Excluding Inclusion
By WAYNE TRYHUK
(Editor’s Note: Wayne Tryhuk is a Wisconsin-based journalist whose articles have appeared in The Indianapolis Star, Milwaukee Magazine, and many others.)
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Political liberals, like those at NARAL Pro-Choice America, often seem to worship the concepts of “inclusiveness” and “diversity.” Yet NARAL would deny a group of Roman Catholic nuns their religious liberty because the sisters serve and employ too inclusive and diverse a group of people.
The nuns belong to the Little Sisters of the Poor. Their international organization, for 175 years, has been caring for elderly persons in poverty. Because they see inestimable dignity and value in all human life, the sisters object to a federal health-care mandate generally requiring employers to offer employees insurance providing access to contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.
The Little Sisters of the Poor are seeking an exemption from the mandate on religious grounds. But according to Donna Crane, vice president of NARAL, which is a zealous promoter of abortion and contraception, the Little Sisters of the Poor constitute merely “a social service organization,” not “a religious enterprise.” Why? Because the sisters employ and minister to “people of all faiths and no faith.”
NARAL’S website emphasizes its commitment to fostering that “Diversity and Inclusion” normally revered by liberals. But in the group’s view as expressed by Crane, the very diversity and inclusiveness of the sisters’ ministry disqualifies them from religious exemption.
The federal government agrees the sisters are insufficiently religious to merit such relief, this with much liberal encouragement.
If denied the exemption, which the sisters have petitioned the Supreme Court to allow, they will reportedly face fines of as much as $70 million. The court is expected to act on the matter by the end of June.
In explaining her group’s position, Sr. Loraine Marie Maguire, mother provincial of the Little Sisters of the Poor, said that “we offer the neediest elderly of every race and religion a home where they are welcomed as Christ. We perform this loving ministry because of our faith and cannot possibly choose between our care for the elderly poor and our faith, and we shouldn’t have to.”
But some Catholic groups have already been unconscionably forced to make critical choices, because courts, cheered on by liberals, disdained constitutionally protected religious liberty. For example, Catholic adoption and foster-care agencies in at least several locations had to cease operations rather than place children with homosexual parents as the government had demanded they do.
So it is by no means inconceivable that the Catholic Church could some day be forced to stop providing some or all of its array of health, charitable, educational, social, and other services due to the insurance mandate or other government regulation inspired by liberals. Which would likely insure nothing so much as the deprivation, hardship, and suffering of large numbers of people.
And even if government could compensate for some of the loss it was causing, how much more would citizens have to render unto Caesar to make that happen?
However, liberal efforts to force Catholic and other religious organizations to comply with requirements antithetical to their faith would be unlikely to cease even were the Supreme Court to rule in favor of the Little Sisters of the Poor (and several other groups also objecting to the insurance mandate).
So let’s hope that, though it’s improbable, NARAL’s hypocrisy regarding “Diversity and Inclusion” will at least make some people who would otherwise unthinkingly accept liberal positions be less likely to do so. (Not that diversity and inclusiveness are bad in and of themselves.)
And if enough such people would consequently begin honestly examining the potential ramifications of, say, religious liberty curtailment — the kind favored by NARAL, for example — the group’s hypocritical stance on the Little Sisters of the Poor case could be a blessing. For people “of all faiths and no faith.”
