Thank you for keeping the Faithful up to date on your thoughts about the HHS mandate and about the Patient Affordable Care Act 0f 2011 via the local parish. I read with interest, once again, your words in today’s bulletin at the Parish of Our Saviour. Two remarks seemed especially thought provoking in light of one another. I quote them below, followed by some of the thoughts thereby provoked:

…The Catholic Church has advocated for universal health care for nearly a century, and our record on providing health care to all, particularly to women and children, is second to none…

…All we have asked is that the Church be left alone to continue to doing the good work in education, charity, and health care that we have always done…

It would appear from these words that, while you clearly are opposed to the “suffocating HHS mandates”, you are in support of the Patient Affordable Care Act of 2011 – a bill that claims “universal health care” as its end.

I beg your pardon if I misunderstand your position. Do you mean to say, by the first statement, that the Church has determined that a secular government is the superior and therefore the ideal sole and just provider of the goods and services that are known as “health care”? I am left to wonder in light of Bishop Nickless’ refreshing and articulate thesis stating that the Church recognizes the validity of a market system of delivery of goods and services – including medicine and health care – in his Patoral Letter to the Diocese of Sioux City, Iowa (of interest to all) which was published during the Congressional debates on the Act.

By this, then, it could be argued that the Church “advocates for a market mechanism as the provider of healthcare where such markets are viable.” Yet your statement seems to foreclose that as a possibility.

Notwithstanding that, if the church wants universal healthcare, as you say, then let it provide it. Is it right for the church to “advocate” that the government do so by “universal healthcare” — if it is not fitting for the Church to advocate a market mechanism (which is also “universal” in the sense that it is available to all, yet not necessarily without cost to the consumer)?

Such considerations call to mind another question: If the church really wanted to be “left alone”, why did it advocate for universal healthcare to begin with? Why didn’t it advocate for a government that would leave the matter in the hands of the producers and consumers of such services? Should the Church seek a privilege for itself that the populace in general doesn’t enjoy — the right to be “left alone?”

Reason argues that it cannot be had both ways. By advocating for “universal healthcare”, supporters of the Act bargained with the government to take control of a vibrant health care industry, and after it did, they realized they’d been delivered a Trojan horse. Inside the Act, all along, lay the precedent and the language that made the HHS Mandates – along with “government provided” but taxpayer financed abortion, contraception, and even sterilization, and who knows what other evils – inevitable.

This is not a new idea. The issue was raised in Catholic media before the Act became law. Numerous Church leaders (Bishops Vasa, Chaput, Nickless, and Cardinal Rigali, et al) – saw that the present deplorable condition would be the inevitable outcome of the Patient Care Act. Regrettably, I do not recall reading anything in my parish bulletin from the Archdiocese of New York containing such a warning. How can that be?

I thank you for your attention.

Yours truly,

Charles D. Wright
Manhattan

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/archive/ldn/2009/aug/09081810
I leave aside for the moment whether it is enough that the Bishops “debate religious freedom” alone or also considers the limits of just government. For where the concerns of governing the family are concerned, Paul VI says “The Church cannot ignore these questions, for they concern matters intimately connected with the life and happiness of human beings.” He said that in the context of this prescient concern in Humanae Vita: “Who will prevent public authorities from favoring those contraceptive methods which they consider more effective? Should they regard this as necessary, they may even impose their use on everyone. It could well happen, therefore, that when people, either individually or in family or social life, experience the inherent difficulties of the divine law and are determined to avoid them, they may give into the hands of public authorities the power to intervene in the most personal and intimate responsibility of husband and wife.”

So the Catholics who are among the 40% of Americans who identify Republican, say “Yes, thank you Bishops for speaking truth, no matter how hard it is for some to hear”. The 60% of Americans who are Independent or Democrat say, “Huh, this sounds like partisan politics to me, not magisterial teaching”.

I think our bishops really need to find a collective way to disentangle themselves from partisan politics in order for their positions to carry more weight. Also, it doesn’t help when our bishops use sources like Bill Donohue of the Catholic League to reinforce their statements; it just undermines any claim to authority.

Speaking as someone with experience in community organizing, I was fascinated at how quickly our bishops were able to mobilize a united base around the contraceptive mandate by rightfully claiming it was about religious liberty, not contraception. I was equally fascinated by how quickly that base later disintegrated, when the campaign became about, not just maintaining the status quo, but changing it. At that point it DID become about contraception, not religious liberty, in the eyes of the electorate, with people falling back into their usual camps. It’s a sad example of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory; whoever is heading the USCCB’s advocacy on this needs to rethink their strategy.