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COMMENTARY: Catholics Betrayed Themselves with ObamaCare
President Barack Obama’s closed-door assurances that he would not infringe upon religious freedom is simply a rewrite of Aesop’s fable of the fox who allowed the scorpion to ride his back across the river after assurances he would not be stung. Both the fox and the scorpion drown as a result of the scorpion’s mid-river sting.
Many Catholics supported ObamaCare under the belief that increasing government services is a way to increase human dignity. Sadly, the opposite is true. Catholic social teaching challenges us to view bigger government as a real and serious threat to human dignity.
President Obama’s decision to require religious employers’ health plans to cover contraceptives, abortion-producing drugs and sterilization is indeed a “literally unconscionable” attack on religious freedom, as Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, was quoted in the Jan. 25 Wall Street Journal op-ed “Catholics Blast Rule on Contraception.” Sadly, we Catholics have only ourselves to blame.
We Catholics have a deep tradition of Catholic social teaching, which warns us that running to government to answer problems which we have the capability of addressing more locally leads to the loss of personal freedoms which undermines the dignity of every person.
Michael Galligan Stierle, president of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities, said in the same op-ed: “There has been a taking advantage of the religious community. It is clear that what was shared in private has not been followed through.” If the religious community is the fox, Obama and ObamaCare are the scorpion. The scorpion betrayed the fox, but only because the fox allowed him to. The truth is Catholics who supported ObamaCare unwittingly betrayed themselves and participated in creating a monstrous government which feeds on religious freedom, among other personal freedoms. The sadder, deeper truth is our church, myself as a deacon included, betrayed Catholics by failing to teach our own teaching.
Now we begin to see that the price for believing government should dictate choices in healthcare for the common good is more dear than many realized: loss of religious liberty. With such good intentions, how did healthcare for all go so wrong?
The truth is we have become cowardly, and instead of fighting to care for our poor, our sick and our uneducated, we fight to ask our government to do it for us, usurping our own role and responsibility and, in the process, coming to believe it can’t be done at a state or private level. Catholics were foundational in building our nation’s healthcare and hospitals, creating healthcare for all long ago. From early in our nation’s existence, Catholics stepped up and cared for our nation’s poor, despite many of us being poor immigrants ourselves. Centuries ago, Catholics conceived the idea and practice of education for all. We did these good works locally, seeking private support from the community. Being Catholic meant serving others as an inherent part of our living faith, and we did so through local organizations.
Subsidiarity is a little known yet critical cornerstone principle of Catholic social teaching. It says that any action should be owned at the most local level that is practicable. The other two “pillars” of Catholic social teaching, which together with subsidiarity form the three pillars that uphold human dignity (the preeminent principle of Catholic social teaching) are the common good and solidarity. It is on enthusiasm for the common good that many Catholics supported ObamaCare, sadly forgetting that a three-legged stool falls if any leg is missing. Subsidiarity was missing, and human dignity fell down.
Solidarity, where we stand together because what affects one affects all, was used by Pope John Paul II to help bring down communism in Poland. Yet in the name of upholding human dignity, many Catholics have been fighting to become more like communist Poland.
One flawed argument for turning to the government to do things which we can do far more locally ourselves is that we are our government, ergo we are doing them ourselves. It is true that, we, the people, choose our government. Our government is of us, by us, and for us, but government is its own greedy entity and, as our nation’s founders knew, it is a “necessary evil” not to be trusted, but rather to be watched. It will always seek to serve itself at the expense of the people if not kept in check (c.f. Thomas Paine).
The Obama Administrations’ attempt at a morality shell game on Feb. 10 fooled only those who want to be fooled and does nothing to address the underlying issues of religious freedom and the usurpation of rights and responsibilities by the government. ObamaCare’s attack on religious freedom is only one example of greedy government with too much power.
Catholics are receiving a clarion call: return to serving our poor in health, education, economy, morality, and other poverties. We Catholics, and indeed all faiths, need to stop fighting to make government bigger and instead get about the work of building God’s kingdom by reclaiming our rightful role as the servants of our poor, outcast, sick, uneducated, and downtrodden. Please discover our rich history, starting in the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, of personally reaching sideways to help our neighbor rather than preaching that government should do so for us.
We and our faith and our nation will be stronger for personally serving our poor rather than advocating for government to do it for us and losing our religious liberty in the bargain.
(Patrick Jones is a deacon in the Diocese of Colorado Springs, and founder of www.OurHolyConception.com.)
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