Faith and Policy

Catholics do not deserve health reform stereotypes

Samuel Gregg

Catholic America is about as divided about health care reform as the rest of the country. But there are a small number of non-negotiables for Catholics that principally concern any provisions that facilitate or encourage the intentional termination of innocent human life or diminish existing conscience exemptions.

These issues dwarf everything else for Catholics who take their church's teaching seriously when applied to the health care legislation.

No matter how good the rest of the legislation might be in widening access to affordable health care, it is a principle of Catholic faith and natural law that you cannot do evil so good may come from it. St. Paul insisted upon this almost 2,000 years ago (Romans 3:8), and it is constantly affirmed by Scripture, tradition and centuries of magisterial teaching.

For this reason, much of the Catholic contribution to the health care debate, especially that of Catholic bishops, has focused on these issues.

But imagine the health care legislation involved a massive expansion of government involvement that didn't promote abortion or other non-negotiables. Would Catholics be obliged to support passage of such legislation?

The answer is no. Catholic moral teaching has held that the realization of good ends (such as making health care more affordable and accessible) mostly falls into the realm of prudential judgment. The church has always recognized that faithful Catholics can disagree about such matters.

But this basic point seems to have escaped the attention of some Catholics, who have criticized the increasing number of American Catholic bishops who have questioned, on prudential grounds, those reform proposals that significantly increase the state's involvement in health care. One Catholic magazine described such critiques as out of step with Catholic teaching.

It might, however, be that these groups have a deeper concern: their realization that the days when American Catholic bishops could be relied upon to accept or advocate the extension of the state's participation in most areas of social and economic life are long gone.

In part, this trend reflects the collapse during the past 40 years of the knee-jerk association of Catholics with the Democratic Party. But it may also indicate that increasing numbers of Catholic bishops are tired of being presumed to adhere to any number of positions on policy issues simply because one or more organizations of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops happen to advocate a particular viewpoint.

Frankly, it's a welcome development. First, it illustrates that more bishops are not going to be muzzled by a "conference line" (real or imagined) on issues of judgment. And it suggests faithful Catholics increasingly recognize they are entitled to reason their way through these subjects on the basis of Catholic principles and knowledge acquired from other sources, instead of being assumed to adhere to any number of (invariably liberal) positions on such questions.

That's one part of the often-romanticized Catholic stereotype that, thankfully, can be consigned to history.

Samuel Gregg is director of research at the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty in Grand Rapids. E-mail comments to letters@detnews.com