Marquette Part of the "Partner Bennies" Crowd

A somewhat defensive co-ordinated public-relations splash:

Marquette University, which will begin offering domestic partner benefits next year, isn't the first Catholic institution in the Milwaukee area to do so.

Cardinal Stritch University and Alverno College have provided benefits for domestic partners for several years, spokesmen for the schools said Friday.

Umnhhh....so?

Marquette spokeswoman Mary Pat Pfeil [....] called it in keeping with Catholic teaching.

Really?

"The benefits provision is an expression of pastoral care and an acknowledgment that health care is a basic human right," Pfeil said.

That statement is not true. Actually, medical professionals (and hospitals) have a moral obligation to provide essential health care, and essential health-care is mandated by the Hill-Burton Act. But that's secondary.

...the Catholic Church does not teach that “health care” as such, without distinction, is a natural right. The “natural right” of health care is the divine bounty of food, water, and air without which all of us quickly die. This bounty comes from God directly. None of us own it, and none of us can morally withhold it from others. The remainder of health care is a political, not a natural, right, because it comes from our human efforts, creativity, and compassion. As a political right, health care should be apportioned according to need, not ability to pay or to benefit from the care.--Bp. Nickless (Sioux Falls, IA.)

Bishops such as Bp. Nickless, teach in the name of the Church. Neither Mary Pat Pfeil nor Fr. Wild has the authority to so teach. So when they chatter about "rights" they are not competent to make the assertion--and, in fact, they are contradicted by an authoritative teacher--a Bishop.

Marquette is now in the position of facilitating non-marital "relationships," both hetero- and homo-sexual, which facilitation happens to have a name in moral theology: cooperation.

Mediate material cooperation occurs when the cooperator participates in circumstances that are not essential to the commission of an action, such that the action could occur even without this cooperation. Mediate material cooperation in an immoral act might be justifiable under three basic conditions:

• If there is a proportionately serious reason for the cooperation (i.e., for the sake of protecting an important good or for avoiding a worse harm); the graver the evil the more serious a reason required for the cooperation;
• The importance of the reason for cooperation must be proportionate to the causal proximity of the cooperator’s action to the action of the principal agent (the distinction between proximate and remote);
• The danger of scandal (i.e., leading others into doing evil, leading others into error, or spreading confusion) must be avoided.

While one could argue that Marquette's action meets #2, it is extremely difficult to argue that 'scandal' is avoided. (The same applies to Stritch and Alverno, of course.) It's an open question whether MU could even meet Condition #1.

So. The basis on which MU claims to act (a "right") is not actually a right under Catholic teaching. And MU's material cooperation will cause scandal. And MU simply cannot assert, without better arguments, that there is a "proportionately serious reason for the cooperation."

All in all: FAIL.

The Word of the Year: "Subsidiarity"

Never mind QueenNancy's obnoxious and perverted drooling yappaflappa about 'the Word.'

The word of the year (for the US Bishops) is "subsidiarity." It should have been in their vocabulary since their days in the seminary, but you know........maybe they just forgot it.

Acton Institute would like to remind them of the word and its application.

...the USCCB was right to lay a threefold stress on "the protection of innocent life from the use of lethal force from conception to natural death," "the maintenance of conscience protections," and "the realization of universal access to healthcare for all, especially the poor and migrants" in the health care debate. But Gregg says they overlooked the time-tested Catholic principle of social and economic justice called 'subsidiarity.'

...Subsidiarity is a Catholic principle of social order that puts a check on government interference in roles that other members of a society can do better and have a responsibility to perform. Gregg emphasized that subsidiarity is neither "anti-government" nor "anti-state" but rather recognizes the importance of government for the common good. Under subsidiarity, government should support - but not dominate - the facilitation of the common good through the actions of individuals and communities.

However, it is not just "Catholic." The Constitution's 9th and 10th Amendments conform perfectly with the idea of "subsidiarity," too. That's not because Jefferson & Co. were raving Catholics; it's because subsidiarity is common sense.

...Gregg argues that "the massive expansion of Federal government control over healthcare in the United States" should provoke the USCCB to acknowledge subsidiarity "as a vital principle for Catholics." He praised those bishops who have made clear that "striving to widen access to healthcare need not automatically translate into the state assuming a dominant role."

Names of the three Bishops who actually get it?

Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann of Kansas City, Kansas, ... Bishop Robert W. Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph...and Bp. Nickless of Sioux City.

I don't think it's coincidence that all of them are in "flyover country."

Fair Warning to the USCC's "Rights" Crowd

Roeser is right, you know.

...I come now to the injunction a good many Catholic prelates use: “The right to health care” where they sanction its passage by justifiable might. None other than one of my favorites used it the other day—Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver. He spoke at Houston Baptist University.

Most of what Archbishop Chaput said made good sense—but like many other prelates of good will, when he turned to the subject of health care. He said this: “First, while access to decent health care may not seem to be a `right’ in the same sense as our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the Church does see it as a right.

TO WHICH WITH RESPECT, I SAY “REALLY?” SHOW ME WHERE THE CHURCH PROCLAIMS THE STATE MUST EXTEND IT.

Well, yes. There is no such teaching in Church doctrine. (The Beatitudes have no language specifying Statism, for the information of the LeftOWackies who inhabit rectories, chanceries, and all the other usual-suspect places....)

And Tom's not done yet.

Make no mistake: I thoroughly support the efforts of prelates and the USCCB to keep the evil of abortion out of universal health care. But at the same time I believe that it is also incumbent on the Church and its churchmen to emphasize that state assumption of private functions runs the risk of incurring a collectivist theory of morality.

Finally, it occurs to me that maybe our prelates are so cavalier about “rights” they urge the state to assume stems from the fact that their dioceses and they themselves in contradistinction to all of us, are tax exempt. I guarantee you this: If they keep this up, there will be enough backlash in this country to insist that they too share the burden of the rest of us taxpayers.

That’s something for them to ponder and ponder well. They may then reflect on how many state mandated “rights” are required.

The "collectivist theory" Tom mentions is quite au courant--a variant, "liberation theology" was smacked down hard by JPII, who was partially successful. It's a category-error class mistake, essentially confusing personal responsibility with State responsibility; an extension of "welfare" to the Nth degree.

It's about time that Bishops with common sense (such as Bp. Nickless of Sioux City) start a vigorous campaign to assist their brother-Bishops in understanding Church teaching and Statism.

Bishop Nickless on "Health Care"

There are a few very important distinctions made by the Bishop which should be circulated.

...First and most important, the Church will not accept any legislation that mandates coverage, public or private, for abortion, euthanasia, or embryonic stem-cell research. We refuse to be made complicit in these evils, which frankly contradict what “health care” should mean. We refuse to allow our own parish, school, and diocesan health insurance plans to be forced to include these evils. As a corollary of this, we insist equally on adequate protection of individual rights of conscience for patients and health care providers not to be made complicit in these evils. A so-called reform that imposes these evils on us would be far worse than keeping the health care system we now have.

Nothing new there; as Abp. Dolan made clear, the Catholic hospitals will close down before they bow to the altar of abortion.

Here's the part of great interest:

Second, the Catholic Church does not teach that “health care” as such, without distinction, is a natural right. The “natural right” of health care is the divine bounty of food, water, and air without which all of us quickly die. This bounty comes from God directly. None of us own it, and none of us can morally withhold it from others. The remainder of health care is a political, not a natural, right, because it comes from our human efforts, creativity, and compassion. As a political right, health care should be apportioned according to need, not ability to pay or to benefit from the care. We reject the rationing of care. Those who are sickest should get the most care, regardless of age, status, or wealth. But how to do this is not self-evident. The decisions that we must collectively make about how to administer health care therefore fall under “prudential judgment.”

You get the idea that the Bishop is not happy with the USCC's web-page, which does not distinguish sausage from shinola?

Third, in that category of prudential judgment, the Catholic Church does not teach that government should directly provide health care. Unlike a prudential concern like national defense, for which government monopolization is objectively good – it both limits violence overall and prevents the obvious abuses to which private armies are susceptible – health care should not be subject to federal monopolization. Preserving patient choice (through a flourishing private sector) is the only way to prevent a health care monopoly from denying care arbitrarily, as we learned from HMOs in the recent past. [Left-o-Wackies would prefer that you forget all about HMOs, which were enabled by Ted Kennedy.]

...While a government monopoly would not be motivated by profit, it would be motivated by such bureaucratic standards as quotas and defined “best procedures,” which are equally beyond the influence of most citizens. The proper role of the government is to regulate the private sector, in order to foster healthy competition and to curtail abuses. Therefore any legislation that undermines the viability of the private sector is suspect. Private, religious hospitals and nursing homes, in particular, should be protected, because these are the ones most vigorously offering actual health care to the poorest of the poor.

Well-said.

Fourth, preventative care is a moral obligation of the individual to God and to his or her family and loved ones, not a right to be demanded from society. The gift of life comes only from God; to spurn that gift by seriously mistreating our own health is morally wrong. The most effective preventative care for most people is essentially free – good diet, moderate exercise, and sufficient sleep.

So there are problems with HR 3200 AND the Senate proposal (albeit that is not finalized).

The current House reform bill, HR 3200, does not meet the first or the fourth standard. As Cardinal Justin Rigali has written for the USCCB Secretariat of Pro-life Activities, this bill circumvents the Hyde amendment (which prohibits federal funds from being used to pay for abortions) by drawing funding from new sources not covered by the Hyde amendment, and by creatively manipulating how federal funds covered by the Hyde amendment are accounted. It also provides a “public insurance option” without adequate limits, so that smaller employers especially will have a financial incentive to push all their employees into this public insurance. This will effectively prevent those employees from choosing any private insurance plans. This will saddle the working classes with additional taxes for inefficient and immoral entitlements. The Senate bill, HELP, is better than the House bill, as I understand it. It subsidizes care for the poor, rather than tending to monopolize care. But, it designates the limit of four times federal poverty level for the public insurance option, which still includes more than half of all workers. This would impinge on the vitality of the private sector. It also does not meet the first standard of explicitly excluding mandatory abortion coverage.

Good, clear, concise, with the important distinctions.

HT: American Papist