Dating God

“Health justice should be among the priorities of governments and international institutions,” the Pope said this week.

On November 18, 2010, Pope Benedict XVI sent a prepared statement to the attendees of the 25^th international conference of the Pontifical Council for Healthcare Ministry. What he said should reverberate across the Atlantic, yet it seems uncertain that his exhortative effort to emphasize the moral imperative of healthcare for all members of the human family will be received by the bishops.

He began his address with the following strong remarks:

[Healthcare is of particular interest for the] Christian community, in which the care of the human being is central, because of his transcendent dignity and inalienable rights. Health is a precious good for the person and society to promote, conserve and protect, dedicating the means, resources and energies necessary so that more persons can enjoy it.

Unfortunately, the problem still remains today of many populations of the world that do not have access to the necessary resources to satisfy fundamental needs, particularly in regard to health. It is necessary to work with greater commitment at all levels so that the right to health is rendered effective, favoring access to primary health care.

In our time we witness on one hand a care of health that risks being transformed into pharmacological consumerism, medical and surgical, becoming almost a cult of the body, and on the other, the difficulty of millions of persons to accede to conditions of minimal subsistence and indispensable medicines to be cured.

These remarks follow, with the proximity of two days, the comments of newly elected USCCB President Archbishop Timothy Dolan who, answering questions about his forthcoming ‘agenda,’ was quoted in The New York Times (16 November 2010) saying:

Archbishop Dolan said in a news conference after the vote that he would carry on the forceful opposition of his predecessor, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, to the recent health care overhaul because the bishops believed it would permit expanded government financing for abortion.

“My major priority would be to continue with all vigor I can muster what’s already in place,” Archbishop Dolan said. “It’s not like we’re in crisis; it’s not like all of a sudden we need some daring new initiatives. Thank God for the leadership of Cardinal Francis George, things are going well.”

Archbishop Dolan also suggested that he would not countenance other Catholic leaders and organizations when they take public positions that contradict the bishops. That is what happened this year when some groups representing Catholic hospitals and nuns came out in support of the health care overhaul bill, despite the bishops’ staunch opposition.

The notion of “expanded government financing for abortion” is an already disproved specter of partisan construction. The precise justification for the support of the Catholic Health Association (CHA) and NETWORK, the Catholic Social Justice Lobby, of this U.S. healthcare legislation is the expert and evidential analysis of the law that has ruled out this irrational American-episcopal fear.

That the US bishops continue, with seemingly unmitigated enthusiasm, to fight against healthcare reform in this country betrays the worst of selective memory.

Yes, there are indeed moral quagmires to be avoided in the legislative process of an expressly secular and liberal (in the philosophical, not ideological, sense) nation that is the USA, when Church leaders get involved.

Even the Holy Father makes mention of just such situations when, on Thursday, he said, “Unfortunately, next to positive and encouraging results, there are opinions and lines of thought that wound it: I am referring to questions such as those connected with so-called “reproductive health,” with recourse to artificial techniques of procreation entailing the destruction of embryos, or with legalized euthanasia.”

Curiously Pope Benedict XVI avoids naming abortion anywhere in the text.

What Benedict XVI is echoing in his recent remarks is the long-standing and central core of Catholic moral teaching that identifies healthcare as an “inalienable” right of all human persons. This can be found, for example, in the seminal text of Pope John XXIII, Pacem in Terris (1963). John XXIII writes:

We must speak of  [human] rights. [Men and women] have the right to live. [They] have the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and, finally, the necessary social services. In consequence, [they] have the right to be looked after in the event of illhealth; disability stemming from his work; widowhood; old age; enforced unemployment; or whenever through no fault of [their] own they [are] deprived of the means of livelihood. (no. 11)

Those who wish to represent the so-called “Catholic moral view” in matters related to healthcare in this country need to take heed of the Church’s actual teaching, instead of being swept up in the partisan streams of political agendas that have, unfortunately, taken hold of so many men and women of good (and less-than-good) will in this country.

To selectively recall that which suits one’s own political agenda is to foster a really dangerous memory – and not the anamnesis of Christian living – that distorts the Gospel imperative of justice and authentic caritas.

I’d love to hear what Archbishop Dolan and others who continue to oppose healthcare reform have to say in response to Pope Benedict XVI’s teaching, both recently and in his encyclical letter Caritas in Veritate as well as that teaching contained in Pope John XXIII’s Pacem in Terris and the heretofore unmentioned, but abundant, teaching of Vatican Council II – there just isn’t enough space in this already lengthy article.

[Dolan] said that the battle over the health care overhaul had put the bishops in a “delicate position.”

“We should have been doing cartwheels” when the health care bill passed, he said, because the bishops had long supported expanding coverage. But he said the bishops could not endorse the legislation because they concluded there were “unborn babies that were in danger.”

If there was a real threat to life (of either the pre- or post-natal variety) in the legislation, then that would be another story. But there is not.

Instead, catering to the will and pocketbooks of big insurance and pharmaceutical companies over hearing the cry of the poor (Ps 34) is perhaps one of the greatest systemic sins of our day. And it seems that many bishops, even with the best of intentions, are advocating that structure.

Will you stand with Christ among the poor, sick and marginalized or with the powerful, wealthy and oppressive?

This entry was posted on November 19, 2010 at 4:18 pm and is filed under Uncategorized with tags benedict xvi, CHA, healthcare, john XXIII, Network, timothy dolan, usccb. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.