{"id":387,"date":"2012-03-15T21:20:27","date_gmt":"2012-03-16T01:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=387"},"modified":"2012-03-15T21:20:27","modified_gmt":"2012-03-16T01:20:27","slug":"the-catholic-church-obamacare-and-social-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/03\/the-catholic-church-obamacare-and-social-justice.html","title":{"rendered":"The Catholic Church, Obamacare, and Social Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

The question concerning the relationship between faith and politics is one that has arrested the attention of many an American.\u00a0 But it is during election seasons, particularly presidential <\/em>election seasons, that it assumes a larger than usual importance in the American consciousness.\u00a0 It is during this time that candidates exhaust themselves explaining the respects in which their religious convictions inform their political convictions.<\/p>\n

Religion and politics, though conceptually distinct activities, do indeed intersect in all manner of ways.\u00a0 Such encounters are much more frequently than not contentious, and sometimes\u2014as in the present case of President Barack Obama\u2019s confrontation with the Catholic Church\u2014they can be downright acrimonious.<\/p>\n

In focusing on this episode, we are able to clearly discern the intimate nature of the connection between \u201creligious liberty\u201d and liberty generally, faith and culture, faith and politics, in American life.<\/p>\n

The Obama Administration and the Catholic Church<\/strong><\/p>\n

A couple of weeks ago, while attending mass at my local parish, the priest read from a letter written by the Arch Bishop of our diocese.\u00a0 The subject of the letter was the Health and Human Services Department\u2019s requirement that Catholic institutions provide \u201cfree\u201d contraceptives to their employees.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My Bishop, along with Catholic clergy and laity around the country, insisted that Catholics could not and would not comply with such a law, for inasmuch as it both infringed upon Catholics\u2019 \u201creligious liberty\u201d and coerced them to act in violation of their \u201cconsciences,\u201d it was unjust.<\/p>\n

Although President Obama later announced that Catholic institutions would be exempted from this demand, that only insurance companies would be legally compelled to comply with it, the truth of the matter is that health care insurers will have no economically viable option but to ultimately shift the costs of making these provisions onto the employer\u2014i.e. the Catholic Church.\u00a0 Obama, that is, isn\u2019t making any <\/em>concessions.\u00a0 He is simply playing the proverbial shell game.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thus, the position of the Catholic Church vis-\u00e0-vis Obamacare has not in the least bit altered.<\/p>\n

This episode speaks to a range of issues the breadth of which the chattering class, as far as I can determine, has yet to appreciate.\u00a0 This controversy, as much as any, readily reveals the multiple ways in which faith and politics, the public and the private, relate to one another. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

An Issue of<\/em> Liberty<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n

Partisans on all sides of this issue tend to frame it in terms of a question of \u201creligious liberty.\u201d\u00a0 I beg to differ.\u00a0 Those who speak thus, like those who speak of \u201ceconomic liberty,\u201d \u201cpositive rights,\u201d \u201cnegative rights,\u201d and the like, speak confusedly.\u00a0 What is at issue here is nothing more or less than liberty <\/em>itself.<\/p>\n

The liberty which, as Americans, we claim to prize may very well be a dispensation from God.\u00a0 I, for one, thank God regularly for it.\u00a0 But it is something that comes to us directly from the broad <\/em>dispersal of power and authority of which our constitutional arrangements consist.\u00a0 To put it more simply, our liberty is comprised of a complex of liberties <\/em>implied by the federal <\/em>design that those who framed and ratified the Constitution imposed upon the United States government.\u00a0 Such explicit \u201cfreedoms\u201d as are found in the Bill of Rights and those that are implicit elsewhere throughout the Constitution are the obverse of the federal government\u2019s obligations\u2014<\/em>namely, its obligations to refrain from <\/em>undermining its federal character by usurping those \u201cpowers\u201d that are reserved to the states.<\/p>\n

It has been a long, long <\/em>time since the federal government has been a genuinely federal <\/em>government. Still, it is critical that we appreciate the nature of liberty before we proceed to talk about \u201creligious\u201d liberty and the like.\u00a0 \u201cReligious liberty\u201d is simply the liberty to practice religion.\u00a0 Because our system of government forbids any person or group from acquiring a monopoly on authority and power, individual Americans are permitted to engage in a staggering array of mutually incompatible pursuits of their own choosing. Religious activity is just one of these engagements.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In short, what this means is that when the government undercuts the liberty of some<\/em> Americans to pursue ends of a religious <\/em>nature, it undercuts the liberty of all <\/em>Americans to pursue ends of any <\/em>nature.\u00a0 Conversely, whenever the government impedes the exercise of liberty for any ends, it impedes the exercise of liberty for religious ends.<\/p>\n

This being so, that Catholic institutions will be compelled under Obamacare to subsidize products to which they are opposed is something that should elicit every bit as much outrage from every liberty-loving American as it has elicited from the most orthodox of Catholic clerics.\u00a0 At the same time, however, Catholics should have been as indignant over the fact that for decades and decades, Americans of all backgrounds have been coerced by a gargantuan federal government to subsidize all manner of practices to which they <\/em>have been opposed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Truth be told, not only is it the case that the Church has been silent; it has actually demanded an ever more intrusive federal government.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n

The Quest for \u2018Social Justice\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

This last point brings me to my present one.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cBe careful what you ask for, because you just might get it.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 There is a reason that this is an old saying: there is no small measure of truth in it.\u00a0 It is indeed more than a bit ironic that the very same Catholic Church that for decades has been calling for \u201csocial justice\u201d is now reaping what it has sowed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The demand for \u201csocial justice\u201d is a demand for an ever expansive government.\u00a0 More specifically, the demand for \u201csocial justice\u201d is a demand for an activist <\/em>government, the kind of government possessed of a large concentration of power sufficient to confiscate the resources of some\u2014\u201cthe Haves\u201d\u2014so as to \u201credistribute\u201d them to others\u2014\u201cthe Have Nots.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSocial justice\u201d is radically incompatible with the Constitutional Republic bequeathed to us by our Founders.\u00a0 What they referred to as a Republic is what the conservative theorist Michael Oakeshott characterized as a \u201ccivil association,\u201d an association whose members are related to one another in terms, not of some grand purpose to pursue, but laws <\/em>to be observed.\u00a0 These laws neither <\/em>specify actions in which the associates (citizens) are to engage nor do they dispense substantive satisfactions for them to enjoy. Rather, the laws are \u201cadverbial,\u201d as Oakeshott put it, in that they assert conditions<\/em> for the associates of civil association to fulfill while engaging in their self-chosen <\/em>pursuits.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In these respects, laws are like grammatical rules.\u00a0 The latter do not prescribe what <\/em>is to be said. But whatever <\/em>it is we say, if it is to be decipherable, if it is to gain a hearing, it must conform to the conditions of our language\u2019s grammar.\u00a0 Similarly, only those actions are permissible that satisfy the conditions posited by the laws.<\/p>\n

An association committed to \u201csocial justice\u201d is most certainly not <\/em>a civil association.\u00a0 It is not a Constitutional Republic. It is what Oakeshott called an \u201centerprise association.\u201d\u00a0 In an enterprise association, the government is expected to \u201clead\u201d its subjects into a Promised Land of one kind or another, a new dispensation in which some ideal condition is realized.\u00a0 In this case, the case of \u201csocial justice,\u201d the ideal is a condition in which material goods achieve a more equal <\/em>distribution.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The problem, though, is that in a Constitutional Republic, a civil association, there is no place for any schemes of \u201csocial justice,\u201d for the latter is a purpose to which all others must ultimately be subordinated.\u00a0 That is, the call for \u201csocial justice\u201d is the call for citizens to devote\u2014or, more precisely, be made <\/em>to devote\u2014at least some of their resources in time, energy, and property to the fulfillment of this one over arching purpose.\u00a0 The call for \u201csocial justice\u201d is the call for less <\/em>individuality, less <\/em>liberty, and more <\/em>government.<\/p>\n

Yet in a civil association there is no purpose, grand or otherwise, that citizens are compelled to pursue.\u00a0 And the federal character with which the Framers of our government originally invested it precludes the pursuit of \u201csocial justice\u201d for which the Catholic Church and others have been relentlessly calling for decades.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n

This election season, perhaps even more so than during seasons past, promises a fairly salient role for religion.\u00a0 President Obama\u2019s controversial health care law has insured this.\u00a0 For the first time in a long time Catholics and those of other faiths are acutely aware of the precarious nature of liberty (and \u201creligious\u201d liberty).\u00a0 Obamacare is just now beginning to reap what it sowed.\u00a0 To paraphrase Obama\u2019s former pastor and \u201cspiritual mentor\u201d of over twenty years, Obamacare\u2019s \u201cchickens are coming home to roost.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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