Catholic bishop calls health plan attack on religion

— The state’s top Roman Catholic official is denouncing the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for requiring the church’s schools, hospitals, adoption agencies and other charities to begin offering free contraceptive services as part of their health-care plans.

“This is a direct attack on religion and on our First Amendment rights,” Little Rock Bishop Anthony B. Taylor wrote in a Jan. 25 letter to the state’s 137,000 Roman Catholics. “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law.”

Many U.S. bishops are sending smiliar letters in dioceses across the country.

As a result of the Affordable Care Act, most employers will be required to cover the cost of contraceptive services for their employees. The Department has carved out a narrow exception for a religious employer if it “(1) has the inculcation of religious values as its purpose; (2) primarily employs persons who share its religious tenets; (3) primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets; and (4) is a nonprofit [church or religious order] ...”

The exemption, critics say, is so narrow that it would require the nation’s roughly 600 Catholic hospitals and its nearly 250 Catholic colleges and universities to pay for contraceptive services for everyone covered by the institutions’ healthcare plans.

On Jan. 20, the Obama administration announced that it would give church-affiliated organizations until August 2013 to comply.

Now, the Catholic Church is pushing for legislation to provide a permanent exemption.

“Unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled either to violate our consciences, or to drop health-care coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so),” Taylor wrote.

The Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, which has been introduced on Capitol Hill, would allow faith-based employers to “retain the right to provide, purchase, or enroll in health coverage that is consistent with their religious beliefs and moral convictions.”

The measure already has more than 100 co-sponsors in the House of Representatives, including Arkansas Republicans Tim Griffin and Rick Crawford. Similar legislation in the Senate has at least two dozen co-sponsors, including Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is pushing this issue to the forefront in the 2012 election cycle.

It says the exemption for religious employers “is so narrow that it fails to cover the vast majority of faithbased organizations.”

On its website, Conference President and Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan accuses the Obama administration of forcing “almost every employer and insurer in the country to provide sterilization and contraceptives, including some abortion-inducing drugs, in their health plans.”

“Never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience,” Dolan said. “This shouldn’t happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights.”

The Catholic Church condemns the use of contraception, calling it “intrinsically wrong.” In a 1968 encyclical letter, Humanae Vitae [Human Life], Pope Paul VI denounced artificial birth control methods — condemning “any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation.”

But birth control use is prevalent among Catholics and non-Catholics alike, Gallup and a slew of other pollsters have found.

Jon O’Brien, president of Catholics for Choice, says the new regulation is appropriate. “The bishops are making much ado about nothing,” he said. “Catholic women who use a method of contraception or non-Catholics working for Catholic institutions should be entitled to the same coverage as other Americans.”

Bishop Taylor’s letter can be read at dolr.org.

Religion, Pages 15 on 02/04/2012

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