Fortnight for Freedom, Day 11

I admit I'm having trouble coming up with material each day for this series opposing the U.S. Council of Bishops' campaign, Fortnight for Freedom, now in its eleventh day. My main thrust is toward seeking a revision of the teaching of the Church regarding sexual morality, because the main friction point that has provoked F4F is the question of the "contraception mandate" in the new health-insurance law. Can Catholic institutions such as social-service providers, hospitals, and universities be required to provide contraception coverage for their employees? Isn't that a violation of religious freedom?

I'm reading a book by Margaret A. Farley, Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics, that suggests how the Church — and everyone else, for that matter — can reinterpret the ethics of love and sex in light of the traditional search for justice. Being just requires that each of us unfailingly give each other person his or her "due" — that much I can relay to you at the present time. But it's taking a while for me to absorb this material in its entirety ... and I don't think I'll be able to continue commenting on Farley's ideas in any depth until after the F4F windup on July 4.

Meanwhile, this. The bishops are framing the "religious freedom" issue as a matter of "conscience," not precisely one of sexual morality. Shouldn't the Catholic head or heads of an institution or a business, they say, be able to conscientiously object to including contraception coverage in health insurance that he or she or they have to provide under the Obamacare mandate?

Thomas More (Paul Scofield) tells his
daughter Meg (Susannah York) that
God made Man "to serve Him
wittily, in the tangle of his mind."

A commentary by David DeCosse, "Bishops' conscience model makes light of practical reason," from the National Catholic Reporter on Jan. 23, 2012, questions that premise. DeCosse leads off with the photo and caption shown at left, a scene from the movie A Man for All Seasons.

In it, Thomas More is telling his daughter of his intention to avoid, if at all possible, a direct confrontation with King Henry VIII of England. The year is approximately 1532. Henry, whose court is in the general area of London, has sought More's complicity in opposing the pope in Rome on the matter of granting Henry a divorce. As a Catholic, More has objected to picking a fight with the pope ... yet in so doing, he has sought every possible way to avoid being outright disloyal to his secular monarch.

But the king's ministers have insisted on attempting to coerce More's capitulation, on penalty of death. Thomas More, having had every conscientious "out" removed from the equation, eventually paid the ultimate price. His homeland, England, became a Protestant country under the newly established Church of England, and More was eventually (in 1935) canonized a saint by the Catholic Church.

David DeCosse

But in David DeCosse's estimation, the lesson of the movie for us today is epitomized in this fuller quote of Thomas More's from the Robert Bolt screenplay:

God made the angels to show Him splendor, as He made animals for innocence and plants for their simplicity. But Man He made to serve Him wittily, in the tangle of his mind. If He suffers us to come to such a case that there is no escaping, then we may stand to our tackle as best we can, and, yes ... then we can clamor like champions, if we have the spittle for it. But it's God part, not our own, to bring ourselves to such a pass. Our natural business lies in escaping.

If I'm the Catholic head of a business or institution, then here's the big question: Is there any way I can use "practical reason" to sidestep the bishops' F4F call to "conscience" and comply in good faith with the contraception mandate? That's what DeCosse asks in his commentary.

DeCosse complains that

... the model of conscience used by most bishops is problematic [in that] it emphasizes obedience, law, and hierarchical authority and thus departs from the Catholic tradition’s close linkage of conscience, practical reason, and freedom.

Moreover,

... these bishops needlessly lapse into using a sectarian model of the Catholic conscience ill-suited to the Church’s mission in a democratic pluralist society like the United States.

DeCosse adds:

Where a theologian like Thomas Aquinas speaks of conscience combining obedience to moral law and the exercise of practical reason, the bishops heavily favor the former over the latter. On the one hand, this means that conscience is best understood as the way by which we adhere to the moral laws requiring respect always and everywhere — in the bishops’ eyes especially meaning turning from what they call the “intrinsic evils” at stake in the use of the artificial means of birth control; in gay marriage; and in taking innocent human life from conception onward.

Put another way, I'd say that the bishops are, in the spirit they have infused into Fortnight for Freedom, leaving no wiggle room for Catholic institution heads and business owners who are in the line of fire vis-à-vis the contraception mandate to, in their own private moral deliberations, treat the Church teaching about contraception as something that is not "obligatory in a universal, objective way."

I think that's a bad choice on the bishops' part. Emphasizing "obedience, law, and hierarchical authority," it implies that lay Catholics ought to consider themselves moral "children" who should simply listen to the haughty prelates of the Church and do their bidding.