Francis Cardinal George, the Catholic archbishop of Chicago, has a column up warning about four potential consequences of the Free Birth Control Rule on charitable and non profit institutions associated with the Catholic Church. It makes for sad reading because I don’t think Cardinal George quite gets that the impacts against which he warns are precisely those that the president and his hard political left cohorts want. I’ll break it down, piece-by-piece. From, “What Are You Giving Up This Lent?”
What will happen if the HHS regulations are not rescinded? A Catholic institution, so far as I can see right now, will have one of four choices: 1) secularize itself, breaking its connection to the church, her moral and social teachings and the oversight of its ministry by the local bishop. This is a form of theft. It means the church will not be permitted to have an institutional voice in public life.
But that’s the very point. It is not theft, in their view, but social justice. And they don’t want the Catholic Church or other “orthodox” faiths to have an institutional voice in public life because the moral views of such organizations conflict with those of the secular left. For now, POTUS and his ilk will permit churches “freedom of worship,” but not “freedom of religion,” that is to decide what’s what in churches, convents, temples, synagogues, etc. But, beyond the pews and altars, either shut up or get out!
2) Pay exorbitant annual fines to avoid paying for insurance policies that cover abortifacient drugs, artificial contraception and sterilization. This is not economically sustainable.
As planned, for this is precisely how O creates the trap. Otherwise, there might be wiggle room to continue to have an institutional voice in the public square and maintain faith teachings, such as in California where Catholic institutions can get around a state-imposed birth control mandate by self insuring prescription coverage or not having health insurance.
3) Sell the institution to a non-Catholic group or to a local government.
That would be cool, according to the O-types. Moreover, since the sale would be essentially forced, fire-sale prices could be obtained, after which, the number of facilities to obtain abortions would increase. Win, win, win from the cultural left’s perspective.
4) Close down.
They’d prefer option 3, but will accept the suffering caused by a close down because then they could blame the resulting problems on the Church and its supposed lack of compassion. Think of the anti Catholic demogoguery possibilities!
Sometimes, I can hear Obama’s thoughts. Let me concentrate...Yes, there he is. My goodness. This is timely. He just read Cardinal George’s article and thought, “I hope that’s a promise, because it certainly isn’t a threat.”
