What’s Wrong with the World

I expect to die in bed. My successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.

Oh brother.

Let me ask you something, Lydia, when was the last time we’ve seen any one of these (ahem) martyrs being arrested for, say, protesting the existence of abortion mills in their dioceses? I’ll tell you when -- Never! That’s when. These guys are complete and utter phonies. “Die in prison?” -- can I restrain my laughter?; even just one day in prison would mean that they would have to suffer through at least one bad meal. And believe me, for these prima donnas to voluntarily put themselves in the path of such a grisly misfortune would be absolutely unthinkable.

George, maybe he expects his successor to be a braver man than himself. The race to radicalism by one side tends to create changes in the other side.

George, maybe he expects his successor to be a braver man than himself.

On what grounds?

The race to radicalism by one side tends to create changes in the other side.

What other side?

I love O'Brien's Father Elijah: An Apocalypse. Just thinking about it tempts me to set aside my current post-apocalyptic sci fi to read it again.

And I was thinking of a cynical response, but George out-cynicalled me. I do think a few of our bishops will welcome jail and accept martyrdom. But being opposed to the Democrats and being opposed to any civilian government growth or intrusion is entirely new to the bishops (we would all be speaking Russian if the American bishops of a quarter century had had their way with their attacks on America's military forces), and is no doubt opposed most bitterly by their chancery staffs, as well as the kommisars who keep the not-at-all-bureaucratically-named USCCB chugging along from day to day.

Cdl George's struggle to rein in the notorious Michael Pfleger and any number of other Chicago priests may be an overly gentle failure to discipline the presbyterium, but it's also a fact of his inheritance- and the inheritance of all us Catholics in America- of the AmChurchy thing bequeathed to us by a generation or two of Bernardin-style soft, soft, softy softness, a parallel to the broader embrace of every bit of faddishness and quackery that invaded our society in those golden years when the mop-tops of Mersyside were still together, telling us that all we needed was luv, luv, luv.

From that perspective it's remarkable that as prominent a churchman as Cdl George is able to say things like jail, martyrdom. And what the good Cdl needs is not the cynically inclined like George and me jeering from the sidelines as Amchurch's schism becomes more and more explicit, but the prayers and public support of all of us in the pews.

And, really, it's especially encouraging to see so many Protestants, who may not understand nor agree with why the Church teaches that artificial birth control etc. is wrong, but who understand that the fight is not against Popery or Romanism, but precisely against Christianity of any traditional stripe, against the most fundamental of the freedoms our Fathers established when they Founded our presently rather milquetoasty little nation.

From that perspective it's remarkable that as prominent a churchman as Cdl George is able to say things like jail, martyrdom. And what the good Cdl needs is not the cynically inclined like George and me jeering from the sidelines as Amchurch's schism becomes more and more explicit, but the prayers and public support of all of us in the pews.

Bingo, exactly.

David, if you like O'Brien's Fr. Elijah, instead of re-reading it, jump in with Plague Journal and then move on to Eclipse of the Sun. Or, if you're willing to go through something more slow-paced, do it the "right" way and start with Strangers and Sojourners, because the other two are technically sequels to it. If you like things more fast-paced, you can get away with going straight to Plague Journal and just realizing that most of these characters were introduced previously.

The section in Eclipse of the Sun about the Archbishop shows a psychologically plausible situation where a bishop who has been a softy but who is orthodox and really wants to feed the sheep actually realizes what he's been doing, wakes up, and starts being willing to fight the good fight.

Maybe I'm just naive, but even as a Protestant I like to see someone like George talking as though that might actually be happening to some real church leaders in the real world.

I believe that people like Cdls George and Schoenborn, of Vienna, were plenty rock-ribbed before they became eminences; but finding their flocks troublesome has made them appear, occasionally, to have gone soft, or worse. It's a great difficulty as a pastor of souls- do you bring back your lost sheep by excommunicating the most troublesome, and thus scaring the rest back into the fold? Do you instead coax, encourage, even in ways that look from afar (e.g., to me) like refusals to condemn?

The particular difficulty here is that the bishops and priests have been, as it were, honoring Katherine Sebelius and Sandra Fluke for a generation now, refusing to condemn contraception in the confessional or from the pulpit. And now, bless them and protect them, poor shepherds, I'm afraid they are leading from too far in front of the flock. "What's the big deal about the Church paying for the Pill, Father? You told me when I came to you about getting my tubes tied that it was no big deal, that I didn't even have to confess it. You told my daughter that it was okay for her to be on the pill when she went to college. Now you're telling us that the Church doesn't approve of the Pill??"

I hope the bishops have the wisdom and courage to teach clearly, sympathetically, truthfully. Maybe that will only provoke the definitive split between an Amchurch and those continuing in communion with Rome; but then may it be a cleaner split, where everyone better understands the reasons and the stakes.

And the largest problem I see with their approach is that it seems impersonal and bureaucratic- it's a matter of our rights as hospital administrators; as though it had nothing with what you husbands and wives do behind your closed bedroom doors. If they teach Constitutional law, which is comparatively easy, they may win the battle while deciding not to fight the war. If they teach the fullness of the Catholic faith's teaching on human sexuality, it will be complicated, troublesome, provoking, messy and almost entirely emotional- for those who don't want to get it. But that's the only way to shepherd the flock. That's what they need the courage for. And our prayers.

David, I don't know whether we agree or disagree here, but I do see the message of the bare-knuckled Obama admin. attack on religious freedom to be an extremely powerful one. I think it resonates both with the Catholic faithful and with Protestants. Certainly, it's just a logical matter that this wouldn't _be_ a matter of conscience for the Catholic institutions were it not for the Catholic teaching on the substantive issue of contraception. Nonetheless, the not mere willingness but positive eagerness of the Obama admin. to overrun Catholic consciences and to run Catholic institutions out of business makes it quite clear what the stakes are here. The left is on the attack, and all Christians of conscience are in the crosshairs. I don't really see that as coming across as distant and bureaucratic at all.

In other news, and underscoring what I'm saying, the Obama admin. is now signaling disapproval of a measure to protect the consciences of military chaplains who don't want to perform homosexual "marriages."

George, say what you want about Cardinal George and other hot names, you can't put Bishop Fabian Bruskewicz in the same grouping. He won't buy the insurance no matter what.

If Obama wins again (heaven forbid), I expect at least one bishop to be charged with big tax penalties. When he doesn't pay them, I expect he will have tax liens put on diocesan properties. Theoretically, the IRS can force a sale of property to collect the debt. They may have some trouble going through with it, especially if they are stupid enough to try to attach a lien on the cathedral. I don't know where prison comes in, unless he refuses to vacate the chancery after it is sold out from under him.

For the employee health care plan question---maybe they are self-insured? Wouldn't that exempt them from the mandate?

Jane, this article says that the self-insured exception is vague and that at least for the students, Franciscan isn't self-insured because they are too small.

http://www.catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=30064

I can't see how they could be not too small for the faculty plan to be self-insured. I just don't know what they are going to do about the employee plan. And if they drop it, about the fines.

Lydia, I hope not to disagree with you about anything. I have been trying to organize and condense my fears into a non-rambling post. I guess Cardinal George's remark strikes me the more as I consider two things. First, he just turned 75 (bishops are required to tender their resignations to the pope upon turning 75; popes are not required to accept), so when he speaks of his successor being jailed, he's talking about sometime during Obama's second or Biden's first administration. Second, whatever the context in which his remark was uttered, I expect it was formed not so much by his years as archbishop of the large and troublesome Chicago archdiocese as by his recently completed term as president of the USCCB. Either this is hyperbole, or Cardinal George expects that American Catholics and freedom-loving Americans of whatever religious alliance will not rise up against the imprisoners of bishops or the executioners of cardinals. Sometime within the next decade.

One has to hope for hyperbole, because if he's being prophetic, we're not far from the apocalypse of Christianity in the United States.

So I'm tottering off to bed, wishing that the clear and simple First Amendment argument will carry the day, but rather fearing that our episcopal recusal from the defense of Humanae Vitae will prove in the end decisive. 'So what, it's just the Pill. Everybody has a right to birth control!'

If I recall correctly, the old self-insured avenue closed with the Obamacare act. The whole point is that "insured" now means what the feds say it means, and at this point they are saying you aren't offering insurance if you don't offer contraceptives and Plan B.

I wonder Cdl George does not contemplate civil disobedience. His four options follow the law he himself calls unjust. So why the melodrama of going to jail, why should anybody go to jail if they have not broken any law?

So I'm tottering off to bed, wishing that the clear and simple First Amendment argument will carry the day, but rather fearing that our episcopal recusal from the defense of Humanae Vitae will prove in the end decisive.

It may not prove decisive in practical terms, but it's their best shot. I'm not a pacifist, but I would be utterly alarmed at an administration that took the attitude toward Quakers that the Obama admin. is taking toward Catholics. It's a totally insane, gleefully destructive attitude, and it's coming to every conscientious Christian individual and institution in the land ultimately over some issue or other. It goes beyond the permissibility of anything to a kind of worship of that thing. Even from a socialist point of view, it's so bizarrely selective. Elderly people can't afford hearing aids, people can't afford expensive medicines for migraine headache and other real illnesses, and the Obama admin. is mandating free...contraception? Even over the objections of people conscientiously opposed? It's a kind of cult mentality that should freak out anybody who still cares tuppence about freedom from totalitarianism. And if they don't, nothing else will work, either.

Also, of course, we can hope that Obamacare will be declared unconstitutional across the board. The sheer dictatorial power it delegates should terrify any red-blooded American. Obama and Sebelius wake up one fine morning, decide to tell every employer in American that they must supply x or y for "free" to their employees, announce it in a press conference, and voila, it's called "the law." And we have commentators here at W4 intoning with a kind of breathtaking and creepy combination of satisfaction and solemnity that this brand-new mandate which our Emperor just made up over breakfast and had broadcast to the plebes is now "the law" and that anyone who isn't willing to comply is considering "breaking the law."

And it's not just Catholics affected, either. Our non-denominational evangelical college doesn't provide for birth control in our insurance package, either, because so many methods are actually abortifacient, so we are likely to find ourselves in the same position as any Catholic institution.

Lord have mercy on us all.

Plus the mandate requires provision of permanent sterilization, which might well be contrary to conscience all on its own. (And since when is sterilization health care anyway?)

At the risk of being accused of hijacking, help me understand how this is different from what the Feds have been doing for years in other areas. The ones I know a bit more about are environmental issues and "safety" issues. The government has for years dictated the kinds of things people can do with their own property even when it was not clearly a public good issue.

Although I spent a number of years as a libertarian and have largely left that behind, I still retain a fondness for their paranoia in this regard. I think this is where the libertarian warnings from 20,30, 40 years ago (even 70 if you include the Road to Serfdom) have proved prescient.

Lots of people in government like the power it brings and seek to increase it. I guess I just don't understand why this is all such a big surprise.

A quick glance at the original Amendments to the Constitution, and a totally unwarranted assumption that, reflecting the Ten Commandments, the first ten descend in order of the Framers' view of their importance, reveals that freedom of religion comes first; and that property is not explicitly mentioned until halfway down.

An argument might be mounted that this is but a continuation of intrusive un-Constitutional governmental powers, froggy's cool water only slowly coming up to its present simmer, the boiling point not quite reached; that if we the people will not fight against Kelo we will not fight for Christ. Even such an argument seems to recognize that attacks upon religious freedom are a culmination, perhaps the aim of the original assault on the powers, not enumerated, supposedly reserved thereby to the people.

But even that is not a 'more of the same'; it is a recognition of the importance of the ordering of the Amendments. The only reason having guns is listed just under religion is because religion- what you believe, thus who you are- is worth fighting and dying for. Even a libertarianism that has devolved to mere libertinism should recognize that, even if libertine libertarians tend to favor contraception and abortion as a matter of course.

Now our central government has decided what the largest single religion in America is allowed to do.

Sure, maybe if we'd fought against prison terms for possessing nickel bags this wouldn't be happening. Is that NORML's line on the HHS mandate?

Tim H, like most things, it's similar in some ways and different in others. Yes, indeed, the government has been way too big for its boots for a long time. However: The Obama admin. is definitely moving into new legal waters in a couple of ways. 1) The mandate that employers and or insurers provide some product *for free* is, as far as I know, unprecedented. It's one thing (and bad enough in its own way) to regulate in ridiculously nit-picky detail exactly what constitutes worker safety, how employers must negotiate with workers who want to walk off the job and shut down the plant, or whatever. It's another thing, economically speaking and in terms of the sheer breathtaking power grab, simply to declare that x product shall now be "free" to all employees. And since obviously such declarations of "free stuff" can't be made across the board, it amounts to a type of arbitrariness in executive control of the economy and of employer-employee relations that is new. After all, why shouldn't "the Secretary" also declare tomorrow that all employers must make orange juice "free" to their employees for the sake of "health care." It would, come to think of it, make more sense than the present mandate. But it would also be pretty clearly a new level of power for the executive branch literally to hand out goods and services by arbitrary diktat. 2) Previously, the necessity for and scope of religious exemptions has been pretty well-understood, and in any previous administration self-identified religious institutions would be exempt. That's cold comfort for the small individual employer who also has a conscientious objection, but it was at least one kind of haven for overtly religious charities, schools, etc. The Obama admin. is trying to imitate both Europe and Canada now in changing "freedom of religion" to "freedom of worship." This means that, e.g., a Catholic hospital has no conscience haven qua hospital. Only houses of worship have, and that, only in the areas directly governing worship, not in any of their charitable endeavors. This is definitely new. 3) Of course, Obamacare itself contains a constitutional novelty: The individual mandate. 4) The Obamacare law attempts to guarantee everyone health insurance, which is itself new. 5) The powers conferred upon "the Secretary" under Obamacare are _extremely_ sweeping and constitute for the power to issue, by direct decree, personal regulation (of the healthcare industry itself, inter alia) that is unprecedented in scope.

That'll do to start with. :-)

I hold no brief for the previous levels of government power. They've certainly softened everyone up in a big way and have led us to the situation we have now where Nancy Pelosi (I believe it was)literally laughed when asked for the Constitutional authority for Obamacare. But, in fact, things are being ratcheted up a notch here along several axes. (To mix metaphors.)

3) Of course, Obamacare itself contains a constitutional novelty: The individual mandate.

It so new that the Founding Fathers used it.
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/102620/individual-mandate-history-affordable-care-act

2) Previously, the necessity for and scope of religious exemptions has been pretty well-understood, and in any previous administration self-identified religious institutions would be exempt.

I can't remember where I read it, but one of the secondary things that had the bishops in such an uproar was that for the first time a "religious institution" was going to be closely defined in federal law. There has previously been a fair amount of ambiguity in the legal meaning, and while I understand your desire to have the term cover as much as possible, I don't think self-identification by an owner is necessarily an accurate description when they are engaged in economic activities open to the general public that are competing with secular institutions.

Ugh, way past my bedtime. It is so new that the Founding Fathers used it.

Step2, that article has signs of being fiction. Did you ever stop to ask yourself: how long have we had health insurance? Here are some points on it from La Wiki:

Benjamin Franklin helped to popularize and make standard the practice of insurance, particularly Property insurance to spread the risk of loss from fire, in the form of perpetual insurance. In 1752, he founded the Philadelphia Contributionship for the Insurance of Houses from Loss by Fire. Franklin's company was the first to make contributions toward fire prevention. Not only did his company warn against certain fire hazards, it refused to insure certain buildings where the risk of fire was too great, such as all wooden houses. The sale of life insurance in the U.S. began in the late 1760s....

Accident insurance was first offered in the United States by the Franklin Health Assurance Company of Massachusetts. This firm, founded in 1850, offered insurance against injuries arising from railroad and steamboat accidents. Sixty organizations were offering accident insurance in the US by 1866, but the industry consolidated rapidly soon thereafter. In 1887, the African American workers in Muchakinock, Iowa, a company town, organized a mutual protection society. Members paid fifty cents a month or $1 per family for health insurance and burial expenses.[20] In the 1890s, various health plans became more common. Group disability policy was issued in 1911.[21]
Commercial insurance companies began offering accident and sickness insurance (disability insurance) as early as the mid-19th century.[21][22] The first group medical plan was purchased from The Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States by the General Tire & Rubber Company in 1934.[21] Before the development of medical expense insurance, patients were expected to pay all other health care costs out of their own pockets, under what is known as the fee-for-service business model. During the middle to late 20th century, traditional disability insurance evolved into modern health insurance programs....

During the 1920s, individual hospitals began offering services to individuals on a pre-paid basis. The first group pre-payment plan was created at the Baylor University Hospital in Dallas, Texas.

There was no such thing as health insurance back. I am not sure what was true, but purchasing health insurance wasn't it.

I don't think self-identification by an owner is necessarily an accurate description when they are engaged in economic activities open to the general public that are competing with secular institutions.

Identification as a religious institution has been an evolving and troublesome issue, rather than a settled and stable point of law. Nevertheless, Step2, your comment is particularly tin-eared. Let's take hospitals, for example. All early hospitals were completely charitable institutions, and they were nearly all run by churches. The churches viewed taking care of the sick, especially the sick who had nobody else to take care of them, as a religious obligation and a work of mercy. Gradually, states and smaller communities formed some, but being tax-paid is not much different from being charity-paid for these purposes. In the last 100 years or less, corporations started into the arena. The fact that corporations can figure out how to make a profit off them doesn't change the fact that church-initiated hospitals exist on account of religious motives. They aren't "in business" to compete for "the health care dollar". To suggest that they are is sheer crassness.

Likewise, there is something horribly ugly about noting that a Christian hospital will serve Jews, Muslims, and atheists, and then use that fact to say it isn't religious. That's positively grotesque. OK, so Christians are decent enough and sensible enough to not use your time of illness to begin a high-pressure salesman routine on you to convert. That makes the hospital "not religious"? What planet are you from ? You actually WANT bible-thumping Christians to go out using direct proselytizing at such a time? The Bible says "they will know you are Christians by your love." It is precisely by giving that form of love to others, in particular others who have no natural call on our bounty, that we are exercising a quiet, gentle, open invitation to those others to think about Christianity.

Neither the fact that a hospital is in the same line of activity as a for-profit entity, nor that it treats those of any religion, should be considered to form even the smallest shred of an argument that they aren't religious employers.

Come, Step2. _I_ might like it if "self-identification by an owner" were sufficient to designate an institution as "Christian" or "Catholic" or "religious," but that's never how it's been, that wasn't the status quo ante, and that's not what the Catholic bishops are asking for.

The Obama administration is absolutely trying to define "religious institution" not simply clearly but far more restrictively than ever before, and completely unreasonably. As Tony says, it's grotesque to say that if an institution is so charitable as to _serve_ others not of that religion it is no longer truly a religiously identifiable institution.

Step 2,

Tony and Lydia effectively answered your point about how the Obama Administration is unprecedented in its attempt to define what religious institutions can and cannot be exempt from their HHS mandate.

However, Tony was too quick to dismiss Professor Elhauge's argument, as it has been used by liberals since Obamacare's passage. Unfortunately, as the wonderful Professor Barnett makes clear, they just haven't used it very effectively (and click through to Barnett's update as he responded to Elhauge's response):

http://volokh.com/2012/04/13/still-unprecedented-recycling-the-same-two-examples-of-supposed-economic-mandates/

Tony,
After reading the Volokh article and the update, I think it is fair to say that what the Founding Fathers passed into law was the equivalent of insurance, (which was simply because insurance of that kind was not yet available). The gun argument was actually stronger in my opinion. In other words, if Congress can force individual citizens to own guns, why is that so different from requiring another type of protection through ownership of insurance?

They aren't "in business" to compete for "the health care dollar".

I would say some of them are and some of them aren't. I don't grant that they must be in business for demonstrating mercy, not unless you can prove they routinely operate with a deficit. Let me turn the example around: What if a diocese decided they wanted to get into the food service business because of their fervent desire to make sure nobody ever goes hungry? This would be in addition to soup kitchens that rely mostly on volunteers and donated goods. If they were opening new restaurants (let's call it Manna from Heaven) and competing against secular restaurants, would you say that their original motivation is the only thing to be considered when deciding if they are a religious institution?

You actually WANT bible-thumping Christians to go out using direct proselytizing at such a time?

It is strange to see this question from a person supposedly affiliate with a Crusade. Yes I do. Are they fulfilling a Christian mission or simply performing a generic service?

...being tax-paid is not much different from being charity-paid for these purposes.

That's some glibertarian heresy right there. Don't you know that all taxes are theft?

I don't grant that they must be in business for demonstrating mercy, not unless you can prove they routinely operate with a deficit.

Ahhhh, Step2, do you have any notion of how non-profit hospitals operate? I went out and just at random picked a Catholic hospital, and found that it has an associated foundation that provides substantial amounts of charitable gifts for care: in the first 4 months of 2011, some 150 persons had made donations of over $100 each. Some gifts are in excess of $10,000, since they have a standard way of recognizing large gifts. And they have an established volunteer program.

http://www.sjo.org/documents/MONITOR-SUMMER-final.pdf

Other Catholic hospitals (and nursing homes) still use nuns for a significant share of care-giving and/or other spots (custodial, cooking & cleaning, administrative, etc). Since these nuns are paid typically something on the order of 1/4 of the going rate for comparable professions, this too is a donative arrangement.

I know a medical group (OB-GYN mainly) that is a non-profit charitable group. Most of the women who see them have insurance, and they pay normal rates. But they annually not only deliver babies for free for poor women, they sometimes pick the entire hospital tab for those women - at a for-profit hospital - using donations and fundraisers to collect the necessary.

My parish priest started a non-profit clinic 8 years ago, for poor people in an underserved location. They get a little standard funding, but they also do fundraising concerts and other activities, and the doctors and nurses donate their time.

What is this unseemly motivation to call church-led hospitals and clinics "businesses" through and through? Is there some hidden hatred of Christians just plain doing good for their fellow man? There is more need for health care than there is paid health care in this country. Groups that provide the care not at full cost are doing charitable activity. Why do you have a problem with that?

They get a little standard funding, but they also do fundraising concerts and other activities, and the doctors and nurses donate their time.

They would also clearly qualify as a religious institution in my view.

What is this unseemly motivation to call church-led hospitals and clinics "businesses" through and through?

Because I don't consider it realistic to say that there are no church-led hospitals that haven't become, over time, primarily a secular commercial activity and their religious aspects, if visible at all, are tangential to their function of providing a generic healthcare service.

Groups that provide the care not at full cost are doing charitable activity. Why do you have a problem with that?

All hospitals are required by law to provide emergency care to persons who can't pay. Many hospitals have a special fund established for the purpose of providing free or discounted non-emergency care to those who can't afford full price. Just because it is partially a charitable activity doesn't make it a religious institution. I've stated already that if they are relying primarily on donations and volunteers they should be considered a religious institution. The difficult part is establishing what percentage of charitable and proselytizing activity vs. commercial activity should count as the tipping point.

The difficult part is establishing what percentage of charitable and proselytizing activity vs. commercial activity should count as the tipping point.

Let's grant for the moment that merely having some donated care does not constitute a charitable enterprise. That still leaves open a separate question: If A and B both enter into activity X, and A does it for profit while B does it for religious reasons with no desire for profit (and not actually receiving any distributable profit), does the fact that A's motive is non-religious mean that activity X cannot be a religiously motivated activity for B?