Live-blogging from Georgetown

I'm participating in a symposium today at Georgetown Law regarding the HHS contraception mandate.  The current panel is an all-star interdisciplinary lineup: John Langan, S.J., Cathy Kaveny, Lisa Sowle Cahill, Bob Tuttle, and Patrick Deneen.  A very quick (and undoubtedly imperfect) synopsis of their remarks:

Cathy Kaveny – After providing a basic overview of formal versus material cooperation with evil, she observed that the primary concern of Catholic institutions is not focused narrowly on who has to pay for what, but on the compulsion of their broader participation in the normalization of contraception.  She is also concerned, though, about how Catholics have been approaching the debate in terms of modeling ethical discussion.  She thinks we have lost an opportunity to discuss the issue as rights arising in the context of responsibilities and the common good, rather than following along with the frequent invocation of rights as trumps.  In the debate over the mandate, there has been a tendency among some Catholics to use rights as trumps.  There should be more attention paid to questions about an employer's obligations to their employees to provide certain types of health care, what constitutes health care, etc.

Patrick Deneen – He believes that the real debate is over what constitutes a religious organization.  The government, through its exemption for some religious employers, acknowledges that the mandate constitutes a burden, just has a narrow understanding of religious organizations that should be exempt from the burden.  He does lament that the debate has proceeding in largely individualist terms, and he looks forward to the opportunity to have more substantive moral conversations after the lawsuits are resolved.

Lisa Sowle Cahill – for Catholics, the relevant question is not just whether opposition to the mandate arises from a sincerely held religious conviction, but what does prudence warrant regarding the common good and the nature of health care.  Simply to claim religious freedom without giving substantive arguments about requirements of the common good itself leads to scandal because it creates impression that Catholic moral convictions are simply products of religious dogma.  Resorting to religious liberty as the primary focus of the conversation short-circuits the moral tradition by making the debate focus on religious beliefs, rather than on the conditions necessary for human flourishing.

Bob Tuttle – He points out that government defines religion in many different ways in different contexts -- e.g., for purposes of broadcasting, paying taxes, and individual religious liberty exemptions –- as a matter of political prudence, not as a theological judgment.   He is not a fan of RFRA, and he is not a fan of a "church autonomy" approach to religious liberty.  Given the sexual misconduct cases, he can’t say words “church autonomy” without a deep sense of embarrassment because that was used so often as a defense in those cases.  We don’t operate in a world of separate sovereigns; it's just that the government recognizes its own limitations and lack of competence in certain areas. 

John Langan, S.J. – He outlined the Catholic understanding of religious liberty as freedom of the church, which was neglected in the HHS regulations.  The importance of the freedom of the church is not simply about the self-protection of church, but about contributing to the development of the Western understanding of liberty.   A more Protestant understanding of religious liberty is focused more on individual conscience, which lends itself to an easier harmonization with the mandate.