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President Obama and Bishops should keep talking
Friday the Obama administration announced its important tweak to the Jan. 20 Health and Human Services rule regarding religious exemptions to the contraceptive mandate in the Affordable Care Act. That tweak effectively expands exemptions to include not only churches but also religious schools, charities, hospitals and universities. The administration’s move quells the political firestorm in Washington that had raged in recent weeks. More importantly, the tweak answers the specific objections that America’s Catholic bishops identified repeatedly since last summer. It’s curious, then, that reception by the bishops has been mixed.
I backed the bishops in wanting a broadening of the exemption to include all religious institutions. So, when the announcement came on Friday morning I rejoiced. A “win for the angels,” I called it. Yet, while I celebrated, some at the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) hastily moved the goal posts, working desperately to snatch defeat from the jaws of a pretty good victory for religious liberty.
The work of Friday’s defeat-snatchers was cut out for them, because initial USCCB responses to the fix were mostly positive, darkened only by grumblings about lack of consultation. At midday on Friday, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan of New York, the president of the conference, even called the administration’s efforts “a first step in the right direction.” But by late afternoon, things were shifting. Around 8:00 p.m. an AP reporter emailed me to report an unusual night-time broadside for the USCCB. The USCCB now was calling not for the protection of conscience for religious institutions but instead for completely rescinding all mandated insurance coverage for contraception by employers.
The administration’s Friday fix creates an even greater moral distance between religious conscience and contraception than that of taxes. Contraception costs are to be paid for by insurance companies out of actuarial profits. Religious institutions have no role in paying for or facilitating that coverage. A moral firewall stands between the religious conscience and contraception.
A few Catholic institutions have self-funded plans, wherein the institution is its own insurer. Friday’s language does not address such cases. But this bug can be an easy fix, perhaps by grandfathering institutional exemptions to the mandate for such plans. The administration has telegraphed that this is an immediate priority.
So, the enumerated concerns raised by the USCCB in recent months were squarely faced and largely resolved on Friday. Why then suddenly — almost out of the blue — is it now proposing what must be seen as a political poison pill: rescinding the mandate itself?
Several bishops I utterly revere — Dolan is among those. But like any organization, the USCCB is driven in part by inner dynamics. Such dynamics were evident Friday, as messaging shifted from the welcoming of a “first step” before noon to words like “unacceptable” by evening. As discussions get under way between the conference and the administration, I’m hopeful that these dynamics continue to evolve and that the conference not settle on positions making further discussion irrelevant.
In a compelling analysis appearing in the Catholic publication America this week, Bishop Blase Cupich of Spokane, Wash., remarked that “the president’s announcement Friday provides us with an opportunity to resolve the present impasse.” This is exactly right. Not only were Catholic institutions protected, but almost any other option required new legislation that in the present political climate had no chance for passage.
Yet, while Friday’s announcement marks the end of a political firestorm, it should not mark the end of what has emerged as an important national discussion. As Cupich notes, “an even greater opportunity is before us, namely to have a deeper and on a more prolonged basis a fundamental dialogue about the role of religion in society in general and the nature of religious liberty… .” This is a needed conversation that neither the bishops nor the president should look to stop.
Schneck is the director of the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America and has advised the Obama administration on Catholic matters.
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