Who knew federal funds were more devious than the Jesuits?

The headline is a bit tongue-in-cheek, of course, drawing on the old stereotype of Jesuit agents carrying out shadowy deeds and pulling invisible strings as they worked diligently to shape and control world events. But as John Norton of Our Sunday Visitor reports, at least one Jesuit school is struggling simply to change its health insurance:

If you work for the Jesuit University of San Francisco, no matter which USF health insurance you choose, it will pay for an abortion, sterilization, artificial contraception and some infertility treatments. And that is unlikely to change anytime soon, despite a report here earlier this year.

The USF Faculty Association president, Elliot Neaman, said today that if the university tries to remove the abortion benefit, it would file an unfair labor practice complaint.

Whether abortion involves the killing of a child is “not relevant,” Neaman told OSV. “You are mixing up morality and contractual obligations,” he said.

So, part of the problem is contractual. Fair enough, it seems. But the deeper problem is far more troubling:

Removing the abortion benefit because it is in the Blue Cross PPO agreed to in the labor contract “would be something like abolishing tenure. It is a point of law,” Neaman said. “It would make everything else in the contract vulnerable. ... If you have a contract with someone you can’t break it.” Neaman said the Blue Cross PPO has included abortion and contraception for many years: “It probably goes back 20 years,” and the university just noticed it when it was brought to their attention by journalists, he said.

Neaman said the Catholic Church’s opposition to abortion is irrelevant, Neaman said, because USF is not legally a Catholic university. "A long time ago, to get federal funding, the Jesuits divested themselves of the university so it is basically run by the board of trustees. They cannot apply for an exemption as a Catholic university because they could lose federal funding because of that," he said.

The selling of birthrights, trying to serve two masters, and all of that. At the very least, a cautionary tale and a sad reminder of what often happens when funding becomes more important than faith.

Comments

[Wisdom with hindsight]

A very sad reminder indeed-I suggest the Church in future should forbid the acceptance of any funding that comes with secular strings attached!

[Titus Andronicus]

I've never known a college professor (law professors excepted) who knew two figs about the actual law. I don't know that religious orders are entitled to special exemptions from contract law (so its probably irrelevant who technically runs USF), but I do know that contracts can be renegotiated or rescinded according to their own terms. Furthermore, if the contract specifies a particular PPO, it does not necessarily make every element of that PPO an article of the contract (Blue Cross, while perhaps being bound by a separate contract to offer certain services to the university, is not privy to, and not bound by, the contract between the university and its employees). So if the university convinced Blue Cross to drop abortion and contraception coverage from the PPO plan referenced by the faculty/staff employment agreement, it probably would not constitute a violation of that agreement. But one would always have to look at the actual documents to know for sure.

[American Phoenix]

It appears that the USF Faculty Association President doesn't know much about the law either. You can always break a contract, if you are willing to pay the monetary damages. Let them file an unfair labor practice complaint. Or better yet, let the contract expire and then CHANGE the substance of its provisions upon renewal. When the labor contract comes up for renewal, you can CHANGE that too.

After all, aren't we all about CHANGE these days?

The real problem is unwillingness by USF administration to ensure that the University comports itself in accord with Catholic teaching. This is not the first time that there's been a problem at USF. These problems have been ongoing ever since I was a student there. That USF is not a Catholic university hasn't been a surprise for more than 20 years now.

[Manuel G. Daugherty Razetto]

Relativism, modernism( the presen one, not the 19th cent. version),and subjectivism, dwell freely in the Catholic Academia's corridors. Who owns a University is always relevant.