The Smoke Blown is called Compromise

                It has been explained to me that an insurance policy is funded in three ways: the premium paid by the employer, the premium paid by the employee, and co-pays.  These funds make up an insurance policy.  These funds together make up an insurance policy; these funds separately make up a fantasy called compromise.  Some all but say when the president blows smoke up your integrity all you can say politely is “thank you”.

                First of all I would like to say that Catholic Organizations should be autonomous.  Trouble is always tied to purse strings and institutions of faith must have their autonomy, although there are Christian Churches who are also a self funded, anti- contraception, insurance company as well and they are scratching their heads as to how this is compromise.

                I envy their ability to ponder from such a position of strength.  Their position highlights the actual lack of pluralism that is becoming status quo as the Christian Church insurance companies must be worried about being assessed fines for non-compliance.  Religious institutions are voluntary even if their tenants are strict; the laws of a country are involuntary and so must be open to pluralism which is not unethical.  The religious organizations actually and rationally can argue that contraception is unethical and even call them inherently evil.

                This essay is not about the argument for or against contraception it is about the responsibility of power.  When one looks at the psychological construct involving who must be seen as the agent of abuse it is about the power disparity between the abused and the abuser.  Sexual harassment is about someone in a position of power asserting that power inappropriately to assault a person whom the power is exerted over. The person who is not in power can be disciplined by the superior so the superior is insulated from the threat of harassment.

                The first charge I must parry is that the laity of the Church is under the oppression and harassment of the Bishops of the Church.  The Catholic Church is not a club or a democracy it is the agent of God and is concerned with shepherding its flock into eternal beatific joy.  Can one do this at the cost of the relationship with the source of the Grace which has carried the Church through over two-thousand years of history?  In other words if contraception is a mortal sin then that is not a matter of opinion it is a matter of sanctity.  One cannot both separate oneself from God and claim to be the Church of Christ. One must carry on and teach the truth of Christ regardless of persecution.  The laity of the Church has the tools through the grace of the sacraments to pray about the position they desire to take in relation to the teachings of the Church.  If there conscious leads them away from the Church that is extremely sad but they are perfectly free to function under their own ill-formed conscience.  They just can’t be Catholic; which is not something anyone in the world would be critical of.

                The Church has to function within the laws of the United States however, there is no carrying on within the borders of the county as a self excommunicated American.  Being an expat while living in Colorado makes very little sense.

                So the government is in the position of authority over the Church.  To such an extent that it has the ability to try to cause the Church to mortally sin against God through the administration of its laws.  If the government should do this it obstructs the ability of that religion to exist on a fundamental level.  The laity too must have the right to follow the tenants of the Church.  The laity of the Church must have the ability to exercise the tenants of their faith. 

                If the laity have no ability to obtain insurance that does not conflict with their conscience then they must have the option of being uninsured.  This seems counter to the heart of the president’s proposal which is universal health care.  It is logical to allow the Church to have an outlet which does not compromise its ability to reach the beatific vision and thus its very mission in existing.

                The issue is not abstract but well defined, as I have written on in the past “the Church and the State, Sat. Aug. 6, 2011”. 

“John Locke’s work laid the inspirational groundwork for Thomas Jefferson who agreed that religion should not and could not be impinged upon by the state as it was an exercise of the interior life of men and women.  Government could not govern the individual’s conscience; that governance was between the individual and his or her God. 

                In Jefferson’s letter to the Baptists of Danbury, who were concerned that their expression of religion was not an exercise of religious freedom but rather given at the discretion of the majority, he stated that they should not fear because there should be “a wall of separation between church and state.”  He affirmed that government should not attempt to interfere in the individual’s ability to express themselves to their God.

                Honestly though citing this letter is no slam dunk and should not be seen as extended to all expressions of an individual’s religion.  If this were the case people would try to prove religious expression in court rather than disprove their sanity.  The one obvious example of a religion which has tried to sight religious expression and tested the limitations thus far has been the Mormons.   In 1879 in Reynolds v. United States of America the Supreme Court upheld the Morrill Act, which outlawed Polygamy; the courts claim being that a government cannot interfere in religious beliefs but can interfere in its actions.  In 1890 a decree by church president Willford Woodriff suggested that Mormons not enter into marriages which were illegal and that was that.

                I believe that this was prudent action by the government, and I also believe that it’s a stretch to compare polygamy to vouchers for private schools.  I believe that “separation of church and state” has become a sound bite which implies so much more to a secular culture than it is willing to examine justly.  They wish to portray the church and state as competitors vying for influence.  The church has every right to be as suspicious now as the Baptists who wrote to Thomas Jefferson, as separation of church and state has been used to attack every expression of faith aired in the public sphere from nativities to the Pledge of Allegiance. 

                The position which has emerged, not in small part to these litigations, is not a neutral position but depending on the school distinct or the state could be very anti-religion.  I am looking at you California.   It seems the more pluralism is espoused the more the church’s position is washed out of consideration; creating not a true pluralism but a very distinct point of view.”

                Contraception is not illegal and the Church has no special right given to it by the government to actually prevent the laity from obtaining contraception.  Isn’t this one of the reasons the Federal Government of the United States funds Planned Parenthood?  Contraception is more than readily available without the interference of government upon the conscience of the Church.  The true existence of pluralism and religious freedom within our borders is very much at stake.

                To conclude one must juxtaposition the rigidity of care in shepherding the flock between the Church and the State.  The Church and the State, specifically this administration, may both believe they hold the truth in their belief system.  The Church is however very, very slow to publicly excommunicate any of its members.  Kathleen Sebelius has had a year long conversation with her bishop, Archbishop Joseph Naumann, who tried to shepherd her into good standing with the church and it seems she took the same opportunity to try to bring the Church into good standing with her.  The conclusion, Archbishop Naumann asked her first privately and then publically not to present herself for Holy Communion.  She is not officially ex-communicated, however, and is one good confession away from religious integrity.

                 The Obama Administration is set to issue fines that start at hundreds of thousands of dollars and jump up after that; pastoral care via sledge hammer. 

                The opportunity to practice our faith in a real way cannot be predicated upon surreal literary illusions of Government.  The insurance industry does not work in the way the administration portrays and so nothing has actually changed.  The idea that religious institutions have to live with a fatally flawed compromise is to show how little regard some in Washington and in our country have for the faith they confess out of convenience and self indulgence.

                The point of view created by the government and specifically in this case the Obama Administration, is that when the actions of the state interfere with the ability of the laity to form and exercise their very conscience then they cannot participate in the fundamental expression of that religion; as the government would have found a way into the “holiest of holies” the interior where Jefferson and Locke stated the government could never go.