HHS Mandate Response - Part 2

Editor’s Note: This is the continuation of a conversation with Bishop Patrick J. Zurek that began in the Feb. 5 issue of The West Texas Catholic, dealing with the Jan. 20 decree from Health and Human Services that nonprofit groups that do not provide contraceptive coverage because of their religious beliefs will get an additional year ‘to adapt to this new rule.’

West Texas Catholic: Does Health and Human Services include religious exemptions?

Bishop Zurek: Yes, an incredibly narrow “religious employer” exemption that fails to protect many and perhaps, most of the religious employers. To be eligible, an organization must meet four strict criteria. These would include the requirement that it both hire and serve primarily people of its own faith. Catholic Schools, Hospitals and institutions like Catholic Family Services or Downtown Women’s both hire non-Catholics and obviously serve people of other denominations or different faiths.

According to this Decree, Catholic institutions with non Catholic employees and/or giving services to non-Catholics would have to remove their non-Catholic employees students and patients, or purchase health care coverage that violates their moral and religious teaching.

The exemption provides no protection at all to sponsors and providers of health care plans for the general public, i.e., Catholic schools, hospitals, parishes, Catholic institutions like Catholic Family Services, Downtown Women’s Center, etc. It provides no protection to pro-life people who own businesses or to individuals with a moral or religious objection to these procedures.

As I said in the last issue, the president thinks he’s giving us a concession by allowing us to have a year to prepare for the change. In reality it appears that he is giving us a year “to prepare to violate our own conscience.”

WTC: Isn’t this mandate an aspect of the administration’s drive for broader access to health care for everyone?

Bishop Zurek: Well, whether or not it was intended that way, we think it has the opposite effect. People will not be free to keep the coverage that they now possess, which does respect their convictions. For instance, right now a Catholic hospital or a Catholic school, diocese or parish or other Church institution can offer insurance without this particular coverage—and which does not violate an individual’s conscience. Hence, the Church would remain free to exercise its Right of Conscience, according to the constitutional mandate of Freedom of Religion.

However, under the Order, organizations with many employees will have to violate their conscience or stop offering health care benefits altogether. In a reality we would also have to violate the Church’s social teaching too, by not providing insurance, which we would normally do and want to do. The resources needed to provide basic health care to the uninsured would be used instead to facilitate things that are very contrary to our Catholic teaching, such as IUD’s and Depo-Provera, for those who already had ample coverage. This is a diversion away from universal health care.

WTC: Will this provide free birth control for all American women?

Bishop Zurek: That claim is false in many ways. First, women won’t be free to choose, therefore, the coverage is mandatory, not a matter of free choice for any woman. Second, insurance companies will not be able to charge a co-pay, or a deductible, for the coverage that is against our moral teaching. They will simply add that cost to the standard premium everyone has to pay, even if that violates the conscience of the person who must pay this premium! Ultimately the Catholic institution and the individual are both being called to violate their conscience.

WTC: By objecting to this coverage, is the Church discriminating against women?

Bishop Zurek: Not at all. The Church’s teaching against any early abortion is based on respect for all human life. It makes no distinction between male or female. The Church’s teaching against contraception and sterilization, for example, is based on the respect for the power to generate new human life, a power that is held by both men and women. Hence, health care plans in accord with Catholic teaching, do not cover male or female sterilization.

WTC: Do religious employers violate the consciences of women who want birth control by refusing to cover it in their employee health care plans?

Bishop Zurek: Absolutely not. They simply decline to provide active support for procedures that violate their own consciences. What we are saying is that the Church cannot provide it, because it would violate our conscience. If an employee disagrees with the providers plan, he or she can simply purchase that coverage or procedures elsewhere.

WTC: What solution to this dispute would be acceptable?

Bishop Zurek: The most logical and easiest solution would be to leave the law as it has always been, so that those who provide, sponsor or purchase health care coverage can make their own decisions about whether to include these procedures, without having the federal government impose one answer on everyone. If HHS refuses, it will be especially urgent for Congress to pass the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act,” to prevent the Health Care Reform Act from being used to violate insurers’ and purchasers’ moral and religious consciences and beliefs.

WTC: In conclusion, Bishop Zurek, if this is allowed to stand, we’ll be in violation of the Constitution and religious liberty would fall. What would be next to dissappear from the American landscape?

Bishop Zurek: First of all, the Freedom of Religion, Religious Liberty or Freedom of Conscience constitute one of the most fundamental of Human Rights. In the civic sphere it is a violation of the Constitution. In the religious arena it is a violation of the Right to Life. According to Pope John Paul II, the Right to life is the foundational right upon which all other Human Rights depend. He taught that if the “Right to Life” falls, every other human right falls, because all are based on that. His logic is, “when human life is snuffed out, it can never be recuperated.” It is gone forever. If we disregard the Freedom of Conscience by violating Religious Liberty, we set in motion the very strong possibility that other freedoms we enjoy in this country and have taken for granted since our beginning, are in danger of falling also.

I would ask all our Catholic people and all people of good will belonging to other religious denominations or religions to ponder this question with us. It affects all of us, in all our varying religions. It even affects people without faith. We must band together and work logically, consistently and firmly to overturn this decree by the administration through the Department of Health and Human Services.

May Our Lord Jesus Christ grant us the Grace to persevere in this holy enterprise!