In the latest issue of First Things, Thomas Joseph White and R.R. Reno discuss how Catholics might resist the contraceptive mandate (link below). It got me thinking about the logic of moral opposition to the mandate.
The authors acknowledge but then blow past what I think is the central question:
Instead of drawing a generally-applicable line, they offer a more inclusive standard to follow:
In particular, the second option outlined is to provide no health insurance at all (which would result in employers paying a government penalty). Employer money not spent on health insurance (minus the penalty) would be given to the employee directly as "increased compensation," which employees could use to purchase health insurance on their own.
Question: If employees receive increased compensation that otherwise would have been used to pay for health insurance, then aren't those employers simply subsidizing employee access to contraception in another way? Money from the employer is still flowing in a direction in which it might be used by someone to purchase contraception-- in this case, the employee herself would use the money, rather than have the insurance company use the money. The only difference I can see is that the employee is not stating that one option for using the money is to purchase contraception, while the insurance plan makes that clear. Is that really a significant difference?
Furthermore, this points to a more general problem of opposition to the contraceptive mandate: Employees who work for Catholic institutions may currently use their wages or salaries for pornography, for a hotel room to cheat on a spouse, to buy books that advocate atheism, or purchase contraception, or do any number of 'evil' things. Catholic employers are 'mandated' by the government to provide a wage for work (the minimum wage), which may be used in very un-Catholic ways-- is that government infringement on religious liberty?
As a result, the line drawing seems over formal: Either way (contraceptive mandate or not), Catholic institutions are not directly paying for contraception. Instead, they are providing money to a third party who may choose to use that money for contraception.
One could argue that, under the 'no insurance, increased compensation' option, contraception will not be provided for 'free.' Employees are always able to use their salary for contraception. The key difference between self-funding and the contraception mandate is that the mandate makes more expensive-- and more effective-- contraception easier to obtain. So perhaps the real source of opposition, if not purely symbolic, is the perceived effectiveness of the policy rather than its falling on the wrong side of some kind of moral division.
I also think it is important to note that entanglement has worked in the opposite direction-- Catholic-affiliated institutions receive a lot of money from taxpayers through government grants, and it is clear that taxpayer subsidization of Catholic institutions frees up a lot of the Catholic Church's money to be used in ways that likely offend the belief systems of many other Americans. If the Catholic Church did not receive any taxpayer money, for example, would it be able to spend as much of its own 'freed up' money to advocate against abortion, contraception, and gay marriage?
All of us find ourselves, at one point or another, entangled with people or institutions we see as doing objectionable things, and we have to wrestle with the question of when our seeming subsidization of their behavior is too much to take. Ultimately, however, some entanglement and subsidization is unavoidable in a pluralistic, democratic society. All of us 'participate' in things we don't like and if each of us were able to opt out, then the whole collective endeavor would collapse. The first focus of the contraceptive mandate debate should be whether Catholic opposition to the mandate is based on a principle of entanglement that could be generally and consistently applied across the political spectrum in a way that would not undermine government and societal cooperation to achieve common goods.
Links:
Essay in First Things (October 2012): A Mandate to Disobey
The authors acknowledge but then blow past what I think is the central question:
Of course, as taxpayers, voters, and loyal citizens, we inevitably are implicated in the goods and evils of American society. In some instances our material cooperation with illicit acts and moral evils, if indirect, may not be culpable, and moral theologians will rightly debate the details of material cooperation with the contraceptive mandate as it applies in various circumstances.Well, what is the dividing line between implication-in-evil that we accept and implication-in-evil that we resist, and why is the contraceptive mandate on the 'resist' side? This concession (which is good of them to make) swallows their argument, or at least renders discussion of resistance irrelevant until they can articulate a more clear standard for when to protest the entanglement of Catholic institutions with 'evil' practices.
Instead of drawing a generally-applicable line, they offer a more inclusive standard to follow:
However, one principle is clear: We should always seek to withdraw support and reduce material cooperation when possible. The failure to do so sends a message. It suggests that our material cooperation flows from assent, all the more so when we do not take the available steps to disentangle ourselves.The authors spend the balance of the essay considering three options for withdrawing support and reducing material cooperation. The options reveal the tenuous nature of the opposition itself.
In particular, the second option outlined is to provide no health insurance at all (which would result in employers paying a government penalty). Employer money not spent on health insurance (minus the penalty) would be given to the employee directly as "increased compensation," which employees could use to purchase health insurance on their own.
Question: If employees receive increased compensation that otherwise would have been used to pay for health insurance, then aren't those employers simply subsidizing employee access to contraception in another way? Money from the employer is still flowing in a direction in which it might be used by someone to purchase contraception-- in this case, the employee herself would use the money, rather than have the insurance company use the money. The only difference I can see is that the employee is not stating that one option for using the money is to purchase contraception, while the insurance plan makes that clear. Is that really a significant difference?
Furthermore, this points to a more general problem of opposition to the contraceptive mandate: Employees who work for Catholic institutions may currently use their wages or salaries for pornography, for a hotel room to cheat on a spouse, to buy books that advocate atheism, or purchase contraception, or do any number of 'evil' things. Catholic employers are 'mandated' by the government to provide a wage for work (the minimum wage), which may be used in very un-Catholic ways-- is that government infringement on religious liberty?
As a result, the line drawing seems over formal: Either way (contraceptive mandate or not), Catholic institutions are not directly paying for contraception. Instead, they are providing money to a third party who may choose to use that money for contraception.
One could argue that, under the 'no insurance, increased compensation' option, contraception will not be provided for 'free.' Employees are always able to use their salary for contraception. The key difference between self-funding and the contraception mandate is that the mandate makes more expensive-- and more effective-- contraception easier to obtain. So perhaps the real source of opposition, if not purely symbolic, is the perceived effectiveness of the policy rather than its falling on the wrong side of some kind of moral division.
I also think it is important to note that entanglement has worked in the opposite direction-- Catholic-affiliated institutions receive a lot of money from taxpayers through government grants, and it is clear that taxpayer subsidization of Catholic institutions frees up a lot of the Catholic Church's money to be used in ways that likely offend the belief systems of many other Americans. If the Catholic Church did not receive any taxpayer money, for example, would it be able to spend as much of its own 'freed up' money to advocate against abortion, contraception, and gay marriage?
All of us find ourselves, at one point or another, entangled with people or institutions we see as doing objectionable things, and we have to wrestle with the question of when our seeming subsidization of their behavior is too much to take. Ultimately, however, some entanglement and subsidization is unavoidable in a pluralistic, democratic society. All of us 'participate' in things we don't like and if each of us were able to opt out, then the whole collective endeavor would collapse. The first focus of the contraceptive mandate debate should be whether Catholic opposition to the mandate is based on a principle of entanglement that could be generally and consistently applied across the political spectrum in a way that would not undermine government and societal cooperation to achieve common goods.
Links:
Essay in First Things (October 2012): A Mandate to Disobey
Comments