"Bishops Renew Call to Legislative Action on Religious Liberty" (USCCB, 2/10/12)

With regard yesterday's supposed resolution of the morally repugnant HHS mandate....

Yesterday's ill-advised statement from Sister Carol Keehan and the Catholic Health Association should come as no surprise to anyone who remembers Sister's and the CHAUSA's earlier betrayal of their fellow Catholics:

• "The Catholic Health Association is very pleased with the White House announcement that a resolution has been reached that protects the religious liberty and conscience rights of Catholic institutions."

With all respect Sister, this issue is not simply about your preferred insitutional protections (And by the way Sister, there are plenty of indications that your own CHAUSA moral house is NOT in good order.).

Considering Senator Robert Casey, Jr's longstanding endorsement of President Obama and "Obamacare," it should come as no surprise that Senator Casey's own statement evidenced appalling ignorance of the nature of Catholic moral teaching (Yet, it was admittedly less gleeful than that of Sister Carol Keehan & the CHAUSA.):

• "I support greater access to contraceptives but I do not believe that religious institutions should be forced to violate their beliefs....I will review the details of today’s announcement to determine whether it strikes the right balance."

Sister & Senator, let me help you out here. The White House "resolution" will NOT protect "the religious liberty and conscience rights of Catholic institutions" (to say nothing of other institutions and individuals). It absolutely does NOT strike "the right balance," and handing out abortifacients/contraceptives is NOT health care. You urgently need to get up to speed on authentic women's health care. As per yesterday's statement from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops,

• [we] "urged HHS, if it insisted on keeping the mandate, to provide a conscience exemption for all of these stakeholders [i.e., insurers, employers, employees, schools, students]—not just the extremely small subset of 'religious employers' that HHS proposed to exempt initially....
  
  "[The President] has decided to retain HHS's nationwide mandate of insurance coverage of sterilization and contraception, including some abortifacients [emphasis added]. This is both unsupported in the law and remains a grave moral concern. We cannot fail to reiterate this, even as so many would focus exclusively on the question of religious liberty....
  
  "the lack of clear protection for key stakeholders—for self-insured religious employers; for religious and secular for-profit employers; for secular non-profit employers; for religious insurers; and for individuals—is unacceptable and must be corrected. And in the case where the employee and insurer agree to add the objectionable coverage, that coverage is still provided as a part of the objecting employer's plan, financed in the same way as the rest of the coverage offered by the objecting employer....
  
  "today's proposal continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions....The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for HHS to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services....
  
  "we renew our call on Congress to pass, and the Administration to sign, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. And we renew our call to the Catholic faithful, and to all our fellow Americans, to join together in this effort to protect religious liberty and freedom of conscience for all."

As a registered Democrat, I am especially embarassed by Senator Casey's continued failure to co-sponsor the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act (S 1467). Senator Casey's flimsy alternative, S 1489 - which has NO co-sponsors - is ABSOLUTELY NOT AN ACCEPTABLE ALTERNATIVE. Kudos to Senator Pat Toomey for being one of the 36 co-sponsors of S 1467.

Kudos to Pennsylvania Representatives Lou Barletta (11), Mark Critz (12), Mike Fitzpatrick (8), Mike Kelly (3), Tom Marino (10), Patrick Mehan (7), Tim Murphy (18), Todd Platts (19), Bill Shuster (9), and Glenn Thompson (5) for being among the 172 co-sponsors of the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act (HR 1179).