Fortnight for Freedom, Day 14

Lady Liberty

At last! This is the final installment in my marathon 14-day challenge to the spirit and letter of Fortnight for Freedom, the current U.S. bishops' campaign — set to end tomorrow on the Fourth of July — against the "contraception mandate" being imposed by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services as part of Obamacare.

The prelates claim that Catholics' "religious freedom" is under attack, since requiring Catholic-run hospitals and other institutions to offer employee health-benefit plans that cover contraceptives violates the Catholic Church's teaching that the use of condoms, birth-control pills, etc. is immoral.

I have proposed, contrariwise, that the Church re-examine its teaching, and indeed ought to develop a new framework for Christian sexual ethics that takes into account the fact that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women not desiring pregnancy have used artificial means of birth control, as a Guttmacher Institute study I cited in an earlier post shows.

Many Catholics will say the bishops' cry for religious freedom makes sense to them regardless. Yes, many folks will say, by all means let us as a Church update our views on sexual morality. Meanwhile, though, the contraception mandate is an insult to our freedom to practice our Catholic religion as presently defined by the Church and its hierarchy.

I tried to show in my last post, however, that F4F by its very nature introduces a contradiction. Since Vatican II, the Church hierarchy has officially adhered to the Constitution on Religious Freedom, from 1965, which insists the "private consciences" of non-Catholics must always be honored, even where Catholics are in the majority — as they typically are in the ranks of employees of Catholic-run hospitals, charities, and universities. My claim is that the bishops' expectation that the health plans of (minority) non-Catholics in the employ of such organizations not be mandated to cover contraceptives violates those employees' "private conscience" rights to make up their own minds about using birth control or not.

For that matter, I'd say it violates the "private conscience" rights of Catholic employees, too. Do the bishops really want us to go back to the days when the supposed "objective truth" of their teaching could be imposed on lay Catholics whose private consciences might in fact dictate otherwise?

I sincerely hope not.

I believe that including contraception (and sterilization and abortion) coverage in an employee health plan does not itself compromise the Church. It simply creates a "money tap." That money tap is turned on, though, only when, as, and if a person's "private conscience" so dictates. And that's entirely fine. In a pluralistic democracy, under the rule of secular law, it's exactly what our Church's Constitution on Religious Freedom envisions.

Happy Fourth of July!