To Accommodate Caesar or to Follow Conscience

Senior Judge John L. Kane of the District Court for the District of Colorado did his Solomon-like duty July 27. The Carter appointee issued an injunction against the government’s Affordable Care Act mandate that forces employers to pay for contraceptives, including abortion-causing drugs, and female sterilization for employees.

The mandate he’s forestalled in Newland v. Sebelius comes from Health and Human Services’ preventive services mandate under the Affordable Care Act. It went into effect August 1.

The employer, Denver-based Hercules Industries, makes heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning parts. It is owned by four Catholic siblings, the Newlands, who run their business according to Catholic principles, even if it might affect the bottom line. The company is self-insured and offers a generous health plan but doesn’t fund contraceptives, sterilization and abortion. The Newlands sued HHS for violating their First Amendment rights, which guarantee free expression of religion, and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (known as RFRA).

The judge weighed two rights: the individuals’ claim that the HHS mandate would violate their religious beliefs and the government’s claim that it had to do so in order to meet the public good. He then looked at the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. It states that the government may not “substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion, even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability.” RFRA adds that the government may only justify a substantial burden of the free exercise of religion if the challenged law “(1) is in furtherance of government interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling government interest.”

Judge Kane’s ruling found that the government’s case for compelling government interest was undermined by the fact that it already has offered exemptions to 190 million health plan participants already.

He also noted the government has a greater interest in upholding the individuals’ free exercise rights than in the government’s claims that it was acting to improve health care for women and children.

           

Could there be another way to make the government happy? The plaintiffs offered a solution that would not violate their religious freedom and suggested “government provision of free birth control,” even though they would not recommend this as a matter of public policy.  They further pointed out that the government already provides free contraception to some women, so their suggestion should not be seen as infeasible by the government.

In some ways this is a small victory, for the injunction stands only until the court case is decided. It affects but one company. It is huge, however, because it is the first HHS mandate case to consider religious freedom issues, and religious freedom won. Caesar may figure out a way to rain down contraceptives from the clouds, but in no way should the government order religious groups and individuals to violate their consciences and underwrite the mandate that opposes the clear teaching of their church.

President Obama: Render Unto God the Things that Are God’s

Jesus is often quoted for his saying to “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” The rest of the quote could be a message to the Obama Administration: “Render unto God the things that are God’s.”

The current tensions over religious freedom come down to a simple fact: the First Amendment guarantees free exercise of religion. That includes the right of Catholic and other religious institutions to define and carry out their ministry.

An Obama regulation that compels virtually all employers to provide sterilization and contraceptives, including abortion-causing drugs, to employees without co-pay, has a religious exemption. But the exemption is so narrow that Jesus himself wouldn’t qualify. Religious ministries qualify for the exemption only if the people providing the service are Catholic, the ones being served are Catholic, and the service itself comes packaged with religious instruction.

So much for hospital ministry. Will “Where does it hurt?” have to be replaced with “Where were you baptized?” At the soup kitchen will “Are you hungry?” be replaced with “Are you Catholic?” Will we have to teach the hungry the Apostle’s Creed before we feed them?

It is the church, not Caesar, that defines ministry. We Catholics are called to serve others because we’re Catholic, not because they are. We help others because of their need, not their creed. For the government to hold fast to its new definition of ministry, one crafted by the American Civil Liberties Union, reflects deafness to the Constitution that is unbecoming to the man sworn to defend it.

There has been some talk of accommodation, whereby (it is claimed) some Catholic institutions would not have to pay for services that violate their religious beliefs. Apparently, their insurance companies would pay for the services instead. One doesn’t have to be a cynic to question where the money to pay for those services will come from, as the only pool of available funds seems to be the premiums subsidized by the objecting religious institutions. And the government’s problematic definition of religious ministry still remains. There also is the question of what self-insured Catholic organizations are supposed to do. What good does it do to say the dirty work will be done by the insurer rather than the employer, if they are one and the same?

The Administration’s intrusive decision about what does and does not constitute religious ministry should make every American pause. What falls after freedom of religion? Freedom of the press? Will Caesar tell you what you have to print or air?

Days before President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to the miserly religious exemption in his Administration’s regulation; the U.S. Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision pertinent to religious freedom. In the Hosanna-Tabor case, the Court upheld 9-0 the right of a Lutheran Church to decide who its ministers are. The Obama Administration had taken the opposite, and losing, side, arguing that the church had no more right of religious liberty than a secular organization. One would have expected the Court’s resounding rejection of that argument to bring the Administration’s eyes into focus on the religious liberty question. Clearly it did not.

The Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution makes freedom of religion the “First Freedom.” The Founding Fathers stressed that this freedom was sacred. George Washington in 1789 wrote to an annual meeting of Quakers that “The conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with great delicacy and tenderness and it is my wish and desire, that the laws may always be extremely accommodated to them.”

Certainly our government, wise as it is, can’t be expected (and shouldn’t purport) to know everything. It might well ease its burdens by leaving some things to the Almighty and rendering unto God the things that are God’s.

HHS Makes In-Your-Face Effort to Undermine Constitution’s Religious Freedom

Health and Human Services must think Catholics and other religious groups are fools.

That’s all you can think when you read HHS’s recent announcement that it may exempt the church from having to pay for contraceptive services, counseling to use them and sterilizations under the new health reform in certain circumstances. As planned now, HHS would limit the right of the church not to pay for such services in limited instances, such as when the employees involved are teaching religion and in cases where the people served are primarily Catholic.

HHS’s reg conveniently ignores the underlying principle of Catholic charitable actions: we help people because we are Catholic, not because our clients are. There’s no need to show your baptismal certificate in the hospital emergency room, the parish food pantry, or the diocesan drug rehab program. Or any place else the church offers help, either.

With its new regulation, HHS seeks to force church institutions to buy contraceptives, including drugs that can disrupt an existing pregnancy, through insurance they offer their own employees. This is part of HHS’s anticipated list of preventive services for women that private insurance programs must provide under the new health reform law.

The exemption is limited, to say the least. The pastor in the Catholic parish doesn’t have to buy the Pill for his employees, but the religious order that runs a Catholic hospital has to foot the bill for surgical sterilizations. And diocesan Catholic Charities agencies have to use money that would be better spent on feeding the poor to underwrite services that violate church teachings.
Whatever you think of artificial birth control, HHS’s command that everyone, including churches, must pay for it exalts ideology over conscience and common sense.

Perhaps HHS is unduly influenced by lobbyists. No surprise there. Certainly a major lobbyist is Planned Parenthood, the nation’s chief proponent of contraceptive services. Contraceptive services make a lot of money for Planned Parenthood clinics, which (again no surprise) provide the “services” HHS has mandated.

HHS and Planned Parenthood are narrow in focus. Respect for religious rights isn’t likely a key concern for them. However, it ought to be a key concern for President Obama, who last year promised to respect religious rights as he garnered support from the church community to pass the health care reform act. To assuage concerns, President Obama went so far as to issue an executive order promising that the health care reform act would not fund abortion or force people and institutions to violate their consciences. HHS is on its way to violating that promise. For the sake of basic integrity – the President’s keeping his word and for the protection of the right to religious freedom – President Obama needs to speak up now.

Keeping Catholic Hospitals True to Their Identity: A Winning Health Care Proposal

A friend just got a job in a Catholic hospital. She loves the work, and I hear with delight about the employee training program and the mission of top-flight care in a Catholic setting.

She is a receptionist, and hospital leaders know values must be conveyed by all the staff, from the first person you meet to the professional staff who hold lives in their hands.

Values that emphasize the sacredness of every person, rich or poor, coming into life or leaving it, are paramount in Catholic hospitals and right now the U.S. bishops are working hard to make sure these values will still exist under health care reform.

Catholic health care encompasses more than 600 facilities; the ministry costs about $6.7 billion annually. Yet, although Catholic hospitals are a major force, their unique nature could be threatened if the health care reform bills dismiss concerns of the bishops.

The U.S. bishops do not want an expansion of abortion and urge that the policy of the Hyde Amendment be preserved. The Hyde Amendment, first passed in 1976, precludes federal money from being used to pay for elective abortions or plans which provide coverage for them. This already is policy for several major federal health programs. The underlying principle: health care reform should not force anybody to pay for another’s abortion.

The bishops want conscience protection for institutions and individuals. Among other things, they would like to see the language of the Weldon Amendment incorporated into health care reform. Weldon, passed in 2004, prevents government bodies from discriminating against hospitals and other health care providers that do not perform, refer for or pay for abortions. Health care facilities and personnel have the right to provide care according to a value system that respects each human life. Language from the Weldon Amendment is now in the House health care reform bill and needs to be retained in final legislation.

The bishops as employers are not forced by federal law to pay for health plans that cover such services as abortion and sterilization and they want to retain that right. The church does not believe these are morally acceptable and it does violence to the church to force it as an employer to pay for them. This is a matter of conscience, of being true to one’s identity.

Charity care is part of any Catholic hospital but these hospitals also have to follow sound business practices. Emergency rooms must serve both insured and uninsured. The bills before Congress preserve current law that prevents legal immigrants from accessing federal-health care programs, such as Medicaid, for five years, even though they work, pay taxes, and soon will be citizens. They also prevent undocumented persons from buying into a newly-created health-care exchange, forcing them to stay uninsured and dependent on emergency room care. This is bad public policy, since the costs of their care would be borne by taxpayers. Under these rules, a hospital is forced to serve the sick, which is good, but can’t be reimbursed by insurance because some patients are denied entry into the government health care system even when they can afford to pay for it.

Catholic Charities provides about $3.5 billion annually in services. Much of it goes to people who can’t make ends meet. The health care reform proposals are burdensome at best. A family of four earning $29,500 would have to pay four percent of its income for health insurance and would have inadequate protection on high deductibles and co-payments. That’s almost $2,000 annually. Out-of-pocket expenses for health care could be near twenty percent of their income.

My friend feels she’s glimpsing heaven, in a place that respects people, rich or poor, coming into or leaving life on earth. She is part of something important to both church and society. Millions who have been patients in Catholic hospitals can attest to that! If Congress works with the bishops to uphold this gift to our nation, everybody wins.