Cooperation Is Not An Option | Msgr. Kevin T. McMahon, STD | Catholic World Report
There can be no moral justification for obeying the HHS mandate.
In these pages, I recently argued that Catholics and others must not comply with the United States Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) mandate requiring virtually all employers to provide health insurance to their employees that would cover direct sterilization and contraceptive drugs and devices, including those which may cause abortions. The discussion there focused primarily on a defense of conscience and religious liberty. Here I would like to explain further why, as a matter of a well-formed conscience, Catholics must not compromise the demands of the moral law and their own faith by obeying the mandate.
The US bishops’ witness to moral truth
In its most recent statement on this matter, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) gave several examples, including the HHS mandate, in which religious liberty is currently under attack in our society, and spoke prophetically about the need to defend this most cherished freedom. The bishops rightly state that the mandate amounts to an unjust law, which has no moral authority because it forces “religious institutions to facilitate and fund a product contrary to their own moral teaching and purport[s] to define which religious institutions are ‘religious enough’ to merit protection of their religious liberty.” They underline the obligation not to obey an unjust law in the strongest of terms:
It is a sobering thing to contemplate our government enacting an unjust law. An unjust law cannot be obeyed. In the face of an unjust law, an accommodation is not to be sought, especially by resorting to equivocal words and deceptive practices. If we face today the prospect of unjust laws, then Catholics in America, in solidarity with our fellow citizens, must have the courage not to obey them. No American desires this. No Catholic welcomes it. But if it should fall upon us, we must discharge it as a duty of citizenship and an obligation of faith.
Promoting the common good
The bishops, however, are not simply adopting a defensive posture. ...
This is exceptionally well-reasoned. And it raises, at least obliquely, the core question.
What if, as I suspect will happen, some combination of court rulings, election returns and legislation opens a wide definition of religious exemption from the mandate, but does not vindicate the claim of non-religious purpose employers to conscientious opt-out? And what about employees of employers, who either simply don't care about the mandate or actively support its goals, who are forced to contribute to mandate plans?
I am with the bishops 100% and glory in their courage in this fight, but I think the "religious liberty" vein eventually will run dry. It is not really the bishops' job to fight this battle alone, I think, but the issue really is contraception, sterilization, abortion and the introduction of the culture of death into the legal definition of health care. Running parallel is the introduction of cohabitation in unnatural vice into the legal definition of marriage.
Sooner rather than later, it now appears, the bishops will have to call all US Catholics who listen to them to a more widespread resistance to and thoroughgoing rejection of the US regime (including the "Founders'" scheme, the media and the other organs of US culture). Murrayism (the "Americanism" condemned by Pope Leo XIII), if it ever made any practical sense (and it never did), clearly is not adequate to the challenge ahead of us.
We're subjects of a Kingdom. As Bishop Jenky reminded us: Christus vivat, Christus regnat, Christus imperat!
Viva Cristo Rey!
Posted by: Robert Miller | Thursday, April 19, 2012 at 07:47 PM