The case of Belmont Abbey College

 

 

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