By JAMES K. FITZPATRICK
Like most Catholics who grew up in the middle years of the 20th century, I have a difficult time figuring out the endgame of the nuns in groups such as Network and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR). (I am going to use the term “nun” in what follows as it is used colloquially, even though some may object that it applies only to women religious who live cloistered lives.)
The modern liberal nuns are a mystery to me, poles apart from the Dominican sisters who taught me in grade school. In fact, it seems to be a high priority of modern liberal nuns to make sure that we understand that new reality.
It is interesting to speculate on whether the spirit of the times is to blame for the phenomenon of liberal activist nuns, or if a different kind of woman is attracted to religious life these days; or if the Catholic hierarchy wielded its authority more effectively in the past. But let us leave that question for another day.
What I would like to explore just now is how everyday Catholics should react to the new role that liberal nuns are playing in the Church.
The new breed of nun wears no religious garb, of course. In fact, they are indistinguishable in appearance and demeanor from the women one might see at a conference of liberal activists raising money for environmental causes or librarians announcing this year’s “banned book week” at the local library, even a group of “pro-choice” militants. Officious, pushy, self-important Elizabeth Warren would fit right in. (I am confident the liberal nuns would take that observation as a compliment.)
There was a time when we could assume that members of Catholic religious orders saw it as their mission to bring Catholicism to the world. No more. I think it fair to say that the goal of the women in Network and LCWR is to bring “progressive” insights into Catholic communities with as much zeal as the nuns of the past sought to bring the teachings of the Church to missions in the Third World.
To underscore this point, I offer for your consideration a recent interview on Yahoo News of Sr. Simone Campbell, the 71-year-old nun, lawyer, and public policy advocate who serves as the executive director of Network. I do not accuse Sr. Simone of dishonesty. I can’t read her mind. Perhaps it is her enthusiasm for her favored liberal causes has led her to the twisted logic that she employs to argue the Obama administration’s case against traditional Catholic religious groups, specifically those that maintain it is a violation of their freedom of religion to require that they provide insurance coverage for contraceptives and abortifacients for their employees.
The Trump administration has announced it intends expand the religious exemptions to that federal mandate ordered by the Obama administration. Trump’s decision is what led Sr. Simone to speak out recently. She told the Yahoo reporter, “One of the big tenets of the Catholic faith and of the Christian tradition is the dignity of all people and the importance of a well-formed conscience. One of the things that concerns me about quote-unquote ‘religious liberty’ is that it seems that the preference for the liberty of an employer is being expressed, but not for the employee. As people of faith, I think we are called to be respectful of all people’s conscience….For me in this instance, it’s most often women who get caught in these political machinations.”
If the issue were not birth control Sr. Campbell would see the muddled thinking she is employing. If her concern is genuinely the need to respect “all people’s consciences,” why should the freedom of conscience of the employees of Catholic institutions denied coverage for contraceptives be an issue for her? The freedom of religion of these employees is in no way denied when an employer chooses a health insurance program that does not cover contraceptives.
Permit me to repeat that last line: Only the Catholic employer forced to provide the contraceptive coverage is faced with a threat to his or her freedom of religion by the Obama mandate. Not theemployees.
Seriously. I am not being devious to score a point.
If Catholic employers are forced to pay for contraceptive coverage and abortifacients, by definition, they become complicit in the commission of what Catholics hold to be a sin. They are being forced to pay for what they hold to be an immoral act. The employee faces nothing of the sort.
The purpose of the Constitution’s guarantee of freedom of religion is to ensure that our government will not force an individual to put his soul at risk by coercing him into an action that he believes violates God’s will, whatever his understanding of the Deity.
To get the point, imagine how Network and the LWCR would react if they were forced to pay insurance coverage for the female genital mutilation of the daughters of employees with roots in the African nations where the operation still takes place. These nuns would be at the barricades, protesting that paying for an immoral act is a direct participation in that act, and that the person providing the payment is morally culpable.
In contrast, the women who are denied contraceptive coverage by a Catholic employer are not forced into an immoral act as a consequence of their employer’s decision. Their freedom of religion is not threatened. At worst, they are inconvenienced, and probably only to a slight degree. They can buy contraceptives or insurance for contraceptives on their own. Perhaps they can even secure their contraceptives free or at a very low cost from government agencies or groups such as Planned Parenthood.
No one, including Sr. Simone, would argue that what makes the acquisition of contraceptives moral or not is whether you pay for them on your own or get them through an employer-provided health insurance.
Sr. Simone may think that employers are morally obliged to not burden their employees with the responsibility of securing their own contraceptives. Most Catholics would disagree. But she cannot think that an employee who is forced to bear that burden has been forced to behave immorally. One would think it would be clear to her that there is no violation of employees’ freedom of conscience involved in their employer’s decision about what kind of health insurance package to provide for them. None.
If Sr. Simone feels morally obliged to defend the manner in which employees of Catholic institutions form their consciences about birth control, fine, that’s her problem. She would get a lot of support in liberal Catholic publications for that position. But she is creating a classic straw-man argument when she expresses her concerns in public about how the freedom of conscience of the employee is violated because they have to pay for contraceptives on their own. No additional moral responsibility is attached to the use of contraceptives because of the method of payment used to secure them.
Creating a smokescreen over this issue serves no purpose other than advancing the interests of the militant secularists in the government and the media who are determined to coerce Catholic institutions into paying for contraceptives for their employees.
Is Sr. Simone is doing that? Yes; perhaps intentionally.
Powered by WPtouch Mobile Suite for WordPress