WASHINGTON — In anticipation of upcoming legislation, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore urged the nation’s lawmakers to work this year “to restore a tradition on rights of conscience in health care.”
“I fear that the federal government’s respect for believers and people of conscience no longer measures up to the treatment Americans have a right to expect from their elected representatives,” Archbishop Lori said in a Feb. 15 letter to Congress.
The archbishop, who heads the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, voiced his support for several new legislative measures to protect religious freedom and warned of the negative consequences that would come from a failure to preserve rights of conscience.
He said that a current draft of an appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services contains “two important provisions supported by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.”
The first of these provisions would “extend the long-standing federal policy on conscience” to new programs and mandates created and covered by the Affordable Care Act.
This extension would ensure that “Americans are not forced to violate their fundamental moral and religious convictions in order to offer, sponsor and purchase health coverage,” he explained.
The second important part of the bill would clarify nondiscrimination clauses, giving insurers and employees “the freedom to choose a plan consistent with their religious beliefs,” the archbishop continued.
This clause would also protect health-care professionals who refuse to prescribe or provide contraceptives due to their moral or religious beliefs.
Appropriations and funding bills have been used in the past to ensure conscience protections, Archbishop Lori observed, adding that such protections were instituted by President Bill Clinton and have enjoyed bipartisan support since then.
“It can hardly be said that all these presidents and Congresses, of both parties, had been waging a war on women,” he noted.
The archbishop also criticized attempts to restrict conscience protections, saying that he has “seen no evidence” that laws protecting religious freedom “have done any harm to women or to their advancement in society.”
Instead, he told members of Congress, there is “a new, more grudging attitude in recent years toward citizens whose faith or moral principles are not in accord with the views of the current governing power.”
He noted that while the Obama administration’s decision to mandate insurance coverage of contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs “is hailed by some as a victory for women’s freedom, it permits no free choice” for women who object to this coverage for themselves and their minor children due to moral or religious beliefs.
Archbishop Lori echoed comments by Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, who chairs the bishops' conference, in critiquing the “coercive element” present in the latest proposal by the administration to amend the mandate.
Explaining that “the new proposal falls short of meeting the hopes and expectations of many concerned about religious freedom,” Archbishop Lori pointed to the narrow exemption for religious employers, the imposition into the private affairs of non-exempt religious groups and the mandate’s disregard for the conscience rights of non-religious and for-profit employers.
Furthermore, the new approach “threatens to undermine access to quality health care” because it tells insurance providers and purchasers “that they need to drop their participation in the health-care system if they want to preserve their religious and moral integrity,” he added.
Quoting Cardinal Dolan, he said that “the nation’s bishops remain committed to ‘engaging with the administration and all branches and levels of government.’”
He said, “A restoration of full respect for one of our nation’s founding values is urgently needed.”
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It permits no free choice for women who object? That makes no sense. Women who object can just…not get contraception. What’s next, it is violating religious freedom to have to breath the same air as sinners? To be subjected to the very sight if condoms at the pharmacy? This is getting farcical. Obama made a compromise that satisfies moral teaching. The bishops won’t be happy until contraception is not only not paid for by them, but inaccessible to their employees, and their silliness and posturing like roosters as if they had actual authority to impose a teaching on any Americans life will insure that going forward their concerns and “Religious Liberty” double speak is trivialized and marginalized. I was on the bishops side when this began, but this has become less about Religious Liberty and more about attempts to use religion to block women from getting legitimate care.
And if the bishops want their Religious Liberty concerns to be taken seriously, they should at the very least stop opposing the religious liberty of non Catholic Americans, including, gays and lesbians, and women who belong to faith traditions who do not categorically forbid abortion. Religious Liberty means having the legal right to make moral and ethical choices according to the principals of YOUR OWN FAITH, and the leaders of a religion not ones own do not get a say.
Until the bishops acknowledge religious liberty for ALL Americans, and not just themselves and Evangelicals, their posturing is in bad faith and their voices marginal to the conversation.
Gimme a break “Catholic” mom! As if Catholics of conscience who refuse to pay for women’s contraception are somehow preventing them from access to contraception! For one thing it is cheap, cheap, cheap! Secondly what a red herring to call contraception “legitimate care”. Guess what? In case you haven’t been paying attention, it is not good for women’s bodies or psychological health, OR relationships and thus cannot even come close to be considered health care.
By the way, abortion is murder. You should know that if you are indeed a “mom”. Murder is wrong. As far as other “faith traditions” embracing the sacred cow of abortion and any and every moral perversion, how easy to go along with evil. How difficult it is to stand up to it. For too long the bishops have not stood up to these evils. It is only to be expected that once they HAVE started to speak out, that people like you, who are so “tolerant” suddenly are revealed as having the extreme of intolerance. By calling the bishops who are legitimately exercising their office of teaching and defending the Catholic faith “roosters”, you are in effect no better than those who called out insults to Our Lord.
“For the word of the cross, to them indeed that perish, is foolishness; but to them that are saved, that is, to us, it is the power of God.“1 Cor 1:18
Catholic mom, you’re not really Catholic are you? You’re a liberal (probably homosexual) activist parading around as a “Catholic” trying to spread confusion. How did you lead the conversation to gay rights when the article was about the rights of an individual to not participate in abortions, sterilizations, dispensing of abortifacients/birth control pills, etc? You’ve succeeded in turning all the arguments upside down to fit your view that everybody should be allowed to do whatever they want EXCEPT people who do not want to participate in these things.
Let’s go one step further. Why not actually make a law to require everyone to experience all the things you think are so wonderful? That way no one will have to feel bad about being evil or deviant because we’ll all be in the same boat together and we’ll all be equal. In your warped world this sort of thing makes perfect sense.
Relax. No one will lose their “right” to make lawn fertilizer out of their unborn children or to contracept away their descendents. So you can feel good about that. And, sooner or later, you’ll be all giddy about same sex marriage being the law of the land, although I’m not so sure what’s to celebrate about sexual activity that results in fecal matter and possibly blood being smeared on one’s reproductive organs. How is that normal and natural? Any church that would “bless” something like that with the sacrament of marriage is nothing but a bunch of heretics. You would probably be in favor of forcing all churches to perform same sex marriage or be outlawed for violating gay people’s rights. New flash: Early Christians went to their deaths for their beliefs, which included opposition to abortion, same sex relations, artificial birth control, fornication, divorce, etc. But I guess you know more than the Apostles and all the early Christians.
This is all about people like you trying to normalize abhorrent behavior so you don’t have to feel bad about all your own personal bad behavior. And, you’re not going to tolerate anyone who doesn’t want to agree that everything you’re doing is just fine! YOU are the intollerant one!
God help the shrewd devious people like you who distort reality for the sole purpose of leading others astray.
It is correct that we who oppose can choose not to contracept. For me it is a much bigger problem when I am expected to pay for your contraception. The idea that contraception will only be available if if the affordable care act forces us to make it so. Contraception has always been and will continue be available to anybody who wants to use it. What the affordable care act does is make sure that those of us who find the practice, which includes abortion, reprehensible will still have to pay so that others can have it for ‘free’. The accommodation is no solution at all. As a Catholic nurse I am also concerned about my continuing ability to practice my religious freedom in the context of my career in health care. There is much more at stake here than you suggest.
l.) Our Triune God is a Person of three: a family of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Father so loved the Son that the Holy Spirit came forth from them as a Person. This relationship is imaged upon God’s creation as the family of father, mother, and child. (Catholic doctrine)
2.) Our Triune God can not have the bonds between Them severed. They are One. This means the family cannot have its bond severed and still image God. The family is of “one flesh.” (Catholic doctrine)
3.) If a creature human breaks the bonds of a family, redefines the family, or utilizes blockades which block the life giving love of the family in any way, then that family no longer images God. The “family” now images an anti-god. (logic)
**4.) A secular employer who knowingly persists in providing for the deformation of the image of God in His creation is cooperating in the redefinition of God.
5.) I, and many, would die before redefining God for myself and before my fellow-man. This is about MY OWN FAITH.
6.) Those imposing the HHS mandate would be forcing me to deny my True God. Do they understand that?! Does Catholic Mom?
@Catholic Mom,
God rules over everyone, whether they like it or not. Next the government will be telling us that we can’t preach against homosexual marriage and put us in jail. Will those laws also be acceptable to you? I think that was the mistake Adam and Eve made that started all our troubles.
Catholic mom you are one mixed up lady. Obama doesn’t have a “moral” bone in his body. He’s a so-called Constitutional lawyer from Harvard and a past editor of the Harvard Law Review and he told Pastor Rich Warren in a one-on-one TV interview in front of 3,000 people during the 2008 campaign, when asked, when should a baby be given human rights, he said, “That is above my pay-grade.” Some Constitutional lawyer; a black man who doesn’t know about the Fourteenth Amendment, and whose own citizenship was in question. Perhaps he was confused campaigning much in the “56 or 57 states” he’s “traveled to so far.”
You said, “Obama made a compromise that satisfies moral teaching.” What moral right does Obama, or any President, have mandating to companies they have to provide something for free (the insurance companies), and that religious institutions and religious people owning businesses have to provide insurance coverage to their employees containing intrinsic evil practices?
You sound like you know as much about the Constitution as he does.
Catholic mom is right.VP Biden is also correct in saying that we should not impose our beliefs onto others.If those doctors,nurses,and pharmacists have such a hard time with the new health care law,they should give up their licenses and jobs for occupations that will not allow them to interfere with the decisions of others.Not only is it right morally for them to do so,but respectful of other human beings capable of making decisions for themselves and a medical community to respect their patients’ wishes.The bishops need to back off,and the monies used to pursue this matter can be best used to fill food banks,purchase gas cards for the un/under-employed,and most of all pay off parish debts in many archdioceses in the US.
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