Building a Wall Around Freedom of Conscience

I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. On one hand, LifeSiteNews reports that Archbishop Timothy Dolan is not on board with the larger pro-life movement’s desire to repeal Obamacare. On the other hand, according to the Washington Post and other sources, Dolan wants special exemptions so that the Catholic Church can avoid paying for the abortions and contraception of its employees. Dolan even says that he feels “betrayed” by the Obama administration. Somehow, Dolan is content in the knowledge that our government now demands that 300 million Americans be compelled to tailor their health care decisions to suit the whims of a bureaucratic elite. Nevertheless, he is upset that these whims encroach upon his conscience.

Dolan is surely right that freedom of conscience is a principle deeply embedded in our institutions, culture and traditions. The problem is that he does not seem to understand that the most important mechanism for protecting freedom of conscience is limited government. Obamacare has added and will continue to add thousands of pages to the US Code and the Federal Register, defining in minute detail what sort of insurance and health care Americans will have. Health care, as Dolan seems to agrees, is an issue with a strong moral dimension. Surely not all of these regulations can meet the ethical standards of every American.

Sure, we can try to carve out exemptions piecemeal. Catholics can refuse to cover contraception, sterilization and abortion. Jehovah’s Witnesses can refuse to cover blood transfusions. Perhaps Christian Scientists can opt out entirely. The endless government sanctioned opt-outs and exmptions may sound like an appealing option, but it is just as offensive to America’s founding principles and natural law as our current predicament is. Why should we be forced to beg the government for the right to obey our consciences? Who gets to be the arbiter of whether or not our conscientious objections are legitimate? Suppose I have no religious affiliation, but I happen to believe that Obamacare is a dehumanizing, socialist abomination that strengthens the Culture of Death. Should I be allowed to avoid the mandate?

Carving out exceptions just plays into the hands of the secularizers. Caesar gets to sit in judgment of God and decide whether or not His concerns are legitimate. As the Wall Street Journal recently put the matter:

The HHS diktat isn't something unique to President Obama. It is the political essence of government-run medicine. When politics determines who can or should receive what benefits, and who pays what for it, government will use its force to dictate the outcomes that it wants—either for reasons of cost, or to promote its values, which in this case means that "women's health" trumps religious conscience.

This is why the Catholic Church teaches the principle of subsidiarity as well as solidarity. Yes, we have an obligation to help those in need. By the same token, centralization of authority -- the antithesis of subsidiarity -- leads to what Pope Benedict XVI rightly condemns as “cultural levelling” in Caritas in Veritate. In the interests of political correctness and tolerance, morality is shoved aside and replaced by watered down or even perverse imitations of morality. The result is a compromise that is unsatisfactory to all.

For example, contraception is widely accepted in our society. We as Catholics may not approve of contraception, but we understand that we do not have the ability to prohibit its use. Even if we did have that ability, the knowledge that imposing our values on others only works so long as we’re in the majority should give us pause. Allowing contraception frees both Catholics and non-Catholics alike to make their own moral decisions. At a tactical level, this gambit may seem a bad one for Catholics, but it reinforces the more strategically important value of freedom of conscience. I know many social conservatives will disagree with me, but I believe that freedom of conscience, as this latest clash over Obamacare demonstrates, truly advances the common good.

There are limits to this. We do not decriminalize murder because some wish to perform human sacrifices. Abortion should be illegal. What these examples have in common is that they relate to what are called negative rights. They are matters of justice in the strict sense of the word: give what is owed to whom it is owed and do not take what does not belong to you. All human beings have a right to their own life, and taking that life is a grave violation. Therefore, murder in all of its forms is a violation of justice that easily falls within the realm of just government.

This distinction draws a defensible boundary between church and state. Without such a boundary defining distinct spheres of influence, the state can engage in all sorts of abuses. Kings can appoint or veto bishops, as the early Norman kings of England did. Governments can ban or require burkas. Princes and Ayatollahs can forcibly convert their entire nation to a single religion and execute the dissenters. Or, they can use an impersonal bureaucracy to impose a fun house mirror version of morality on their subjects in the name of universal health care.

If health care is a right enforceable by government, as Archbishop Dolan believes, then government, by necessity, defines health care. Therefore, denying your employees their free contraception, sterilization and abortions is a violation of that right. We may not agree that these anti-life treatments constitute care, but too bad. We’re the minority, so we lose. On the other hand, if health care is not a right, then helping those in need is not justice but charity. As Pope Benedict XVI writes, “charity transcends justice and completes it in the logic of giving and forgiving.” A health care system which leaves more room for God and less room for Caesar, more room for charity and less room for mere justice will allow the room needed for freedom of conscience.