Feb 11

HHS ‘compromise’: “80 pages of nothing new”

Abortion, Culture, Law, Politics No Comments »

The basic mandate that employers with religious objections to the HHS contraceptive coverage still have to comply or pay punitive fines still stands. The latest fig leaf changes little, but it took a few days to wade through the dense and convoluted legalese the government issued to essentially say ‘we’re not willing to budge, more than an inch.’

There is nothing new about the administration deciding who gets exemptions and who doesn’t, and that’s the main point.

After nearly a year, the Obama administration released, on February 1, its latest version of a “compromise” with the employers who object, on religious grounds, to the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate that their health plans cover no-cost access to sterilization services and contraceptives, including those that can act as abortifacients, destroying the early-stage embryo.

As many observers have already remarked, there is nothing substantively new in the administration’s proposal, which only formalizes and fills in details of a proposal it first floated last March, and continues to be based on the same dubious science.

Now facing more than forty lawsuits initiated by colleges, charities, and other religious nonprofits, as well as by for-profit companies whose owners have religiously informed moral objections, the Obama administration may hope that its latest gambit will persuade some credulous judges to toss some of the litigants’ cases.

But in truth, it has only revealed its own blinkered and tyrannical understanding of religious freedom, which it would sacrifice to a goal of “gender equality” that is at best only tenuously related to its free-contraception-for-all policy. And, if the judges attend closely to its arguments, it may even have severely weakened its case.

Well that’s interesting.

Matt Franck makes a good presentation there at Public Discourse on what this alleged compromise actually does. And he wraps it up with a challenge to the reader to do this thought exercise:

Given its stated hostility to any serious understanding of our first freedom, the right not just to worship but to live one’s faith in all one’s daily work, on what understanding of our remaining constitutional freedoms can the administration assure us that any of these other liberties still stands on a firm foundation?

Good question.

Also at Public Discourse was this well-reasoned and extraordinarily well presented analysis.

With last Friday’s rules, the government is claiming that after a year of a mostly losing record of religious freedom lawsuits, it has struck the perfect balance between two urgent goals: getting contraception into the hands of as many American women and girls as possible, and protecting Americans’ religious freedom.

The truth of the matter is quite different.

There are myriad problems inherent in the new rules. They still fail to protect the legally guaranteed religious freedom of religious institutions, for-profit employers, insurers, non-religious non-profit organizations, and individuals. Religious liberty is protected not only by the First Amendment of our Constitution, but also by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

They fail to understand the full nature of the free exercise of religion—that religion, whether practiced individually or by a group, requires being able to integrate one’s actions with one’s religious beliefs, especially when these don’t attack but advance the common good—here, the health and well-being of women and girls.

They trample on parents’ constitutionally-protected right to direct the upbringing of their daughters. And they reveal, still, an irrational zeal for a narrow category of drugs and devices, thus evincing a narrow and harmful understanding of women’s freedom as coincident with sexual expression.

Moreover, while the government tries to make us think that the new rules are hospitable to religious freedom, we shouldn’t overlook its continued failure to admit the bankruptcy of the mandate’s grounding “medical” claim: that unintended pregnancy is a kind of health crisis properly resolved with free contraception and early abortions.

Thank you, Helen Alvare, for such a sound argument.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the US bishops conference, said this latest attempt for cover is still unacceptable.

The Administration’s proposal maintains its inaccurate distinction among religious ministries. It appears to offer second-class status to our first-class institutions in Catholic health care, Catholic education, and Catholic charities. HHS offers what it calls an “accommodation,” rather than accepting the fact that these ministries are integral to our Church and worthy of the same exemption as our Catholic churches. And finally, it seems to take away something that we had previously—the ability of an exempt employer (such as a diocese) to extend its coverage to the employees of a ministry outside the exemption.

(The bishops’ document) United for Religious Freedom explained that the religious ministries not deemed “religious employers” would suffer the severe consequence of “be[ing] forced by government to violate their own teachings within their very own institutions.”After Friday, it appears that the government would require all employees in our “accommodated” ministries to have the illicit coverage—they may not opt out, nor even opt out for their children—under a separate policy.In part because of gaps in the proposed regulations, it is still unclear how directly these separate policies would be funded by objecting ministries, and what precise role those ministries would have in arranging for these separate policies.Thus, there remains the possibility that ministries may yet be forced to fund and facilitate such morally illicit activities…

 the bishops explained that the “HHS mandate creates still a third class, those with no conscience protection at all:individuals who, in their daily lives, strive constantly to act in accordance with their faith and moral values.”This includes employers sponsoring and subsidizing the coverage, insurers writing it, and beneficiaries paying individual premiums for it.Friday’s action confirms that HHS has no intention to provide any exemption or accommodation at all to this “third class.”In obedience to our Judeo-Christian heritage, we have consistently taught our people to live their lives during the week to reflect the same beliefs that they proclaim on the Sabbath.We cannot now abandon them to be forced to violate their morally well-informed consciences.

Because the stakes are so high, we will not cease from our effort to assure that healthcare for all does not mean freedom for few.Throughout the past year, we have been assured by the Administration that we will not have to refer, pay for, or negotiate for the mandated coverage.We remain eager for the Administration to fulfill that pledge and to find acceptable solutions—we will affirm any genuine progress that is made, and we will redouble our efforts to overcome obstacles or setbacks.Thus, we welcome and will take seriously the Administration’s invitation to submit our concerns through formal comments, and we will do so in the hope that an acceptable solution can be found that respects the consciences of all.At the same time, we will continue to stand united with brother bishops, religious institutions, and individual citizens who seek redress in the courts for as long as this is necessary.

For now, this remains necessary.

The cases proceed through the courts, and the latest HHS proposal is likely a response to a DC Circuit Court judge who required the government to report back on what ‘accommodations’ it was making that it had promised would be forthcoming. This does not suffice, say Becket Fund attorneys representing the most cases against the federal mandate.

Today’s announcement of the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on the HHS mandate leaves the religious liberty of millions of Americans unprotected.

“Today’s proposed rule does nothing to protect the religious freedom of millions of Americans. For instance, it does nothing to protect the rights of family businesses like Hobby Lobby,” said Kyle Duncan, General Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.  “The administration obviously realizes that the HHS mandate puts constitutional rights at risk.  There would have been an easy way to resolve this—expanding the exemption—but the proposed rule expressly rejects that option.”

Becket Fund Executive Director Kristina Arriaga sent out this press release:

We’re all still reeling from the Administration’s announcement on the HHS Mandate last Friday, which, as it turns out, is 80 pages of nothing new.
 
The Administration’s proposal is murky on the details – in fact, it’s not at all clear how this would work, if it could work at all; but it’s clear that it still fails to protect our nation’s 237-year guarantee of religious liberty for millions of Americans.
 
As I mentioned in my email to you last Friday when the Obama Administration released this proposal “respecting the concerns of some religious organizations,” – their words, my emphasis – the millions of American entrepreneurs who want to live their lives and run their businesses with their faith intact are not covered even a stitch by this proposal.
 
They are still forced to choose between their conscience and their livelihood.  These entrepreneurs are winning big in court – 11 wins for businesspeople of faith to just 3 for the government –  yet the Administration still refuses to accept that religious liberty is even at issue in these cases.
 
So, as far as the Becket Fund is concerned, the fight against the HHS Mandate is far from over…

The government seems to have been so intent on defining religious liberty as narrowly as possible that they’ve drafted a convoluted 80-page proposal riddled with half-baked ideas and vague accounting schemes.

And, finally, says Helen Alvare…

…these proposed regulations show the government’s standing obsession with this narrow piece of the Affordable Care Act. From August 2011 to today, the White House and HHS have expended enormous amounts of time, written hundreds of pages of rules and amended rules and “safe harbor” provisions, occupied press conference time, re-election campaign ads, and delivered speeches—all to promote the notion that free contraception and early abortifacients are the near sum of women’s freedom.

It’s as clear, and offensive, as that.

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Nov 29

Post-election ruminations

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And they are revealing. Not only about what went wrong for champions of one candidate, much of one party and many advocates of important causes, but how to learn from that. High level disagreement there…

Take this Public Discourse piece.

A common trope in social policy debates is to claim that the public’s changing opinion on the policy at stake, rather than the policy’s moral or substantive justifications, merits changing the platform of one’s preferred political party. This notion seems recently to have taken root on the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal, and several commentators have reacted.

Consider its November 8 editorial extolling referendums on marriage. The editors argue that views on “gay marriage” are changing so that “after 32 defeats at the ballot box, a gay marriage initiative was adopted by voters,” which shows that Americans are “capable of changing their views and the laws on gay marriage.” They praise the referendum process over judicial fiat, but their implicit premise seems to be that the policy change is a good one. Any substantive arguments to support this view are missing; what remains is only the claim of an inexorable shift in public opinion.

Now there’s a good point. I keep saying that we need a robust and honest public airing of different views on a number of social issues and public policies, with opposite arguments made and defended, so people can engage the fullness of the issues and the ramifications of their outcomes. You know, follow an idea through to its logical conclusion. Engage critical thinking. We’re not getting much of that in any widely accessed public forum, with few exceptions.

Ross Douthat comments on all this, and does some dot-connecting in this op-ed piece.

Liberals look at the Obama majority and see a coalition bound together by enlightened values — reason rather than superstition, tolerance rather than bigotry, equality rather than hierarchy. But it’s just as easy to see a coalition created by social disintegration and unified by economic fear.

Consider the Hispanic vote. Are Democrats winning Hispanics because they put forward a more welcoming face than Republicans do — one more in keeping with America’s tradition of assimilating migrants yearning to breathe free? Yes, up to a point. But they’re also winning recent immigrants because those immigrants often aren’t assimilating successfully — or worse, are assimilating downward, thanks to rising out-of-wedlock birthrates and high dropout rates. The Democratic edge among Hispanics depends heavily on these darker trends: the weaker that families and communities are, the more necessary government support inevitably seems.

Likewise with the growing number of unmarried Americans, especially unmarried women. Yes, social issues like abortion help explain why these voters lean Democratic. But the more important explanation is that single life is generally more insecure and chaotic than married life, and single life with children — which is now commonplace for women under 30 — is almost impossible to navigate without the support the welfare state provides.

Or consider the secular vote, which has been growing swiftly and tilts heavily toward Democrats. The liberal image of a non-churchgoing American is probably the “spiritual but not religious” seeker, or the bright young atheist reading Richard Dawkins. But the typical unchurched American is just as often an underemployed working-class man, whose secularism is less an intellectual choice than a symptom of his disconnection from community in general.

What unites all of these stories is the growing failure of America’s local associations — civic, familial, religious — to foster stability, encourage solidarity and make mobility possible…

This is a great flaw in the liberal vision, because whatever role government plays in prosperity, transfer payments are not a sufficient foundation for middle-class success. It’s not a coincidence that the economic era that many liberals pine for — the great, egalitarian post-World War II boom — was an era that social conservatives remember fondly as well: a time of leaping church attendance, rising marriage rates and birthrates, and widespread civic renewal and engagement.

No such renewal seems to be on the horizon. That isn’t a judgment on the Obama White House, necessarily. But it is a judgment on a certain kind of blithe liberal optimism, and the confidence with which many Democrats assume their newly emerged majority is a sign of progress rather than decline.

As for conservatives, they’re having a necessary and not necessarily bad wrestling match within their ranks over big ideas and changing realities and criticism both constructive and very unhelpful.

Back to that Public Discourse piece:

To the extent then that the Republican Party appears to abandon its rightward stance on social issues; to the extent that Republicans are afraid to defend their views on the value of life, on religious freedom, and on marriage, they cede back the Reagan Democrats and their children to the Democrats, and they doom themselves to minority status.

These practical realities have not been lost on conservatives, and several important commentators have sounded the alarm. At First Things Matthew Franck cogently compares the Wall Street Journal’s urgings that we abandon our social principles to the cynical political maneuvering of Stephen Douglas on the slavery issue a century and a half ago. Franck notes that had Abraham Lincoln succumbed to the apparent expediency of falling into line with Douglas’s arguments, slavery likely would have persisted…

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow, policy has worked, does work, and will work best when it is founded on moral and practical arguments. The Republican Party’s defense of freedom and dignity is based on both.

And more, because as Eric Metaxas puts it so well in so few words, logic is not enough.

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Jul 15

Religious freedom and the Obamacare “Tax”

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What impact will Chief Justice John Roberts’ decision to uphold the individual mandate as a tax have on the battle for the right to religious liberty and conscientious objection?

This piece in Public Discourse is one of the best, most thoroughly covered and fairly stated commentaries I’ve seen. It takes a little more time to get through than many articles that are short, hastily written and aimed at sound bite mentalities for people who scan quickly. There’s a lot to scan out there, but this one deserves attention.

Unfortunately for religious organizations, the tax characterization weakens their legal position and appears to arm Secretary Sebelius with a potent arrow in her quiver. The Secretary of Health and Human Services can safely claim that religious organizations are seeking an exemption from a tax, and when it comes to taxation, the Supreme Court is exceptionally reluctant to grant religious exemptions. Yet in spite of this gift to the Obama administration, there are reasons to remain sanguine that the Supreme Court will find the administration’s refusal to grant a meaningful accommodation to religious organizations to be unlawful.

Okay, let’s break this down.

First, the bad news for religious organizations: the Supreme Court has traditionally been hostile to tax exemption claims on religious grounds, even when these taxes substantially burden religion.

Read the longer explanation of that, which follows.

Yet defenders of religious liberty should take heart, for there is also good news. There are several reasonable grounds upon which the Court’s line of reasoning in the “religious liberty versus tax” cases can be distinguished. Among these is that the assessment upon those who do not secure health insurance is no ordinary tax. Unlike the Social Security tax, which is imposed uniformly upon all, the “Obamacare tax” is imposed in a highly selective fashion. Only those who refuse to purchase health insurance, with coverage for all the religiously objectionable services mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services, will find themselves paying this tax. The selective nature of the tax raises the question of whether it is truly neutral and generally applicable in its purpose or effects. While it is generally uncharitable to speculate on questions of intention, the effects of this tax are neither generally applicable nor neutral. Those who will end up paying the tax will be those who refuse to purchase the insurance for reasons of religion and conscience, as well as those who believe they will save money overall by simply forking over money to the Internal Revenue Service…

Moreover, most religious organizations do not have a religious objection to a tax that supports health services. Many have a tradition of deference to secular authority, especially in the realm of taxation, firmly committed to “Render unto Caesar.” Religious hospitals, universities, and other charitable organizations object to being forced to pay for a narrow set of services that they do not regard as legitimately part of “health” care, or else pay a “tax” that is essentially a fine.

Here’s an important distinction:

The modest nature of the exemption sought in no way threatens the overall integrity of a law that is intended to increase access to medical services. There is no conflict between the federal government and religious organizations over the end of increasing access to healthcare. The major disagreement is over the means, and even then, only as these relate to a very small subset of “health” services.

Given the modest exemption sought, one might reasonably ask why there is such reluctance—indeed, intransigence—on the part of the Obama administration to negotiate in good faith with religious organizations to find a workable compromise. No one doubts that it is within the power of the administration to do this even while they uphold the overall integrity of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Now comes a key point, not often covered or even understood. When I raise it with top legal experts on radio, they invariably jump on the chance to clarify what is fundamentally at issue in the lawsuits against the HHS mandate.

[T]he Religious Freedom Restoration Act (1993), which is as much congressional law as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, requires that the executive branch of the federal government accommodate religious minorities when a law substantially burdens their religious practice, unless the government’s interests are compelling and the least restrictive means have been imposed to further that compelling interest. Religious organizations do not believe that the provision of contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs is a compelling interest because they do not believe that contraceptive and abortion services are part of fostering “health.”

However the Supreme Court may regard this claim, it cannot ignore that the means used by the Obama administration—refusing an exemption to religious charitable services when it has granted this exemption to churches—is not the least restrictive means. Even assuming for the sake of argument that the provision of contraception and abortion services is truly necessary to advance “health,” it is still not necessary that religious charitable organizations must pay for them for this interest to be advanced. It is sufficient that those who want these services be given access to affordable contraception or abortion services, and there are myriad ways in which the federal government can (and does) make these services affordable and accessible to those who want them, without requiring religious charitable services to pay for them.

Stay with this, one more chunk. Connect the dots.

It is also arguable that the Obama administration is acting in a rogue fashion, paying little deference to the will of Congress. Congress has the power to tax; the Obama administration does not. Congress has empowered the Secretary of Health and Human Services to define “essential health benefits,” taking into account guidelines stipulated by Congress. For all practical purposes, it is a power given to President Obama since he can dismiss Secretary Sebelius or any other member of his cabinet at will if his bidding is not done. Secretary Sebelius has exercised this power to mandate controversial “preventive services.” Yet the power to define essential benefits does not inherently include the power to tax, or to determine upon whom a “penalty” or “assessable payment” will fall. There is little indication that Congress intended to delegate this power to Secretary Sebelius, and the delegation of taxing authority to this office would be most irregular. As compared to the Internal Revenue Service, which is closely monitored by and answerable to Congress, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is not nearly so accountable. Serving at the pleasure of the president, the secretary primarily does the president’s bidding. Absent a clear indication by Congress that it intends to tax non-compliant religious minorities, taxes resulting from a failure to provide essential benefits may be illegal, since the Secretary’s delegated powers do not necessarily include the ability to designate who will pay taxes.

Ultimately, note this:

The tenets of faith are not forced upon anyone; they are accepted as matters of conscience or not at all. The same cannot be said of the federal government’s penalties and assessable payments. Contraception and abortion are established constitutional rights, accessible to all, in spite of citizens’ objections to these. To have religious citizens pay directly for services contrary to their faith or else be penalized through selective taxation is the mirror image of levying taxes upon nonbelievers in support of churches. Both are violations of the establishment clause, for they involve the state treading into matters of faith by coercing compliance. Taxing some sects to subsidize directly the beliefs and practices of other sects, including the beliefs and practices of secular humanists, is exactly what the establishment clause was intended to prevent. As we keep faith with God, there are good reasons for Americans to have faith that our political system will prevent selective taxation, and that it will not burden our charitable religious organizations in matters of faith and conscience to benefit others.

To repeat, “there are good reasons for Americans to have faith,” which my sources at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty soundly claim, time and again.

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Jun 14

How to be a Catholic Democrat

Church, Culture, Law, Politics, Society No Comments »

And not.

Many top Catholic scholars and members of media and public servants regretfully left the Democratic party of their fathers when the party abandoned their principles so profoundly, they couldn’t compromise such fundamental values.

Others stayed in the party, either capitulating to political expediency or (conversely) determining to reform the Democratic politics according to its rich heritage.

So here’s an example of both.

Nancy Pelosi.

“Well I don’t think that is the entire Catholic Church,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said about the lawsuit brought against the Obama administration by numerous Catholic institutions in the U.S. “Those people have a right to sue, but I don’t think they’re speaking for the Catholic Church and they’re are people in the Catholic Church, including some of the bishops, who have suggested that some of this may be premature.”

“You know what? I do my religion on Sunday in church and I try to go other days of the week. I don’t do it at this press conference,” Pelosi said curtly at her weekly press conference.

And Ray Flynn, popular former mayor of Boston and US Ambassador to the Vatican.

Ambassador Raymond L. Flynn expressed concern about the HHS mandate driving a wedge between Catholics and the Democratic Party as he addressed a Stand Up for Religious Freedom rally at the Boston Commons…

“As a proud lifelong Catholic Democrat, I fear that this dangerous policy is causing a serious rift between the Democratic Party and Catholics – and people of all faiths for that matter. Sadly, this unthinkable move threatens a long and proud relationship.”

In the days of Roosevelt, “It was unthinkable for most Catholics not to vote the straight Democratic ticket.” The era continued through the 50s and 70s…

[I]t was both the Church and the Democratic Party who were always there to help. They were working for better and safer work conditions on the docks, medical care, educating kids and helping the poor. People in those days were loyal to the Church and the Democratic Party.”

“You can’t imagine how I felt when I saw my longtime friend Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York City filing a legal challenge against the Obama Administration for their discriminatory policies against religious institutions in America. I am proud of Cardinal Dolan, but ashamed that this administration has let it come to this.”

“It is outrageous that the administration has taken action to trample on the rights of religious institutions and people of faith. Despite what you hear from the media and some politicians, this is not about access to contraception; it is about the principle of whether the federal government can force religious organizations to take actions that violate their own faith and their own conscience. Catholics will not stand by and be silent!”

I had a very engaging conversation with Ambassador Flynn Thursday. He made a passionate case for citizen involvement in this current heated struggle to preserve historic, constitutional, religious liberties. “Catholics cannot afford to lose this struggle,” he said, adding that though it’s not a Catholic issue, it’s been framed as one and deeply threatens the existence of social ministries.

“We’re in a battle here,” he said fervently. “I can’t get over it that here we are in 2012 being challenged this way. There’s an elitist group of people coming around telling us what we can and can’t do. We have always valued human rights and religious freedom, and there are a lot of wonderful, decent people out there who are working to serve those in need.”

Then he added: “There is no force more powerful than truth, and it will prevail.”

He also wanted radio listeners to know that “Information is the most powerful tool,” so access it and spread it.

Here’s an important site of bi-partisan thought leaders, including Flynn.

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Mar 26

Religious freedom rallies

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They launched big, in 140 cities, coast to coast.

Organizers hope it was only the beginning. They are indeed resourceful.

Take Chicago, for example, where a long summer-like streak ended that morning with a heavy downpour and chilly temperatures and adverse conditions. The crowd swelled to about 2,500 anyway. The sound system went out moments before the noon start time. The message was amplified anyway.

Trouble is, it had to be amplified by bullhorn. And I was the first speaker. I detested having to shout into a bullhorn mouthpiece so the crowd could hear. But was slightly horrified to hear the back of the crowd calling ‘louder, we can’t hear,’ having to crank it up to a higher pitch and force every word as loudly as possible. That’s not the way to deliver a message, in my book.

So here’s what I tried to say.

On January 11th, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of upholding constitutionally protected religious liberty when the Justice Department tried to exert federal authority over how churches define ministries. Obama appointee Justice Elena Kagan joined a concurring opinion with Justice Samuel Alito saying “we have long recognized that the Religion Clauses protect a private sphere within which religious bodies are free to govern themselves in accordance with their own beliefs.” Courts, the opinion stated, must avoid inquiring into whether religious reasons given for internal governance decisions are merely “pretexts” for evading legal obligations.

About a week later, the Obama administration’s HHS mandate was issued, on Friday the 20th, requiring insurance coverage of abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization and contraception, with virtually no religious exemption, thus exerting an audacious and sovereign end-run around even the courts. For the time being, anyway.

Okay, so with a blog I can expand a bit on the few minutes worth of remarks given under duress at a rally.

Earlier that same day, Friday January 20th, before the HHS mandate announcement, I was on the BBC program ‘World Have Your Say’ as part of a panel discussion on the SOPA and PIPA legislation in Congress to impose new restrictions on freedom of information. That panel included a young woman in Cairo, a man in Nairobi, a woman in Britain, a man in Washington and I was the US journalist in Chicago. Wikipedia had gone dark for a day to boycott government overreach, and many internet sites joined in some way to protest. Social media networks launched a campaign of activism so forceful, legislators started backing off the bill they had co-sponsored saying they heard the voice of the people and needed to reconsider legislation.

With the HHS mandate, government is denying conscience rights inherent in American tradition and fundamental to human rights everywhere. The right to conscientious objection has been nearly sacrosanct in American history, and now it’s being tried and tested to a new degree. More Americans oppose this move as government overreach than those who accept it as somehow an outgrowth of what’s colloquially known as ‘Obamacare.’

And btw…I cover enough news sources every day to know that’s not a pejorative as much as it is functional shorthand used by most media, to address those who try to discount criticism of the policies by criticising terminology. Some of the same people who have no problem with the term ‘Romneycare’ for GOP candidate Mitt Romney’s health care law in Massachusettes.

But I digress.

The morning of the rally, I heard the main organizer, Eric Scheidler, interviewed on television network news about the rallies across America, and the final question was ‘what do you want?’ The anchor said ‘there was an accommodation already made over this, so are you looking for another accommodation?’ I worked that into my brief remarks at the rally. There was no accommodation. It did not happen. The White House held a Friday press conference on February 10th announcing that there was, but the HHS mandate was entered into the public record that evening unchanged. It was a diversionary tactic, truth be told.

The Supreme Court hears arguments this week over the individual mandate in Obamacare, challenging the first time the federal government has required American citizens to purchase something by law. With the HHS mandate to purchase something, or provide insurance coverage for something, that violates consciences and religious beliefs, the court challenges are piling up and experts predict this mandate won’t stand judicial scrutiny.

Better to find a remedy before it gets to that point.

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Jan 11

‘The most important religious freedom test in 20 years’

Church, Law, Politics, Society 1 Comment »

The Supreme Court of the United States has been asked to hear some unusually pivotal cases in recent time, even for that increasingly political body.

In this one, theology was up for debate, as WaPo put it.

From homeland security to healthcare, the federal government now has the power to reach further than ever into American society. But so far, the feds have sensibly stayed out of the business of appointing religious leaders.

Now, in a stunning about-face, the Obama Administration has urged the Supreme Court to allow courts to decide virtually any dispute between a church and its ministers. In the administration’s view, juries and judges, not congregations and bishops, should have the final say on who is fit for religious ministry. Fundamental questions of theology would be resolved in the same way as slip-and-fall cases. Plaintiffs’ lawyers would go into a religious feeding frenzy.

The DOJ made this astounding declaration in its brief for a Supreme Court case called Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which some observers have called the most important religious freedom case in 20 years.

The ruling came today.

The Supreme Court of the United States has ruled unanimously in favor of a church’s right to be itself, and its freedom to assign its ministries:

This is an enormous and timely victory for religious freedom:

“In a groundbreaking case, the Supreme Court on Wednesday held for the first time that religious employees of a church cannot sue for employment discrimination.

“But the court’s unanimous decision in a case from Michigan did not specify the distinction between a secular employee, who can take advantage of the government’s protection from discrimination and retaliation, and a religious employee, who can’t.

“It was, nevertheless, the first time the high court has acknowledged the existence of a “ministerial exception” to anti-discrimination laws — a doctrine developed in lower court rulings. This doctrine says the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion shields churches and their operations from the reach of such protective laws when the issue involves employees of these institutions.

Read the whole post and its links, Anchoress put it all together well. Picture Justices Scalia and Kagan jointly outraged “at the government’s constitution-shredding argument.”

Chief Justice John Roberts noted in the court’s opinion

this was the first time the high court has ever considered the “ministerial exception,”

…but likely the first among…more.

The Obama administration tested the waters with an extreme gambit. They’ve now established that this court, in its current make-up, will rule in favor of the churches against overt threats to the most fundamental of our religious freedoms. I expect that if Obama is re-elected, we’ll see continued–but measured–attempts to weaken religious freedoms, as it attempts to discern precisely where the lines are, and how they may be crossed. Chief Justice Roberts appears to acknowledge as much, in writing the opinion.

Meanwhile, this is very good–yes, reassuring–news.

For now.

Shot across the bow noted.

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Oct 16

Tim Tebow’s faith in football

Abortion, Church, Culture, Law, Media, Politics, Society No Comments »

It’s about standings. Sort of…

He has an uneasy celebrity status in the NFL. Many athletes are Christians and visibly show or express their gratitude to God before, during and after games. But there’s something differently, prickly to the media, about Tim Tebow.

If there’s any question about the level of religious divisiveness in America, just look to the NFL, and the cult of personality, punditry, and outright passion surrounding Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow. The former Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Florida, a devout Evangelical Christian who isn’t shy about spreading the gospel, has completed just 45 NFL passes through the first one and a quarter seasons of his career.

However…

Tebow seems to have crossed a line that most athletes have respected. They’ll celebrate their own faith, but won’t challenge yours. “This is a sticking point,” says Arthur Remillard, a religious studies professor at St. Francis College in Loretto, Pa., who teaches a course on sports and religion, and starts it off with a Tebow discussion. “It’s one thing for an athlete to say ‘Thank you, Jesus,” on a Sunday afternoon. It’s another for him to make what amounts to a declaration that ‘I am morally superior to you.’ There’s a segment of the fan base that’s not too keen on hearing that.”

Is that what they’re hearing? Or more accurately (and there’s a difference), is that what he’s saying?

George Weigel says the reaction to Tebow is irrational.

Tebow is the son of an evangelical pastor and spends some of his vacation time working with his father’s mission in the Philippines. He famously wore eye-black with Bible verses inked on it in white during his Florida career, and he is not reluctant to share his Christian faith in other public ways. He visits sick kids in hospitals; he has said that he is a virgin who believes in saving himself for marriage; he and his mother taped a pro-life commercial that ran during the Super Bowl. There is not the slightest evidence that Tebow has ever forced himself and his convictions on his teammates or on an unsuspecting public.

And if Catholics would find his theology a little questionable at points, there is nothing of which I’m aware that would suggest that Tim Tebow wouldn’t be interested in sitting down and having a serious conversation with knowledgeable Catholics about how God saves those who will be saved. A guy who can command respect in the moral and cultural free-fire zone of an NFL locker room (not to mention the Southeastern Conference, which hardly resembles a network of Carthusian monasteries) is not likely to be shaken by a serious conversation about his understanding of how the Lord Jesus and his Father might effect the salvation of those who do not explicitly avow faith in the Lord Jesus and his Father.

No, Tim Tebow is a target of irrational hatred, not because he’s an iffy quarterback at the NFL level, or a creep personally, or an obnoxious, in-your-face, self-righteous proselytizer. He draws hatred because he is an unabashed Christian, whose calmness and decency in the face of his Christophobic detractors drives them crazy. Tim Tebow, in other words, is a prime example of why Christophobia—a neologism first coined by a world-class comparative constitutional law scholar, J.H.H. Weiler, himself an Orthodox Jew—is a serious cultural problem in these United States.

And the fact that it’s George Weigel writing this signals that the problem, reaching this height in major league sports in the US, is serious.

Tolerance, that supreme virtue of the culture of radical relativism, does not extend to evangelical Christians, it seems. And if it does not extend to evangelicals who unapologetically proclaim their faith in Jesus as Lord and Savior and who live their commitment to the dignity of human life from conception and natural death, it will not extend to Catholics who make that same profession of faith and that same moral commitment. Whatever we think of Tim Tebow’s theology of salvation, Tim Tebow and serious Catholics are both fated to be targets of the Christophobes.

Their war on Christianity is getting more radical, as Weigel notes in his concluding remark, which questions how democracy will survive this culture war with religion. It’s a recurring theme, gaining urgency. In the past two weeks, I’ve personally heard three bishops, two cardinals, one congressman, two constitutional law experts and several scholars express heightened concerns over the assault on Christians that’s reached unprecedented levels.

Without risk of exaggerating the football analogy, it’s clear they’re prepared for both defense and offense.

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Oct 14

Save Pastor Joucef Nadarkhani

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It’s a wonder he’s still alive. And just as astonishing to those inside Iran who know how these things go, shocking that the Ayatollah Khamenei has taken the case into his own hands to decide.

I spoke with the American Center for Law and Justice on radio to get the facts of this case straight and updated. There’s no doubt Youcef is still alive and his defense advanced because of the ACLJ and international religious leaders, government bodies and world media focusing attention on the threats to his life for refusing to renounce his Christian faith.

The Vatican is working quietly for his release.

Behind-the-scene efforts by the Holy See, among others, may be helping Youcef Nadarkhani, the Iranian Christian pastor who was tried for abandoning his Islamic faith.

“As is usual in these situations,” the Holy See has been communicating with “the Iranian authorities through diplomatic channels,” Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican Press Office, told the Register early this week…

Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, concurred that the Iranian government may finally be responding to intense international pressure.

Ghaemi firmly believes that the only thing standing between the pastor and the executioner’s chair “is a sustained international protest, which has started with a number of countries making a strong protest.”

At this stage, he continued, “what can save his life is for the Vatican and the Pope to come forward and call for his release, as well as U.N. human-rights officials, including Navi Pillay and U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon. Sustained international protests and attention is the most likely hope for saving Nadarkhani’s life.”

Like Christians and other minority religious groups throughout much of the Muslim world, Iran’s minority communities — including up to 300,000 Christians and 300,000 Baha’i — face the growing threat of fundamentalist Islam.

In a column in the Kansas City Star, Jennifer Marshall, director of the DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society at The Heritage Foundation, said the “increasing persecution” of Christians in the Middle East and their resulting emigration prompted the Catholic archbishop of Baghdad and other leaders to wonder “whether brutal religious oppression could extinguish Christianity in the region altogether.”

The ACLJ told me that’s a big concern that drives their advocacy. And two lead attorneys there, Jordan Sekulow and Tiffany Barrans, told me that international pressure is vital to the hope of protecting whatever religious freedom remains in the Middle East, where Christianity was born.

They strongly urged all people of goodwill to take action, and provide easy means to do that on their homepage by signing the petition or contacting Congress.

The bishops of North America are strongly urging the same thing.

Archbishop Brendan O’Brien of Kingston, chairman of the human rights committee of the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, has called upon the government of Iran to respect the religious freedom of Youcef Nadarkhani, a Protestant pastor sentenced to death for converting from Islam. At a recent retrial, Nadarkhani refused repeated opportunities to renounce his conversion to Christianity.

“Now is the time to speak up and pray out loud for Christians placed in a stranglehold by oppression,” added Neville Kyrke-Smith, head of Aid to the Church in Need UK. “The decision to execute Pastor Nadarkhani is not justifiable in the name of any religion, it is a totalitarian act – one man’s life being ended to dissuade others from opposing the political regime … The Catholic community must not be struck dumb as such suffering goes on.”

Emphasis added. Because that warning has been recurring in my interviews lately on assaults to religious freedom and conscience rights: Christians tend toward passivity and silence in the face of grave danger, and there’s nothing the enemies of religious liberty want more than to silence them.

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Oct 03

Religious freedom threat level raised

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Policies of the federal government under the Obama administration have ignited a blaze of concerns about fundamental religious liberties in America.

Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the US bishops conference, wrote a letter to the president recently.

The Administration’s assault on DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act], Archbishop Dolan said, will “precipitate a national conflict between Church and State of enormous proportions and to the detriment of both institutions.”

“Will”…?

Archbishop Dolan especially objected to the Justice Department’s legal arguments that equate those in favor of DOMA to racists. It is “particularly upsetting,” he said, when the Administration attributes to those who support DOMA “a motivation rooted in prejudice and bias.It is especially wrong and unfair to equate opposition to redefining marriage with either intentional or willfully ignorant racial discrimination, as your Administration insists on doing,” he said.

He underscored the Church’s position recognizing “the immeasurable personal dignity and equal worth of all individuals, including those with same-sex attraction” and said “we reject all hatred and unjust treatment against any person.”

“Our profound regard for marriage as the complementary and fruitful union of a man and a woman does not negate our concern for the well-being of all people but reinforces it,” he said. “While all persons merit our full respect, no other relationships provide for the common good what marriage between husband and wife provides.The law should reflect this reality.”

Archbishop Dolan advised President Obama: “push the reset button on your Administration’s approach to DOMA.”

“Our federal government should not be presuming ill intent or moral blindness on the part of the overwhelming majority of its citizens, millions of whom have gone to the polls to directly support DOMAs in their states and have thereby endorsed marriage as the union of man and woman.Nor should a policy disagreement over the meaning of marriage be treated by federal officials as a federal offense—but this will happen if the Justice Department’s latest constitutional theory prevails in court.”

Archbishop Dolan asked President Obama to “end its campaign against DOMA, the institution of marriage it protects, and religious freedom.”

“Please know that I am always ready to discuss with you the concerns raised here and to address any questions that you may have.” he added. “I am convinced that the door to a dialogue that is strong enough to endure even serious and fundamental disagreements can and must remain open, and I believe that you desire the same.”

Archbishop Dolan was offering a statesman-like presumption of goodwill in warning that if this course is continued, it “will” result in a national conflict. Because it actually has.

Just days ago, the bishops assembled a new ‘task force’ to tackle this new and historic threat to religious liberties.

Saying they are increasingly distressed over government policies that promote contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage and amount to an assault on religious freedom, the U.S. bishops have established a committee to shape public policy and coordinate the church’s response on the issue.

The Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty was announced Sept. 30 by Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., was named chairman of the new committee.

“There is a common and factually grounded perception that religious liberty is increasingly under assault at the state and federal level in the United States, whether through unfriendly legislation or through rules and regulations that impede or tend to impede the work of the church,”…

He says the government is playing God.

Emerging threats to religious freedom have inspired the U.S. bishops to establish a new committee for its protection. Its chairman sees government taking God’s place as the source of the “first freedom.”

Bridgeport Bishop William E. Lori told CNA on Sept. 30 that a “principal and overarching error,” connecting several different threats to the free exercise of faith, is “the view that it is the state that grants religious liberty, and not God.”

“Even though religious liberty is enshrined at the head of the Bill of Rights, in the First Amendment, there is an increasing tendency to make it a lesser right – and to make it quite relative to other, ‘newly-discovered’ rights in our law and in our culture,” said the Connecticut bishop, whose 2010 pastoral letter “Let Freedom Ring” addressed the subject of state intrusion against believers.

The chair of the new Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty said respect for “religion as a merely private affair” remains largely intact.

But he warned that the “institutional conscience” of religious hospitals and similar establishments is being threatened at high levels – as are the conscience rights of individuals in “clutch situations” like filling prescriptions or issuing marriage licenses.

“Their rights are being trampled upon,” said Bishop Lori.

In his letter announcing the new committee’s formation, Archbishop Dolan said that the “basic right” to religious freedom “is now increasingly and in unprecedented ways under assault in America,” especially from an “an increasing number of federal government programs or policies that would infringe upon the right of conscience of people of faith.”

The ‘national conflict of enormous proportions’ is not coming. It is here.

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Feb 08

The Mideast story hardly covered

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Behind the headlines coming out of Egypt and other countries in political and social upheaval in the Middle East, the story is about human life and striving and destiny, maybe more than it ever was before social communications media empowered these peoples’ revolutions.

Fundamentally, the human right that grounds whatever social or political construct that comes out of it all is the one thing media are hardly mentioning…..religious freedom. Pope Benedict has been talking about it for a long time.

Christians in Iraq, Egypt and Nigeria have been killed in churches, in Pakistan a blasphemy law has become an “excuse to cause injustice and violence”, in China they are experiencing a “moment of difficulty and trial,” in the West they are object of a “growing marginalization” which evens demands the rejection of any “reference to religious and moral convictions.” The list of violations and attacks on religious freedom delivered today by Benedict XI to the representatives of 180 countries and international organizations that have diplomatic relations with the Holy See, touches hundreds of millions of people around the world.

The religious dimension is an undeniable and irrepressible feature of man’s being and acting, the measure of the fulfilment of his destiny and of the building up of the community to which he belongs.  Consequently, when the individual himself or those around him neglect or deny this fundamental dimension, imbalances and conflicts arise at all levels, both personal and interpersonal…

This primary and basic truth is the reason why, in this year’s Message for World Day of Peace, I identified religious freedom as the fundamental path to peace.  Peace is built and preserved only when human beings can freely seek and serve God in their hearts, in their lives and in their relationships with others.

Asia News reports that Egyptian Imams and intellectuals get that, and are working on a program of renewing Islam. It’s the unreported revolution.

A score of intellectuals and theologians of Al Azhar have issued a text of enormous importance, entitled “Document for the renewal of religious discourse.” The text was “posted” on the Internet…on the website of the weekly magazine Yawm al-Sâbi’’(“The Seventh Day”). The importance of the document also derives from its signatories, all noted scholars and profoundly committed Muslims.

The outcome of this revolution is as uncertain as the political one. Pope Benedict is watching, and praying, joined by Christians of the Middle East.

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