Catholic Group Supports Senate on Abortion Aid
WASHINGTON — In an apparent split with Roman Catholic bishops over the abortion-financing provisions of the proposed health care overhaul, the nation’s Catholic hospitals have signaled that they back the Senate’s compromise on the issue, raising hopes of breaking an impasse in Congress and stirring controversy within the church.
The Senate bill, approved Thursday morning, allows any state to bar the use of federal subsidies for insurance plans that cover abortion and requires insurers in other states to divide subsidy money into separate accounts so that only dollars from private premiums would be used to pay for abortions. (Confining moral questions to the state level has been TRADITIONAL AMERICAN practice--hence all the different abortion and marriage regulations in all the different states.)
Just days before the bill passed, the Catholic Health Association, which represents hundreds of Catholic hospitals across the country, said in a statement that it was “encouraged” and “increasingly confident” that such a compromise “can achieve the objective of no federal funding for abortion.” An umbrella group for nuns followed its lead. (The LCWR.)
The same day, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops called the proposed compromise “morally unacceptable.”
The divide frames one of the most contentious issues facing House and Senate negotiators as they try to produce a bill that can pass in both chambers.
For months, the bishops have driven a lobbying campaign to bar anyone who receives insurance subsidies under the proposed overhaul from using them to buy coverage that included abortion. Citing the bishops, a group of House Democrats forced their liberal party leaders to adopt such a provision and threatened to block any final legislation that fell short of it. Abortion rights supporters, in response, have vowed to block any bill that includes such a measure.
Officials of the Catholic hospitals’ group and the nuns’ Leadership Conference of Women Religious declined to comment.
Officials of the Catholic hospitals’ group and the nuns’ Leadership Conference of Women Religious declined to comment.
Catholic scholars say their statement reflects a different application of church teachings against “cooperation with evil,” a calculus that the legislation offers a way to extend health insurance to millions of Americans. For the Catholic hospitals, that it is both a moral and financial imperative, since like other hospitals they stand to gain from reducing the number of uninsured patients.
And in practical political terms, some Democrats — including some opponents of abortion rights — say that the Catholic hospitals’ relative openness to a compromise could play a pivotal role by providing political cover for Democrats who oppose abortion to support the health bill.
Democrats and liberal groups quickly disseminated the association’s endorsement along with others from the nuns’ group, other Catholics and evangelicals.
“I think it is a sign that progress is being made, that we are getting there,” said Representative Steve Driehaus of Ohio, one of the Democrats who forced the House to adopt the stricter restrictions in its bill. The hospitals’ statement, he said, recognized the Senate’s compromise as a meaningful step, making him “optimistic” that Democrats could find a bill that he and other abortion foes could support.
Other abortion opponents argue that liberals are overstating the hospital association’s influence. “They don’t carry the same sway,” said Representative Bart Stupak, the Michigan Democrat who led the effort that resulted in the House bill’s including a full ban on abortion coverage in any subsidized health insurance plan.
Mr. Stupak said he still had commitments from at least 10 Democrats who voted for the House bill and pledged to vote against the final legislation if it loosened the abortion restrictions — enough to keep the bill from being approved. “At the end of the day we are going to have something along the lines of my language,” he said. Abortion rights supporters said the signs of openness from Catholic groups were helping some Democratic abortion foes accept the Senate compromise.
“We have known for quite some time that the Catholic hospitals and also the nuns are really breaking from these hard-line bishops and saying, ‘This really is our goal: to get more people into health care coverage,’ ” said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado.
The abortion rights faction of the House Democrats was initially dubious about the Senate bill’s provision but has warmed up to it after reassurances from their Senate counterparts, Ms. DeGette said. President Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders say they aim to follow 30-year-old rules blocking the use of federal money for elective abortions, but lawmakers have fiercely disagreed over how to do so.
Like most Catholic groups, the Catholic Hospital Association has echoed the bishops’ opposition to any federal financing of abortion in health care proposals. But its officials also stood at the White House last spring to endorse Mr. Obama’s plans as part of an administration deal with the hospital industry.
After the Catholic Hospital Association’s endorsement of the proposed compromise, Catholic conservatives and some abortion opponents accused the group of selling out to the Democrats.
“The Catholic Health Association does not represent the teaching of the Catholic Church on the non-negotiable defense of innocent life,” the conservative Catholic activist Deal Hudson said in a statement, calling the association’s move “utterly offensive.” (Neither do you Deal, especially on any other defense of life other than fetuses. For instance, I find your defense of 'pre emptive war' utterly offensive.)
“The Catholic Health Association does not represent the teaching of the Catholic Church on the non-negotiable defense of innocent life,” the conservative Catholic activist Deal Hudson said in a statement, calling the association’s move “utterly offensive.” (Neither do you Deal, especially on any other defense of life other than fetuses. For instance, I find your defense of 'pre emptive war' utterly offensive.)
Catholic ethics experts said the groups evidently disagree about how far to go in avoiding even remote complicity in abortion.
“The Catholic Health Association seems to be using traditional principles of cooperation with evil,” said Prof. M. Cathleen Kaveny of the Notre Dame University Law School.
Such principles, she said, could permit support for “imperfect legislation,” as long as one’s intent was not to “further abortion,” one made every effort to “minimize the harm,” and one achieved “an extremely important good that can’t be achieved any other way.”
In contrast, she said, “some bishops have adopted a prophetic stand against abortion that wants to eliminate any form of cooperation with evil no matter how remote.”
The United States Bishops Conference has not responded to requests for comment. But in a letter to the Senate before its vote this week, the bishops’ group argued that the bill still made some level of support for abortion the default position of the federal government, requiring states to actively “opt out” to avoid participating in insurance plans that offered indirect subsidized coverage of abortion.
Citing the abortion provisions and limitations of the coverage of immigrants, the bishops wrote, “Until these fundamental flaws are remedied, the bill should be opposed.” (But not one peep about forcing Americans to buy private health insurance, a most certainly a form of corporate socialism, and not one word about the cherry deal worked out between the Whitehouse and Big Pharma preventing medicare and individual Americans from buying cheaper drugs from other sources.)
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Looks like bishops all over the world are finding themselves arguing for Catholic positions their flocks are not backing. Both seem to be looking at things from different sides of the pastoral fence and arguing for different interpretive positions concerning Catholic moral law. The abortion provision in the pending US health care legislation maybe just the tip of the ice berg. It's just one example of the pending chasm between the interpretations of the official hierarchy and the rejection of those from the flock which is expected to live with those interpretations.
It seems the Irish flock is forcing a number of bishops to resign --now up to four--in spite of these bishops difference in opinion as to the moral responsibility of their actions in the abuse scandal. In this particular case it certainly appears Dublin's Archbishop Martin is in the same pasture with his flock.
Traditional Catholic moral thinking has never been Prophetic (one could say Evangelical). It has always been far more nuanced. The concept of cooperation with evil is probably best epitomised by the Just War theory.
Individuals have always been able to opt out of these justified compromises based on their personal convictions. Admittedly, such a stance is not always appreciated by the hierarchy. Franz Jagerstatter comes to mind.
Speaking of Franz, that leads me to wonder why the Church is taking such an absolute Prophetic stance with abortion when it certainly didn't concerning Nazism and other acts of fascism. The silence of Pius XII is being presented as a form of 'cooperating with evil' in order to 'achieve an extremely important good which can't be achieved any other way'. Given the Holocaust I'm still trying to figure out just what exactly was that 'extremely important good' that necessitated all that silence as all that slaughter of the innocent proceeded unimpeded. Must have been pretty important, whatever it was, because the Canonization of Pius XII is also proceeding more or less unimpeded.
I'm beginning to wonder if that 'extremely important good' wasn't just the fact that this slaughter was not communist in origin. The Church certainly wasn't silent in it's condemnation of Communism. Which means what? The same heinous acts from Fascists are less odious to God? But I digress.
The USCCB is finding itself in the position of publicly losing control of the health care debate, not only in congress, but with in it's own Catholic ranks. I don't think this is a position they saw for themselves after their Stupak led success in the House. Deal Hudson and other neo cons can state that the CHA and the LCWR don't speak with any authority, but that position holds only if a Catholic truly believes the hierarchy has the sole authority to speak for the Church. Guess what, that's not true and never has been true. If Deal Hudson really believed the hierarchy were the only authoritative Catholic voice, he wouldn't be blogging because he himself does not toe the official teaching line on a number of issues, not the least of which is pre emptive war.
Here's an excerpt from the linked post of Deal's that demonstrates his selective use of official Church authority:
Stupak "gets it" because he's not going to hide behind the skirts of Catholic groups who compromise the Church's teaching on life issues, and who do so without any authority. By dismissing the influence of the CHA, Stupak not only rejects the cover of a lobbying organization with vested interests, but he also defers to the authority of the bishops and their insistence that the health-care bill be stripped of abortion funding.
(Funny how Deal never mentions that Stupak is a card carrying member of the Evangelical "C" Street Family. Maybe that would shed suspicion on Deal's whole message about Bart's uber Catholic obedience to the authority of the bishops.)
