John Gehring is Deputy Communications Director and Senior Writer for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good
It’s not every day you see a commentary penned by a Catholic priest with this headline: Bishops Wrong: Health Care Not a Right. Feel free to read that again. First time around I thought I blinked and missed something. Given longstanding Catholic teaching about health care as a profound moral issue and the tireless care Catholic hospitals provide in our most vulnerable communities, I would have been less startled by a news flash that read: “Cows Reconsider: Vegetarians Are Fools.”
Writing in Human Events, a publication that somewhat conspiratorially describes itself as the “Headquarters of the Conservative Underground,” Rev. Michael Orsi, a Research Fellow in Law and Religion at Ave Maria School of Law, takes issue with a recent statement the U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops sent to Congress that says “health care is not a privilege, but a right and a requirement to protect the life and dignity of each person.” Orsi argues that the bishops’ advocacy on behalf of comprehensive health reform implies a “moral imperative which in the case of health care does not exist.”
It would be interesting to see him float that ivory-tower theory with the nearly 50 million Americans who lack medical insurance. I’m sure that argument would be persuasive to a desperately ill patient denied coverage by an insurance company (the ten largest insurers earned $13 billion in 2007) or a father who puts off seeing a doctor because he can’t afford the expense. If people getting sick and dying for lack of quality medical in the richest nation in the world is not a moral imperative then what is? The Compendium of the Social Doctrine on the Church, complied by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, lists health care as a human right along side food, housing and other basic components of a just society.
While acknowledging Biblical support for medical care is found in the story of the Good Samaritan and the Golden Rule, Orsi makes the case that health care reform is a political issue that people of goodwill can disagree about using prudential judgment. No argument here that applying broad moral principles to the particulars of public policies is not a clear-cut endeavor. The bishops recognize this and offer ethical frameworks that should help guide debates over a range of complicated issues. But Rev. Orsi’s argument that the bishops’ advocacy for comprehensive health reform amounts to an episcopal crossing of the Rubicon is flawed. The USCCB has not been pushing single-payer, the public option or following Republican or Democratic talking points. They are not into legislative sausage making. The bishops are applying timeless Gospel principles and centuries of Catholic social teaching to the shameful reality of a contemporary health care crisis that is particularly impacting the poor and most vulnerable. This is faith in public life at its best, not ideological meddling in politics.
It doesn’t take long before you get to Orsi’s real beef with the bishops: their role in the 2008 presidential election. The way he reads it the bishops had some complicity in helping to elect a president Orsi calls “the most pro-death politician to ever sit in the White House.” The bishops “lack of clarity with pro-choice Catholic politicians had given license for some prominent Catholics to endorse Barack Obama for the presidency and gave permission to 54% of Catholics to vote for him,” he writes.
Along with addressing abortion as a foundational life issue, the U.S. bishops’ election-year document, Faithful Citizenship, is clear that Catholic teaching about the dignity of life also calls us to oppose torture, unjust war, the death penalty, genocide, attacks against noncombatants, racism and poverty. This is broadly understood as a consistent ethic of life or seamless garment philosophy. It was most eloquently articulated by the late Cardinal Bernardin of Chicago. It drives many conservatives crazy. You get the sense that Orsi wishes the bishops would just pipe down about health care and stick to abortion. But we are “not a one-issue church,” as Auxiliary Bishop Gabino Zavala of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles told the Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, Jr before the election. Catholicism can’t be reduced to narrow ideologies, partisan talking points, free-market fundamentalism or any other distortions of a tradition that should make both the left and right uncomfortable from time to time.
As for our “most pro-death politician to ever sit in the White House.” It’s this kind of extremism and, frankly, hateful rhetoric that defiles a faith that has a rich history of engaging in civil dialogue and intellectual inquiry. President Obama has reached out to pro-life leaders and has encouraged comprehensive efforts to support pregnant women and reduce abortions. His meeting last month with Pope Benedict XVI lays the groundwork for productive conversations and common ground on a range of issues. While the president and the pope won’t agree about legal access to abortion, Benedict and Obama share a broad agenda that includes Middle East peace, nuclear deterrence, the plight of refugees, religious freedom, immigration reform and global climate change. While challenging the president when needed, the Catholic Church is right to cultivate the many areas of shared interests with the Obama Administration rather than engaging in what Bishop Blase J. Cupich of South Dakota calls a “prophecy of denunciation.”
Health care distortions: Michael Sean Winters of America magazine blogged on Friday about some low blows directed at Sr. Carol Keehan, a Daughter of Charity who as President and CEO of the Catholic Health Care Association has been the leading Catholic advocate for health care reform during her distinguished career. Jack Smith, the editor of The Catholic Key blog of the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph, charges that her efforts to support comprehensive health reform and support for President Obama’s “pro-abortion appointees” puts her “at odds with the USSCB and the pro-life cause.” As Winters points out, this is an absurd accusation to make about one of the most respected figures in the Catholic community. Mr. Smith owes Sister Carol an apology. Readers can contact the diocese here.
posted August 13, 2009 at 12:55 pm
After observing and doing a bit of research, I’ve come to this conclusion: It’s okay to lie (bear false witness) as long as you do it in the name of Jesus, Ronald Reagan and the corporate wallet.
posted August 13, 2009 at 1:25 pm
This argument is often confused in the sense that writers at one moment talk of health care and in another medical insurance. The debate over “reform” has nothing to do with health care, rather who pays for the cost of medical insurance. When we talk of rights we mean health insurance is a economic right, not one as described in our constitution.
I tell people who will listen that when my grandfather was alive and working 70 years ago, there was no health insurance. People paid for their health care from their own pocket. If they did not have enough, charity was abundant. When people died it was a tragedy but not a “moral imperative” that government swoop in and pick up the tab. We’ve grown accustom to others paying our bills and the right we declare to “health care” is but an economic right as to who should pay.
We pay a lot for “health care” today mostly to extend our lives. The length of our lives should not be determined by the amount of money a society can extract from its citizens. Health care reform is not about health at all, but rather who pays the bills – private companies or the government. In either case, the health of someone goes unchanged. We spend tremendous amounts of money treating diseases, many brought upon ourselves because of lifestyle choices. Spending increasing amounts of money to treat self-inflicted disease seems ludicrous at best.
Most of us frown upon stealing from another regardless of the reason and regardless of the wealth of either individual. When a government does it in the name of reform we seem to go numb.
I have a right to life which includes a right to dispose of the fruits of my labor as I see fit. To deny me this right is to deny me the right to support my life. There is no such thing as ‘partially’ destroying a right. You can not create some new medical “right” (an economic “right” rather than an unalienable one) without negating the right to property, and thus the right to life. This is true of any so called economic ‘right.’ If someone receives without working, then someone has worked without receiving. If the “work without receiving” was not voluntary, that man or woman is a slave. This is wrong and needs to be called wrong for the right reasons. It is to bleed dry the life from the healthy and productive in the name of fighting disease. This is true in all economic endeavors that place the so called interests of group or “society” above the actual, self evident, rights of the individual. It is especially ugly to do so in the name of health.
The government has no more business in the health care insurance arena any more than it does in running banks or car companies. We often forget the words of our founding fathers.“Government is instituted to protect property of every sort…. This being the end of government, that alone is not a just government,…nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest.” – Madison
When I point out that health insurance is a relatively new phenomenon of American life and that it wasn’t always this way, the common response is we are more enlightened now then we were 70 years ago – meaning grandfather and his peers were ignorant and lacked understanding about who should pay for his medical bills. If my grandfather were alive today he would ask you where is your sense of personal responsibility and since when is my health care your responsibility? We’re not more enlightened today, we simply more “entitled” today – the by-product of two generations of over-indulgent parents who foster a sense of entitlement rather than one of responsibility.
posted August 13, 2009 at 3:12 pm
Only in the United States could we look at a system, our healthcare for example, that is far more expensive and much less efficient and call it the best in the world AND use the Bibleto justify it
I am not saying that universal/single payer is the answer our prayers and has no faults, but when you compare costs, life expectancy, infant mortality and see that we spend more, get less, have a lower life expectancy than France, Canada, Norway, Sweden, etc and have a higher infant mortality rate than Cuba, hardly the bastion of the wealthy, it only makes sense to least consider the option. That is unless you are bought and paid for by the healthcare insurance industry and big Pharma.
You would think the GOP and Blue Dogs would worry about the burden our businesses must bear that puts them at a competitive disadvantage with foreign companies that don’t have to fund the healthcare of their employees, but I guess not.
Maybe they’re all bankruptcy lawyers on the side.
posted August 13, 2009 at 10:22 pm
If Christians are going to discuss the health care issue, perhaps we should join the prophets, Jesus and Paul and frame our stance in terms of God’s justice. In scripture we are told that God’s justice is required of those who power and wealth to care for and protect the weak, outcasts, and those without the basics to sustain life. Let us join with Paul in affirming that God has given all of us understanding that we are able to accept. Then as a community we can put all our understandings together to gain discernment of what God is about in the world demanding justice for the least, last and lost. No one has the “whole” understanding, but together we may have a glimpse of what God is calling us to do to create a just society for those in need of the same health care that most have or can afford.
posted August 14, 2009 at 6:10 pm
I’m glad I found this site. I am a former conservative evangelical searching for God again but daring not to darken the door of a church that seems so rife with fear, intolerance, and materialism. I’m reading the scriptures again, focusing mainly on the actual teachings of Christ as passed down to us over the centuries. It is so good to see rational and loving discourse as to matters of faith. Relating to this article, I was both gladdened and vindicated by the Pope’s recent comments that Obama is governing too far to the right.
Also interesting to note – as of the last time I did a “foreclosure crisis” search at the Focus on the Family website I came up with nothing. It seems that certain types of families don’t merit the christian concern of the Dobsin empire. Perhaps those whose socio-economic status precludes contributions to fotf?
I am adding you to my favorites and will be back often. You are helping this dissolusioned christian to stay connected to Him.