This post is focused on Catholics and their religious concerns. I will also address Healthcare Reform and Health Insurance Issues. Catholics may be most interested in reading about themselves, non-Catholics may find the Healthcare and Health Insurance comments of interest, and I hope that all readers will think about all the issues confronted in this post, below.
Some people robustly emphasize as somehow anti-Catholic, literally anything that does not prevent the exercise of abortion and contraception rights. If abortion or contraception are not banned, then whatever package they are included with such as the Affordable Care Act, must in their eyes be rejected entirely -- even if the effect of the package on abortion and contraception is more or less to leave them as they are, in the end, neither advanced nor prevented. See, e.g., "Sister Carol Keehan Sells Out," posted Thursday, March 18, 2010 on RomanCatholicBlog.com; To borrow a phrase from current political discourse, some people seem to equate any such efforts with "treason".
Balderdash. One of the major losses identified by Catholics and non-Catholics alike in the growing withdrawal of Nuns from Healthcare and from Hospital Administration, is that they brought -- and still bring, although to a dying degree -- a focus of charitable concern to their work. They worked, and still work although there are now far fewer Nuns working either in Healthcare or in Hospital Administration, "on serving the needy and [bringing] a spiritual reassurance that healing would prevail over profit". Kevin Sack, "Nuns, a 'Dying Breed,' Fade From Leadership Roles at Catholic Hospitals" p. 11, col. 1 (New York Times Nat'l ed., Sunday, August 21, 2011).
Most other people do not equate refusing to allow reforms that increase Healthcare availability for the needy, and not advancing abortion availability while not restricting or barring abortion completely, either -- as Catholic treason. The role of Catholic Hospitals and Catholic Healthcare in promoting charitable views has been established for a much longer time.
It still proceeds. Actual Catholic Health Associations demand equity for the poor in the name of their God. They do not concentrate on abortions and contraception as their only focus, while they advance the view that all people possess the divine spark and are made in the image and likeness of God. See, e.g., the website of the Catholic Health Association of the United States, which contains useful links. One of those links is to http://www.HealthCareandYou.org, "Understanding the HealthCare Law," a site providing information about the Federal Patient Affordable Care Act.
The legal and ethical issues inherent in Health Insurance and Healthcare are addressed by experts in those fields, of course. An upcoming conference in September, 2011, for example will bring all sorts of experts together to address those issues. See "Health Compliance Program & Conference at Indianapolis" post on Health Law Prof Blog on Thursday, 08.11.11, for example.
While experts, blogs and conferences on Health Insurance Law and on Healthcare generally, may touch upon the issues at work in Catholic Hospitals and Catholic Health Associations, their touching upon such issues is often likely to be more by chance than by design. Catholics are addressing these unique issues, because they have to. They are impelled by the death of Catholics who did all the work in Health Insurance and Healthcare, like the Nuns mentioned above who have devoted their entire lives to Healthcare. See Download Zeni Fox, Ph D, Making All Things New - Catholic Health Care, the Laity and the Church, Health Progress Magazine at 12 (September-October, 2011).
The teachings of the Catholic Church are many. They are all more or less based on reverence for life because human life comes from the Almighty. Since human life originates with the Almighty, human life is infused with a touch of the Divine. Human life is to be respected, therefore -- and not alone for a baby to be carried to term or for sexual relations to be focused on (or at least open to) conception, but to respect care for the aged, the infirm, the young, and the poor alike.
Concerns for the least among us should not have to take a back seat to politicized concerns over abortion and contraception. Actual Catholics never make their concerns for the least among us, sit in the back. We care up front, visibly and unapologetically, for the poor, the disabled, the young, and the old, in short for anyone who finds it hard to speak for themselves or who cannot speak for themselves. To say again, we do not make them sit in the back.
And we refuse to be defined by political operatives who use our religion as their last refuge from reality.
The Author is a 1973 graduate of the University of Notre Dame, a 1977 graduate of the University of Florida College of Law, and a practicing Catholic for more than 50 years. He is also currently Co-Chair of the Health, Life and Disability Subcommittee of the Insurance Litigation Committee of the American Bar Association.
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