Key Catholic Bishop Praises Obama On HHS Mandate

It hasn’t gotten nearly the publicity afforded to critics of President Obama, but a post by Michael Sean Winters’ directed me to a fine statement made recently by Bishop Robert Lynch of the Catholic Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida. Bishop Lynch was writing in response to the most recent efforts of the Obama administration to adjust its controversial mandate requiring contraception coverage. Lynch not only brings his perspective as leader of a diocese and former General Secretary of the United States Catholic Conference (USCC) and the National Conference of Catholic Bishops (NCCB), but also his current service as a member of the Catholic Health Association Board of Directions which has been at the forefront of the negotiations between the Obama administration and concerned Catholics. The civil language and careful tone that the Bishop uses is striking and from my perspective welcome.

Lynch begins by noting that he waited eight days before commenting because he wanted to study the new HHS regulations carefully and to draw on the wisdom of lay people who have experience in the law, especially those who work for Catholic health care facilities that would be impacted by the regulations. While this would seem to be an obvious step, it was nonetheless refreshing to hear the Bishop say it:

I and almost every other bishop have waited while our own attorneys have studied the “regs” in detail. I also have the added assistance as a member of the Catholic Health Association Board of Directions, having listened to their General Counsel’s careful opinion of what influence these new regulations would have on Catholic Health Care interests. The wise and prudent approach has suggested not rushing into comments without the assistance of those more skilled in reading and understanding government “legalese” than most bishops. (emphasis added)

It was also refreshing to read the bishop’s acknowledgment of a genuine effort by the Obama administration:

1. Clearly, the Administration has been desirous of listening to and accommodating the concerns of Catholics and other people and institutions of conscience, like myself, who had real worries about the regulatory language in possession up till last Friday. There has been a serious effort to accommodate some of the conscience concerns of the Catholic bishops and I feel some expression of gratitude is due to the Administration. (emphasis added)

2. One would be hard put to find any other segment of the American public whose concerns about the Affordable Health Care Act have attempted to be dealt with than those of the Catholic bishops and other like-minded people on this very important matter. There have been moments when I think we should consider ourselves lucky that they are still talking to us. (emphasis added)

The bishop not only felt listened to, he believes that substantive steps have been made and he states those clearly:

The result has been that many of our concerns, about religious freedom and conscience have been attempted to be met. For me the first attempt of the government to define religious ministry outside of our houses of worship has been addressed in the removal all together of the first three prongs of the prior definition and I am personally at peace with this aspect of the challenge. (emphasis added)

The bishop goes on to indicate that there are still areas that he hopes to see changed during the comment period set up by HHS. He agrees with Cardinal Dolan and the USCCB’s decision that “seeks to continue to explore progress on some points which would lead to improvement” and he is hopeful for more changes but very pleased with the steps that have been taken and left to wonder if perhaps the Obama administration has listened to the bishops issues more than the bishops have listened to the Obama administration:

We still have time to work to smooth out some of the rough waters which lie ahead. As one member, I would hope that our episcopal conference might be as open to listening to the issues and challenges which government seems to face as I believe they have been so far in hearing our concerns. But in the end, everyone must prepare themselves for what is likely to be imperfect regulations drawn from imperfect legislation. I still am grateful that more universal health care coverage will be the first fruit of the Affordable Care Act and I am beginning to feel that I can say to my diocesan self-insured employees, all 1400 of them, that their moral right to health care coverage will survive this moment. (emphasis added)

Near the conclusion of his statement the bishop makes a very interesting point about the actions of other bishops, including those at the USCCB headquarters. He clearly states his concern that many of these leaders are not actually listening to the Catholic leadership at the local level who lead the health centers and hospitals that would be affected. It is a serious charge that leads to an interesting conclusion about the need for greater humility on the part of bishops.

As far as I know, at no time up to yesterday (Friday) since the new HHS regs were made available for review and public comment, has anyone from the conference structure consulted with legal counsel for other entities in the Church (hospitals, college and universities, Catholic Charities) to ask their read on how this proposal will affect their ministry. Yet the USCCB statement, it seems, would have one believe that the above mentioned entities might fairly have their “noses out-of-joint” because they are being given consideration under the “accommodation” and not the “exemption.” I did not leave this week’s Board of Director’s meeting of the Catholic Health Association thinking that all those CEO’s of systems and related members felt they were being treated as second class citizens by these new regulations. Perhaps we bishops need a little more humility from time to time, recognizing that we are not the only “game in town” but that there are other players, women and men of great faith who also love the Church, and who can speak for themselves and their organizations, on what effect legislation, proposed legislation, regulations will have on their ministry. A more collaborative effort might lead to greater results. (emphasis added)

What Civility Demands of Eric Metaxas

Among Eric Metaxas’ many virtues is his professed commitment to Christian civility. As Richard Mouw has argued for years, such civility, rightly understood, does not preclude serious and sustained disagreement or passionate and heartfelt denunciation, but it does demand thoughtful and considerate explanation. Metaxas’ public stand on the HHS Mandate is that it is comparable to unnamed laws passed in the early stages of Hitler’s rise to power, that it is putting the United States on a similar course to the horrors of Nazi Germany and that it is therefore incumbent upon Christians in America to view the struggle against the HHS Mandate as Bonhoeffer viewed the struggle against Nazism at its earliest stages. This way of thinking has not only influenced Metaxas’ very robust media efforts to challenge the Mandate, but it also shaped the discourse of his fellow Breakpoint colleague’s Charles Colson and Timothy George. They wrote a memorable article for Christianity Today at the early stages of this controversy comparing the duty of Christians in America to the duty of Christians in Germany, even going so far as to title their column for Christianity Today on the issue in identical language to that of the famous Nazi resister Martin Niemoller.

It seems to me that if citizens are going to accuse their duly elected leaders of complicity in horrors comparable to those that launched the Nazi regime then civility would demand that they explain their charges with the care and scholarship that they warrant. Certainly this was Bonhoeffer’s method of operation. He put teeth to his charges against the Nazi regime and did not rely on hyperbole and media sloganeering alone in his resistance to their laws. I have sought such rigor from Metaxas in vein. Unless I am missing something, there is nowhere on the internet or in regular print an explanation of how the HHS Mandate is comparable to any early laws of the Nazi regime, how it will lead to a regime similar to that of Nazi Germany and how it will cause reaction to Catholics similar to the tragedy of the Shoah for Europe’s Jews.

The struggle against the HHS Mandate has reached a new stage with the launch of the Catholic Bishops' Fortnight for Freedom and the prospect of massive civil disobedience in conjunction with it. Metaxas has made clear his intention to join in this campaign with his extensive level of media contacts, going so far as to say Christians should leave no rhetorical "bullet" in the holster. One can hope that in the course of his work he will find time to devote to either explaining substantively his serious charges against the Obama Administration or retract his more extreme statements.

Obama is also not a Mexican Dictator

Eric Metaxas is not alone on the Right in his invocation of extreme historical metaphors to define President Obama's actions on religious freedom. Commonweal has an excellent pair of articles on the manner in which the ideological manipulation of history is also present in the commentary around the new film For Greater Glory. This film, based roughly on the Mexican conflicts of the 1920s, is being read by many as a parable for our times and the devilish designs of President Obama. This is an interpretation explicitly embraced by one of the film's actors who has said "I don't see any difference between Henry VIII" and Obama, not to mention Obama and the Mexican dictator portrayed in the film.   Here is some of Julia Young's fine response to such nonsense:

The “Calles laws,” as they were known, were so comprehensively oppressive that they would be completely unthinkable in contemporary America. They denied legal personality to the church, outlawed monastic and religious orders, secularized all religious education, and forbade the clergy from voting or making political statements in public. Priests and nuns were prohibited from wearing religious garb outside of churches and convents, and public worship was outlawed...When it comes to history, context is everything. The United States today is nothing like Mexico of the late 1920s. Our legal framework and political system are completely different. To equate Obama with a 1920s Mexican dictator, or to draw comparisons between the contraception mandate and anti-clerical regime of Calles, is ignorant at best, and demagogic at worst.

The Metaxas Mantra (UPDATE)

Some of my Catholic readers may not be familiar with Eric Metaxas, and some others who are may not know just how committed Metaxas is to defining the HHS Mandate as a  monstrous attack on religious freedoms. Since I only have referenced a tweet he made last weekend I may have left the impression that I am overdoing his stance. Make no mistake--for Metaxas this is a singularly awful moment in American religious history and one on par with the beginnings of the Nazi Regime in Germany. He has shared these opinions widely and regularly, including the appearance on MSNBC pictured on this page. He is an activist with an unusually wide reach and his historiography is therefore of real significance to the ongoing debate, and we owe it to the quality of that debate to challenge Metaxas on statements like this given at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, DC: “This [the HHS Mandate debate] is so oddly similar to where Bonhoeffer found himself” in the early stages of Nazi Germany. “If we don’t fight now, if we don’t really use our bullets now, we will have no fight five years from now…it’s the millimeter that is that line which we cross. I’m sorry to say that I see these parallels, I really wish I didn’t…We are getting a second chance…so we don’t make the same mistakes and go down the same road.”

This is the kind of urgency that Metaxas brings to this issue and it is the kind of historical framework he places it in. That framework justifies, as he puts it, "using our bullets now"--meaning engage in arguments with a tenacity and an aggressiveness and a sense of full campaign mode that skips over historical questions like these:

1) Which Nazi laws in particular do you compare the HHS Mandate to?
2) How were the Nazis redefining the definition of religious organizations as the HHS Mandate does and which I and others disagree with? If the issue is one of religious freedom, as you regularly insist it is, then which religious freedom were the Nazis infringing on and how does that compare to the HHS Mandate?
3) When a person invokes Bonhoffer as a parallel it is bringing with it the fact that he ended up being killed in a concentration camp during the Holocaust that killed millions of Jews and millions of other people. Explain a scenario in which the HHS Mandate, in a time frame similar to the rise of Nazi Germany and the unleashing of the Holocaust, brings about a comparable historical event?
4) The HHS Mandate fails to expand religious freedom exemption beyond houses of worship and other narrowly defined religious organizations. At other times in American history the government has gone way beyond this type of restriction and actively repressed religious expression, most notably with the Slave Codes of the 1830s. How exactly is the HHS Mandate a more singular threat to religious liberty than those laws? Is there really even a comparison.

Eric Metaxas puts himself forward as an authority on religious freedom and religious history. He is regularly making statements putting the HHS Mandate on par with early Nazi German actions and worse than any other American historical example of restrictions on religious liberty. Why aren't more people calling him on this? At the very least, doesn't he owe the Obama Administration more of an explanation as to why he thinks what it is doing is like Nazi Germany and worse than the Slave Codes active persecution of African American Churches? Is this the kind of rhetoric we can expect more of as the Fortnight For Freedom takes shape?


{This post was updated to include the MSNBC video}

More on Metaxas/Cardinal Dolan and the African American Church

My earlier post on what I see as the serious historical amnesia present in the comments of many conservative evangelicals and Catholics with regard to the HHS Mandate has received some very helpful comments in private correspondence and on my facebook feed. I want to engage one particularly substantive response from a friend:

“I think you rightly point out that there have been laws restricting religious liberty in the African American church experience and thus to argue that such restrictions today are unique is to ignore that history. I agree. If one takes that same concern and applies it to the entirety of the African American experience one learns that the restrictions on the church were not really about religion but about race. Thus it makes me nervous to apply the argument as you have since it defines these issues as religious ones rather than racial ones. It is true that the racial issues in this case ended up restricting religion, but it may overplay the religious perspective. And since I think that religious issues are also being overplayed in the HHS discussion it ties back to that for me.”

I agree with the basic point and I don’t think it contradicts my post but rather fills it in with helpful context. I agree that the reason for the Slave Codes after Nat Turner’s rebellion was primarily fear of further rebellion that would upend the social order deeply rooted in racism. To what extent that fear was rooted in religious based discourse is debatable, and to what extent the religious arguments of Nat Turner and others were primary factors in rebellion is also debatable. My point was not to settle those important historical debates, but rather to make what I think is an unquestionable point-- in order to affect the policy goal of safeguarding the existing social order numerous states instituted laws that trampled all over any kind of conception of the First Amendment’s religious freedom protections. I am not saying they necessarily trampled on those rights for religious reasons, and I am certainly not saying it was only the religious rights of African Americans that were being denied them, but the many states did trample on those religious rights. And the extent to which they trampled on the religious rights of African American individuals and institutions was far more severe and extensive than what the HSS Mandate does. In terms of the Mandate itself, and the reasons for the narrow exemption, it might well be true that the intent of Obama Administration is not specifically to restrict religion but rather to fulfill a different policy goal—namely, free contraception for all. Nonetheless, in order to achieve that goal they are, I believe, violating the constitution’s protection of religious freedom. On that I agree with Dolan, Metaxas and others. Where we part company is in what I see as a disturbing ideological manipulation of history to pursue their “campaign” for religious freedom. Proclaiming themselves as unique victims in the history of religious freedom in America may be a good way to inflame their core constituencies, but it comes at a real price of intellectual integrity and respect for the deeper narratives of American history.

Frederick Douglass to Cardinal Dolan and Eric Metaxas

MEMO FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE

TO: Cardinal Dolan and Eric Metaxas

FROM: Frederick Douglass

SUBJECT: Religious Freedom in America

Gentlemen, it has come to my attention that in these United States of America something of a controversy has arisen around the First Amendment freedom of religion clause. I have heard your cries of injustice I must say that I agree with your concerns with regard to the HHS Mandate. It does seem that the current law would restrict religious freedom by narrowing the definition of religious organizations in an overly narrow way. However, I must say that I find your protestations about this injustice extraordinarily out or proportion to the history of religious freedom in this country. I saw on this newfangled thing called “twitter” that on June 16 Mr. Metaxas said he believes this mandate is an “unprecedented abridgment of religious freedom itself"and I know that Cardinal Dolan and many of his fellow Bishops have likewise portrayed this Mandate and its narrow definition of religious organizations in a similarly apocalyptic manner. It does make me wonder about the state of education in America and whether my grave fears about the loss of memory concerning African Americans in this land have come true. So allow me for just a moment to remind you of the state of religious freedom in this land back in my times on this earth.

You would do well to recall that the HHS Mandate you so rightly denounce has already made specific provisions for houses of worship and other specifically religious institutions to gain exemption. In fact, it would seem that your main gripe is that this exemption is too narrow. If that is your main concern, then how in God’s good Name can you compare this situation with the gravity of the situation that African American Churches faced in your land? Surely you know that we were not even given the control over our own churches and allowed to choose for ourselves our own religious traditions? Surely you are aware of a wave of legislation that followed Nat Turner’s Slave Rebellion? Here is how one of your current day scholars describes what my people faced in terms of restrictions on relgious freedom. Do you really think that what the HHS Mandate proposes is worse than this?

So, instead of abolishing slavery, Virginia decided to revise and severely strengthen its already existing slave codes so that the potential for another slave uprising would be almost impossible. Virginia’s new codes made patrols and militia stronger, eliminated slave schools, slave religious meetings, and slave preachers.8

The idea of abolition did not appeal to the other southern states, so they, like Virginia, passed new restrictive slave laws and codes in hopes of preventing another slave rebellion. States like Georgia and South Carolina heavily relied on slavery for their economic success and thus it was a crucial element to their well being, they could not just get rid of it…Southerners attempted to keep blacks enslaved and suppressed by making their already existing slave codes much harsher and by enacting new laws.10

After Turner’s rebellion, the actions and movements of slaves were severely monitored…Religious meetings or gatherings of slaves were also closely monitored. All blacks were forbidden to preach or hold religious meetings. In fact, in Georgia, a law was passed that forbade blacks to congregate and preach. The Act of December 23, 1833, Sec. 5, 1833 Ga. Laws 226, stated that “no person of color, whether free or slave, shall be allowed to preach to, exhort or join in any religious exercise, with any persons of color, either free or slave.” And if a slave or a free black was found preaching, he or she was “sentenced to be whipped and imprisoned at the discretion of the court: provided, such imprisonment shall not exceed six months, and no whipping shall exceed thirty-nine lashes.”12 If a black person wanted to attend a religious meeting, he or she could only do so at night with his or her master. They could also only receive religious instruction from their master as well.

“At the time of the old Prophet Nat, the colored folks was afraid to pray loud, for the whites threatened to punish ‘em dreadfully if the least noise was heard...if they heard any of the colored folks praying or singing a hymn, they would fall upon ‘em and abuse ‘em and sometimes kill ‘em. The brightest and best was killed in Nat’s time”.–Lydia Maria Child, a slave during Nat Turner’s rebellion.13

Laws such as this were enforced because whites feared that if blacks were given an opportunity to congregate and preach together, as they had with Nat Turner, then another insurrection could possibly occur. Many southern whites believed that the black preachers were filling the minds of slaves with notions of freedom and equality. They believed that the black preachers were teaching slaves that blacks should have just as much rights as whites and that “the black man was as good as the white man...and that all men were born free and equal.” The preachers were also accused of preaching that “white people had rebelled against England to gain their freedom and so had the blacks a right to do so”. The black preachers were also accused of circulating abolitionists pamphlets, some of which had been written by the great abolitionist, William Lloyd Garrison. A portion of the black population was able to read these pamphlets because they had been taught how to read by their masters and because they had attended school. Thus, several states, including Virginia, North Carolina, and Alabama, passed laws that forbade slaves and free blacks form learning how to read and write.14

Sister Carol Speaks to Winters

Michael Sean Winters and Sister Carol Keehan have done more than anyone else I know to advance a constructive discussion of the issues surrounding the standoff between the Obama Administration and the Catholic community over the HHS Mandate in the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It is therefore fitting that Sister Carol spoke with Michael yesterday upon news that the Catholic Health Association (CHA) that Sister Carol leads had come out with a fresh proposal for reframing the HHS Mandate in ways that address what many people, Catholic or not, view as a dangerous redefinition of religious institutions imbedded in the original HHS directive. It is my hope that the Obama Administration will listen with complete attention to what is being proposed and who is proposing it. Sister Carol is the key voice of people like me who support the broad goals of the ACA but who can not and will not accept the Mandate's wording. She has been consistent in those views for months and the statement that CHA released yesterday is Obama's clear path forward to satisfying the legitimate grievances of some of his most loyal supporters. Michael's complete report on his interview with Sister Carol is here, but I thought this was a key part of his post:

Here is a decisive moment, especially for those of us who have been largely supportive of the Obama administration, and especially of the ACA. A few weeks ago, when several Catholic organizations filed suit against the HHS mandate, some denounced the suits and questioned the motives of Fr. John Jenkins and Cardinal Donald Wuerl and others. Now, the question must be posed to them: Do you really, really think that Sr. Carol’s conclusion that the accommodations are unworkable can be dismissed or ignored?

Professor Stephen Schneck, of Catholic University’s Institute for Policy Research & Catholics Studies, quickly answered that question in the negative and sided with CHA. “Morally, the distance that the accommodations offered to conscience concerns for religious institutions such as hospitals, charities, and universities was theoretically sufficient,” Schneck wrote in a statement. “I supported the accommodations initially for that reason. However, in recent weeks it's become clear that the practical difficulties of maintaining that distance were far too onerous for the accommodations to work.”

Like Keehan, Schneck reaffirmed his support for the ACA. “I remain completely supportive of the intentions of the Affordable Care Act. But all religious institutions--including religious hospitals, charities, and universities--should be allowed complete exemption from its contraception mandate. Several workable fixes to this policy problem have been suggested by many who are friendly to the Affordable Care Act. I encourage the administration to consider them.” It is noteworthy as well that the USCCB, which opposed the passage of the ACA has never once called for its repeal but instead has advocated that any objectionable parts, like the HHS mandate, be fixed.

Bishop Lori and the Coming “Fortnight Follies”

Michael Sean Winters is right to detect in my post yesterday a level of frustration with Bishop Lori and President Garvey that reaches beyond the specifics of their handling of Bishop Bruskewitz’s impertinent “question.” While Michael is right to point out that there is a certain protocol to the USCCB gatherings, I want to make clear that my concern is with the broader context of the bishops’ ongoing campaign for religious freedom more generally and its upcoming “Fortnight of Freedom” specifically.

I was upset by the ignorance and incompetence displayed in Lori and Garvey’s feeble-minded response to Bishop Bruskewitz because it is part of a pattern of high profile steps indicative of some sort of combination of public relations incompetence, shallow ignorance and latent bigotry that lead me to conclude that the Fortnight of Freedom will be similarly marred by those qualities unless the bishops and the lay leaders who have their ear come to their senses. Examples of this pattern are numerous. Consider the Catholic Governor Sam Brownback, one of the leading politicians in the conservative Evangelical/Catholic alliance, signing into law just weeks ago so-called “anti-Shariah” legislation with nary a peep of resistance from the Diocese of Kansas or key leaders of the USCCB. This came on the heels of the Auxiliary Bishop of Detroit appearing at a religious freedom rally where he shared the microphone with the President of the Thomas More Law Center, an organization known for its reckless attacks on the religious liberty of Muslims. This disregard for the religious freedom of Muslims is sadly consistent with the Bishops’ own failure to even mention the numerous threats to Muslim’s religious liberty in their major “Statement on Religious Liberty”. Lest anyone believe that these judgments are the result of my own progressive bias, know that even a cursory look at the recent actions of the conservative Becket Fund to distance themselves from anti-Muslim laws and bigotry reveals that my outrage is rooted in a very basic understanding of “religious freedom for all” that the bishops claim to represent. Lori and Garvey’s stated ignorance of the gutter level charge of Muslim “exemption” from the Affordable Care Act is therefore to me not primarily a result of protocols surrounding USCCB gatherings but of a consistent display of genuine ignorance of and disregard for the very real threats to religious liberty facing Muslims.

Unfortunately the bishops’ failure to consistently apply their concern for religious freedom to Muslims is not the only major weakness that Lori and Garvey’s actions confirm. By showing such notable absence of even the most basic public relations savvy they follow in a long line of gaffes related to questions of religious freedom. Cardinal Dolan’s choice to compare the passage of a gay marriage bill by the state of New York to North Korea comes to mind, as does Cardinal George’s unfortunate comparison of gay pride marchers in Chicago to the KKK. The instinct to compare their perceived opponents to fascists was also on display when the Bishop of Peoria, Illinois said Obama’s HHS Mandate put him on a “similar path” to that taken by Bismarck, Clemenceau, Hitler and Stalin. In these and other cases the bishops have shown themselves to be, as Saturday Night Live used to say, “not yet ready for prime time players” when it comes to the task of communicating their commitment to religious freedom in civil, competent ways.

I take no delight in pointing these errors out. I have ignored them for weeks now in the hope that the bishops would use this Atlanta gathering as a time to reign in their rhetoric, put forward their competence and put these past incidents in the past--maybe even just let the excellent lawyers bringing suit agains the HHS Mandate do their work. I was perhaps naïve to expect a clear display of perspective and poise by the leaders of the upcoming Fortnight of Freedom. Instead, I saw, in addition to the Bruskewitz incident, Garvey and Lori holding up the example of Thomas More with such simplicity and naivete that Cardinal George took it upon himself, immediately after Bishop Bruskewitz’s question, to engage in a sort of mini-history lesson for Garvey and Lori on the basic fact that THOMAS MORE BEHEADED COUNTLESS PEOPLE FOR THEIR RELIGIOUS VIEWS. The sense that Lori and Garvey are leading “the gang that can’t shoot straight” was not relieved in the session that followed a recess. The very first speaker, the excellent Bishop Pates, noted that there was significant comment and some media questions during the break about Bishop Burkewitz’s question and that it had been decided that he should immediately make a statement to the gathering. The core of Pates’ comments was this: “Our very capable staff here at the Conference very quickly researched the question that Bishop Bruskewitz raised with regard to the Muslims and they asked me to say that they are not exempt.” While I commend Bishop Pates for his intervention, I can’t help but note how easy it was for the “capable staff” to ascertain the truth of the matter. If a few minutes over lunch break were enough time to answer Bruskewitz’s query with competence, what does it say for the general competence of Lori and Garvey that they could not come up with the answer in real time?

I should mention that I worked in the 1990s for a religious publisher, InterVarsity Press, in a public relations capacity and I have been an avid follower of religious and general media for decades. Since moving to Washington DC in October of 2010 I have been particularly active in writing about the intersection of religious leaders and public policy in the media spotlight. I have paid specific attention to the relationship between the Bishops and the leadership of the Obama administration, especially the leadership of the Health and Human Services (HHS). As I have said in the past, part of my interest in this relationship is personal—my wife is one of the thousands of employees of HHS and we are raising our children in the Catholic faith. I also am one of the vanishing breed of pro-life Democrats who watched in horror in 2010 as the hierarchy of the USCCB aided and abetted the demonization of “Obamacare” and helped provide the rhetorical firepower for a campaign by pro-life groups to rid the House of Representatives of pro-life Democrats who voted for the Affordable Care Act. The viciousness of this campaign—from the attack on Notre Dame for inviting President Obama to speak, to the takedown of Congressman Stupak for carving out wording on abortion that allowed him to vote for the ACA—was to me stunning and a direct reflection on the leadership of the USCCB in the age of Obama. Despite these reservations about and disagreements with the USCCB, I was very vocal at this blog and elsewhere in supporting the bishops in their initial resistance to the HHS Mandate. Like many other politically progressive Catholics, I could see in the Mandate an Executive Branch overreach with profound constitutional repercussions and potentially devastating effects on religion in public life generally, and Catholic involvement specifically.

I continue to believe, even after the Obama administration’s accommodations, that lawsuits such as those filed by Notre Dame in opposition to the Mandate are appropriate and warranted. But I am done pretending that the leadership of this campaign for religious freedom knows what they are doing, understands the issues at sufficient depth, and is capable of communicating the breadth and depth of Catholic social teaching in a way that will advance the overall common good during the upcoming Fortnight of Freedom. What I expect to see is more folly and I will be pleased if I am proven wrong. Bishop Pates and the countless other outstanding bishops deserve better than the spectacle that is likely to play out in the coming weeks. The Catholic Church is filled with outstanding voices for religious liberty and it is telling that many of them are publicly distancing themselves from the USCCB’s efforts. This is a long-winded response to Michael Sean Winters’ post, but I felt like he and you the reader deserved a richer explanation for the tone and content of yesterday’s post. Thanks for sticking with it to the end!! Peace. God is good!

Catholic Bishops and Muslim Liberty

[PART TWO OF THIS POST HERE]

I recently wrote an article for Commonweal about the Bishops’ statement on religious freedom and its failure to address the important issue of so-called anti-Shariah legislation. At the conclusion of the article I expressed hope that the bishops would address this glaring oversight and show themselves to be the true champions of religious freedom of all Americans that they claim in their statement. If they were going to show increased awareness of and sensitivity for the religious rights of Muslims the General Assembly of the USCCB, now taking place in Atlanta, would have been an ideal time for it. Occurring just days before the start of the much publicized “Fortnight for Freedom”, this Assembly represents the ideal public forum for the bishops to get their message out and demonstrate the compassion and competency we have reason to expect from them at this critical moment. Instead, what we have already seen is further evidence of the ignorance and bigotry which I warned about in my article. 

As Michael Sean Winters has pointed out, in yesterday’s afternoon session Bishop Lori, the leader of the Bishops Committee on Religious Freedom, and John Garvey, President of Catholic University of America and a leading lay spokesman for the Fortnight of Freedom, addressed the bishops on the topic of the HHS Mandate. At the conclusion of their address they took questions. The first question was from Bishop Bruskewitz of the Lincoln, Nebraska Diocese. His question and Bishop Lori and President Garvey’s response come at the 1:31 mark of this video, but I have transcribed them below:

Bishop Bruskewitz:

I haven’t had a chance to read the Obamacare Protection Act, but somebody told me that there is a total exemption from Muslims in the back of that Act that all Muslims are exempt because insurance for Muslims is a type of gambling which is contrary to the Koran and therefore Muslims are not obliged in anyway to observe the insurance mandate which derives from the act. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but I just want to know if any of you know anything about it.

Bishop Lori:

Bishop, you must have got a lot further in that act than I did (laughter). I don’t really know.

John Garvey, President, Catholic University of America

I wish I could say more. We should ask the lawyers. I used to be a lawyer, but I just act it now. (laughter)

Let's be perfectly clear—there is absolutely no substance to the question Bruskewitz asked about some sort of conspiracy to let Muslims off the hook from the Affordable Care Act. It is, frankly, the kind of urban myth legend that one sees trumpeted at the most ignorant of websites and it has been thoroughly debunked at numerous fact checking sites for over two years. That we have a Catholic bishop giving voice to these kinds of questions is sad enough, but perhaps to be expected coming from someone as notorious as Bishop Bruskewitz. What we should not expect, and what we should in fact be concerned about, is the ignorance of Lori and Garvey. Here are the two men at the forefront of the bishops’ efforts to convey competence and compassion to the Catholic community and the broader public. They regularly trumpet the notion that the bishops’ efforts are for the common good of all Americans. And yet in the face of a question advancing the supposition that an entire religious group is receiving the exemptions the Catholic community is supposedly being denied, they have nothing more to say than “we don’t know”? This is beyond absurd, it is scandalous. Bishop Lori--you really don't know if the document you have spent the better part of the last 18 months criticizing does or does not allow for an entire religious group to exempt itself from its reach? Then why should we trust your judgments about the President's actions on religious freedom? Why should we trust your stated commitment to represent religious freedom for all, when you are ignorant of even the most basic facts related to a major religious group and its standing before the very law that you have made your reputation upon criticizing? 

We have a right to expect better, or we have a duty to question the real agenda of the bishops. If the best the bishops have to offer is creepy, conspiratorial questions that reflect the very worst of anti-Muslim conspiracy thinking, and/or vacuous responses like Lori and Garvey's, then we are either faced with incompetence or subtle acceptance of bigotry. Either choice is sad. As Winters puts it: "Perhaps at today's session, Bishop Bruskewitz can ask the bishop of Honolulu if he has really seen Obama's birth certificate."

[Further thoughts on these issues at this new post]

The Bishops and Sharia Law--My article for Commonweal

A few weeks back I did a short post on the Catholic Bishops' statement on religious freedom, taking special note of the absence in it of any mention of anti-Sharia law. From that I received an opportunity to write a more substantive reflection for Commonweal, which I am proud to say is now up at their website.
It begins like this:

The U.S. Catholic bishops' recent statement “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty,” which calls for resistance to growing threats to religious freedom, mentions Islam once. Defending religious liberty, the bishops wrote, “is not an Orthodox, Mormon, or Muslim issue. It is an American issue.” The bishops’ case for the universality of their cause would have been more persuasive if, in their list of specific concerns, they had included examples of how compromised religious liberty is, in part, a “Muslim issue.” One phenomenon they might easily have mentioned is the rise of “anti-sharia” laws in the United States.

Read more here.

Steinfels' cry of the heart (and mind) to the Bishops

Margaret O'Brien Steinfels, surely one of America's most astute observers of religion and politics and a faithful lay Catholic, has written what is for now the best "cry of the heart" I have yet seen from the American Catholic Center to her Bishops. Do read the whole article here, but here is a portion of her piece:

Who does the USCCB’s fervor and intransigence actually represent? Is it the view only of the bishops at the forefront of the public protest, while the many dutifully stand back in the name of consensus? How can so many otherwise prudent and experienced bishops remain silent? Why has the conference been so implacable, even going so far as to move the goal posts by demanding that anybusiness owner be able to opt out on religious grounds?...

Indeed, this could have ended in a victory for the bishops on a teaching most adult Catholics don’t accept, even if they defend their bishops’ right to insist on it. The bishops might have kept their army intact if the mandate had been about abortion (it isn’t, despite the USCCB’s repeated claim that some contraceptives are abortifacients). But the bishops march on, seemingly oblivious to the damage they are doing to their already diminished authority, as well as to their credibility on matters that need a vigorous and rational voice: immigration, unemployment, poverty, the threat of war with Iran, and assisted suicide (on the ballot in Massachusetts).

Notre Dame Laity Push Back

Two events—the Vatican’s statement the leadership of American Catholic nuns and the extraordinary charges against President Obama leveled by the Bishop of Peoria, IL—coming on the heels of the historic call by the American Catholic Bishops for a “fortnight of freedom” in response to perceived attacks on religious liberty have awakened stiff resistance from faithful lay Catholics in America. Two must see articles detail significant steps, both coming from Notre Dame, to challenge both the American hierarchy and the Vatican.

1.                The first is an important interview with the highly regarded Catholic thinker Scott Appleby, Professor of History at Notre Dame and the Regan Director of the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. The interview is focused on the Vatican’s statement about American nuns, a report Appleby calls “inappropriate and humiliating.” This is significant because Appleby is hardly a radical critic of the Church. He is in fact one of Her most gifted thinkers. Watch the whole interview, but here are some of the key quotes:

“conservative spectrum of what we would call today feminism…not radical feminists in any sense of the word”

“not treating these sisters with respect….for their own independent judgment as mature Christian women”

“mystery why the church is turning in on itself”

“a generalized culture of fear in the church”

“seems to be motivated more by fear, anxiety and insecurity—not by the courage that would come with Christ. If we were motivated by courage and hope and confidence in Christ and we thought we might…disagree with sisters…we would consult with them quietly, collegially, respectfully, it would not be a national news story…it would not be taking over their operations. This is not the way to treat other Christians.”

“Because the Church feels besieged they think….the religious ought to be towing the line”

“certain members of the hierarchy of the church are not intending to be denigrating women…they are not doing a very good job of sending that message.”

“if you alienate women…if you continue to make them feel that somehow by being a woman…is somehow contrary to the gospel…you are alienating the very heart of your church.”

“if the Vatican are seeking unity they don’t achieve it by enforcing uniformity”

2.                The second is a letter from 50 Notre Dame professors condemning in clear language the recent speech by Bishop Daniel Jenky that compared President Obama to Hitler and Stalin and warned that if Obama were reelected “our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries -- only excepting our church buildings -- could easily be shut down.” The Notre Dame professors urged Jenky to “renounce loudly and publicly” his inflammatory rhetoric and “If he does not do so…Notre Dame should seek the bishop's immediate resignation from the university's Board of Fellows.”

Sarah Posner and the Bishops

While I have been critical of the bishops’ statement on religious freedom because  its narrow examples invite accusations of partisanship by the bishops. Of course, the same concern about narrowness and partisanship applies to critics of the bishops. As Michael Sean Winters is right to point out, Sarah Posner is guilty of both in her critique of the bishops. In this lengthy excerpt, Winters not only challenges Posner, he makes important clarifications about what the bishops have and have not said.

Here is the opening paragraph from Ms. Posner’s post at Religion Dispatches about the USCCB’s document on religious liberty last week:

As promised at their March administrative meeting, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has released its Statement of Religious Liberty, "our first, most cherished liberty." As expected, it's basically a rehash of the same arguments the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty has been making for almost a year. This document, though, is even more pointed and hostile than previous statements, expressing disdain for (and even a refusal to acknowledge) court rulings against the Bishops, vowing not to obey "unjust laws," and pledging to deploy "all the energies the Catholic community can muster" to resist "totalitarian incursions against religious liberty" this summer.

Of course, throwing around the word “totalitarian” is always sure to catch the reader’s attention. But, the bishops did not say that they were pledging the energies of the Catholic community to resist totalitarian incursions against religious liberty, although presumably they would and so would Ms. Posner. They did not suggest that the current political landscape of the nation was totalitarian. What they said this: “In addition to this summer’s observance, we also urge that the Solemnity of Christ the King—a feast born out of resistance to totalitarian incursions against religious liberty—be a day specifically employed by bishops and priests to preach about religious liberty, both here and abroad.” By neglecting the context, and playing around with selective quotations, Ms. Posner makes it seem that the bishops are calling Obama a totalitarian and planning to do something about it this summer. This is a suggestion not born of journalistic attentiveness but partisan hubris.

Posner’s tendentiousness leads her into some curious intellectual territory. She accuses the bishops of “court-snubbing,” and that “the decisions of the courts are not respected by the Bishops, but rather dismissed out of hand as further evidence of discrimination against them.” This is curious. It should come as no surprise that many Americans have questioned judicial decisions in the past. Why should court decisions be viewed as sacrosanct? I wonder if we might have Ms. Posner’s thought on, say, Bush v. Gore or Citizens United? The long history of the nation includes many instances when a prior court decision was subsequently over-ruled by the courts: Should Thurgood Marshall have simply “respected” Plessy v. Ferguson or should he have dismissed it out of hand as further evidence of discrimination?

Even when Ms. Posner finds herself in agreement with the USCCB, she is so uncomfortable with that fact she dissembles and exposes her journalistic sloth. She writes:

Among the "concrete examples" of infringement of religious liberty there's a new twist, added, no doubt, to rebut charges the Bishops are fixated exclusively on matters of sex. The Bishops object to harsh immigration laws, such as those in Alabama, which bar "harboring" undocumented immigrants, "what the Church deems Christian charity and pastoral care to those immigrants." As noble as an objection to these odious laws may be, I find it difficult to see an infringement of religious liberty of the shelterers of undocumented immigrants as their most noxious feature.

First of all, no one said the religious liberty implications of these laws was their most noxious feature. But, had Posner taken the time to do a bit of research – and she could have done it all online – she might have discovered that the USCCB showed how its religious liberty concerns are related to the spate of anti-immigrant laws in its amicus brief against the Arizona anti-immigrant law in ways that are entirely analogous to the USCCB’s opposition to the HHS mandates.

More on Neuhaus

I knew that my blog post on Richard Neuhaus and the bishops’ statement would receive criticism, and I also knew that it was, in the nature of a blog, not particularly clear or systematic. I wanted to engage in the discussion that the bishops have furthered with their statement and see what others thought. A reader commented with this:

No doubt, Richard John Neuhaus would agree that no State or Government should engage in the promotion of promiscuity and thus the sexual objectification of the human person by mandating that every Insurance Company must provide free contraception for all.

I recognize that in my post I was not particularly clear about what I meant by Neuhaus' presence in the bishops' document, but having said that I don't think this person's comment indicates a clear reading of what the bishops have said. This comment makes it sound like the bishops are presenting this as being about contraceptives. They are explicitly saying that it is about religious freedom NOT contraceptives, and that the HHS policy is just one manifestation of a much larger problem. In defining that problem they use Neuhausian frameworks like "naked public square", "civil public square" and "sacred public square" and they quote from a recent statement by the group that Neuhaus helped to found, Evangelicals and Catholics Together. I also specifically mentioned Neuhaus' "End of Democracy?" statement and the controversy that it elicited due to its intemperate and unclear calls for aggressively challenging the judicial branch/political culture. I fear that the bishops’ statement reflects that kind of bellicose approach. If the bishops merely wanted to protest what you have described, then Neuhaus would hardly be alone in agreeing with them, and it would hardly be something worthy of the scale of response that they are undertaking to lead. They have quite clearly done more than that. In so doing they have reflected a good deal of Neuhaus' wisdom, but some of his weakness as well, IMHO.