Against the Bishops Column

I have concern that Roman Catholic doctrine is one of the few religious groups in America where people feel that they can routinely trash. Part of my sensitivity is that I am one of the last of the Latin Mass altar boys and maintain a real affection and respect for the church, even as I suffered at the hands of the nuns in parochial school. I used the bishops’ statements as exemplars of liberal political thought in the messages on the economy and peace in the 1980s. The rhetoric of the bishops has moved to an extremist fringe: when someone compares a health care provision to the worst of Hitler’s Germany, when the bishops consider this provision some sort of deep assault on free exercise of religion, we are no longer engaged in reasoned discourse. I won’t cast aspersions on Catholic doctrine any more than I try not to cast aspersions on the doctrines of other faiths. When those groups enter in the arena of public political discussion, then the marketplace of ideas of engaged discussion comes into play. On matters of public policy, I am willing to disagree or agree with their contentions. The American bishops have been quite vocal in opposing a contraceptive insurance requirement for employees of social service agencies such as hospitals, schools, and the other institutional supports of the church’s mission. I disagree with the bishops on our interpretation of free exercise of religion. Their argument seems to rest on an assumption that a declaration of free exercise gives a blanket immunity from regulation. We have never given an absolutist reading to first amendment rights. The bishops are not content to seek an exemption; they attacked the entire mechanism of the health-care law, even as they speak of support for the provision of health care to Americans. the government may mandate contraceptive coverage as they would be able to mandate a hospital run by Jehovah witnesses provide blood transfusions. it is an arguable part of health from a secular perspective. It is disingenuous of the bishops to claim that merely because some contraceptive measures could possibly be abortifacients somehow renders them off the table for the purpose for which they are intended. Second, their analysis is seriously misleading on the issue of coercion. Yes, the regulation is coercive to their desire to keep their employees from receiving contraceptive services. The obverse is closer to the mark. The church has no right to attempt to coerce non-Catholic employees from receiving services under a public health mandate. Coercion does not only exist from a governmental level. Indeed, it is possible to construe a government exemption for employees of social service institutions to be coercion of the sincerely held religious beliefs of employees who do not find themselves in accord with the particular Roman Catholic teachings on contraception. After all, the church has seen signal failures in having its own members follow its dictates on contraception, but now it seeks to burden employees with a load that it has been unable to convince its own members. I have not detected a similar concern for coercion when it comes to voucher programs that support parochial education. One suspects that it is a cover for what is a principled opposition to contraception itself. Again, the church has no right to attempt to coerce its employees to act in a way consonant with its proscription against contraception. Most Americans do not hold to the idea that marital relationships should be measured by fertility. Most Americans regard contraceptive decisions as a matter of individual conscience or a matter between partners in relationship. When engaged in public health, the Roman Catholic church, or any church, plays on the same field as everyone else.