most state statutes requiring prescription contraception coverage either do not exempt religious employers or draft their exemptions so narrowly that many religious employers fall outside the exemption. (As most MOJ readers probably know, Catholic Charities lost cases in both NY and California on this issue.) In many ways, this unfortunate circumstance is the logical outcome of the Supreme Court's 1990 decision in Employment Division v. Smith.
I should add that the EEOC's stepping in makes the situation worse for relgious employers than merely being subject to state law in this area. Becuase of the preemptive effect of ERISA, state statutes can only include prescription contraceptive mandates as part of their insurance law, effectively saying: if you want to insure in this state, if you provide any prescription coverage, you must provide contraception coverage. That means that a large enough religious employer can choose to self-insure and avoid being subject to the state law. Self-insurance would not, however, sheild a religious employer from action by the EEOC.
Once again public officials are mistakenly equating the liberty of conscience with individual autonomy, failing to see the importance of institutional venues for living out shared moral convictions. Even more discouraging is that the latest mistake appears to have been made in Washington, D.C.:
Belmont Abbey College president Dr. William Thierfelder said officials at the Charlotte division of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) told him that a decision to close a discrimination complaint against the school for failing to offer contraception coverage was reversed after the matter went to the nation's capital.
When federal power is harnessed to a misconception of liberty, watch out.
Monday, August 17, 2009
According to this Atlantic blog post, HHS Secretary Sebelius said that a public option was not essential to the President's health care reform plan. One administration official later said that she "misspoke" but then added that the public option "is not, in the president's view, the most important element of the reform package." Another government official sidestepped the question of whether Sebelius misspoke, reiterating that the president believes that a public option is the best way to achieve desired goals. A third White House official "said that Sibelius didn't misspeak. 'The media misplayed it,' the third official said."
One cannot get a straight answer out of these folks. To be clear, I am not pointing a critical finger at just President Obama and the Democrats. Republicans play the same games. My question is why should we to trust our elected officials (full-time politicians) with important decisions like going to war (Bush) or reforming health care (Obama) when they won't give us straight answers to even the most basic questions. I don't want to be a libertarian, and I continue to hope that the government can play a role in fostering the common good, but these exercises in misdirection and obfuscation make me skeptical of how large a role the government can play in fostering that good we hold in common.
Kathleen Parker (certainly no "conservative") points out, here, that a press whose "separation!" flags were flying high when President Bush proposed his "Faith-Based Initiative" has been blase and unbothered by Pres. Obama's similar program:
A comparison of how the media have treated the two presidents and their faith-based programs during the first six months of their administrations (2001 and 2009) is the subject of a new study by the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.
The findings suggest a very different standard applied to each president. . . .
Michael Cromartie, vice president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center (and director of the Evangelicals in Civic Life program) . . . insists that the disparate levels of scrutiny can't be attributed only to timing and busy schedules.
"Sure, there's always a lot going on in Washington with any new administration. But can you imagine the outcry if Bush had hired a 27-year-old Pentecostal preacher to run the faith-based office and surrounded him with a 25-member advisory board made up of people largely sympathetic to his policy agenda?"
In fact, Bush appointed University of Pennsylvania political science professor John DiIulio, a Democrat, to run his program. Cromartie maintains that the greater attention to Bush was because the media were suspicious that his faith-based initiative was an attempt to install a theocracy. . . .
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Believers Invest in the Gospel of Getting Rich
Donors streamed forward at the Southwest Believers’ Convention this month in Fort Worth.
FORT WORTH — Onstage before thousands of believers weighed down by debt and economic insecurity, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland
and their all-star lineup of “prosperity gospel” preachers delighted
the crowd with anecdotes about the luxurious lives they had attained by
following the Word of God.
Private airplanes and boats. A motorcycle sent by an anonymous
supporter. Vacations in Hawaii and cruises in Alaska. Designer
handbags. A ring of emeralds and diamonds.
“God knows where the money is, and he knows how to get the money to
you,” preached Mrs. Copeland, dressed in a crisp pants ensemble like
those worn by C.E.O.’s.
[The rest is here.]
NYT, 8/16/09
Why We Need Health Care Reform
OUR nation is now engaged in a great
debate about the future of health care in America. And over the past
few weeks, much of the media attention has been focused on the loudest
voices. What we haven’t heard are the voices of the millions upon
millions of Americans who quietly struggle every day with a system that
often works better for the health-insurance companies than it does for
them.
These are people like Lori Hitchcock, whom I met in New Hampshire
last week. Lori is currently self-employed and trying to start a
business, but because she has hepatitis C, she cannot find an insurance
company that will cover her. Another woman testified that an insurance
company would not cover illnesses related to her internal organs
because of an accident she had when she was 5 years old. A man lost his
health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance
company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn’t known about
when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he
died.
I hear more and more stories like these every single day, and it is
why we are acting so urgently to pass health-insurance reform this
year. I don’t have to explain to the nearly 46 million Americans who
don’t have health insurance how important this is. But it’s just as
important for Americans who do have health insurance.
There are four main ways the reform we’re proposing will provide more stability and security to every American.
[Read the rest here.]
