Concerning the desire of certain Catholic institutions for further exemptions from the new health-care law, the following are ideas that provide other perspectives on this latest controversy.
First, having a religious institution send its employees to another insurance company that will pay for contraceptive services at a non-catholic hospital would cause another hospital to do what the Catholic church believe is wrong. If it is wrong for Catholics, it is wrong for non-Catholics, whether or not these non-Catholics believe it. Both Catholics and non-Catholics serve and expect to be judged by the same God.
The conflict might be somewhat analogous to a person thinking that he (or she) has reason to murder someone. But believing it would be wrong to do so, hires or encourages someone else to do it. Wouldn't the first person still be wrong for making arrangements for someone else to do something that he (or she) believed to be wrong?
Catholic universities and hospitals should not encourage non-Catholics to do something they themselves believe is sinful. And that being the case, the Hawaii plan would not be the answer for Hawaiians either.
Paying for employee insurance that covers contraceptive services is not the same a performing or condoning whatever contraceptive services may be performed. Catholic hospitals and universities can pay for the insurance of non-Catholic employees, even as they recommend against their use of the service, but recognize the employee's rights under existing law--a sort of "rendering unto Caesar."
Also, Catholic universities and hospitals don't generally teach their employees about Catholic dogma or religious doctrine, primarily (I guess) because many of their employees are non-Catholic. The Catholic Church does the teaching. So this conflict between conscience and deed, and between whatever minimal Catholic religious teaching these institutions may provide and the contraceptive services the insurance will buy seem not to warrant further exceptions to the health-care law.
The exemption of the Catholic church and any other Catholic institution which hires and insures only member of the Catholic faith makes sense. The employees who follow the church's teachings won't want need contraceptive services.
But what about those who would? Again, it would be wrong to help Catholic members to find other sources of insurance that would cover services which the Catholic church believes is unforgivably sinful.
Some "wrongs" may be appropriate if they achieve a greater good. Many people must work on the Sabbath in order to keep their jobs. Even many religious institutions hire--and require--workers both of the faith and not of the faith to do various kinds of work on the Sabbath. Many people of faith go to war and kill other people who also would rather not being there, but are there either because they are forced to be there or in order to achieve a greater good.
A religious institution's buying employee insurance which also permits contraceptive services also achieves a greater good by providing services to both Catholic and non-Catholic employees who much more often than not have medical needs unrelated to contraceptions.
To the extent that doing something that may be "wrong," It, too,may be "forgivable" when the action achieves a greater good, and President Obama made the right decision. For the President to have ruled otherwise would mean that all Catholic institutions might have to be exempted from all aspects of the law dealing with insuring contraceptive services. That would be unfair to Catholic patrons who might want and need the services, and it would open the door to all kinds of requests by others for exemptions, even those unrelated to religion and contraception.
As for the politics of the matter, the Catholic church--and Catholics members and organizations--must decide whether it wants to be responsible for the failure of Obamacare, and by doing so deny Americans who need universal health care and the benefits the law provides. The disagreement, therefore, does not seem to warrant those of the Catholic faith who otherwise support his agenda abandoning President Obama in his reelection bid. The President made the best decision possible, given the circumstances. He just finds himself in a position of being "damned if you do and damned if you don't."
Which leads one to wonder, what decision a white Republican president of the Catholic faith would have made concerning this matter, and how the Catholic community would have reacted to that decision. I have concluded that both the decision and the reactions would have been the same.
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