The King Has No Clothes!! Jesuit Run America and It's Editors Throws Catholic Laity Under the Bus

I share with the Chronicles from the Front an astonishment at the Jesuit Run America magazine servile almost chaplain to the King approach to the Administration and the HHS mandate. See A reply to the editors of America.

A non Catholic was not quite as polite. See EPISCOCATS via MCJ.

Today Robert George and other gave quite a reply to the America editors. See The Bishops and the Mandate: Principled Witness vs. Politics as Usual

If the editors at America were a lobby for lets say Retired people ( A Catholic AARP) no doubt people would not be able to get SSI until they are 90. This trust us we are from Government attitude would be endearing if not so dangerous.

Regardless It appears we truly have a Emperor has not clothes moment as to America magazine. America that often regards itself as the voice for the Laity and against Clericalism appears to thrown us not working in the 4 Walls of the Church folks under the bus.

Hopefully soon we shall see this "compromise" the administration has said it has. I know it's tiresome for some that we keep pointing out there is no "compromise" on paper yet.

However we have little indication that this compromise will protect the rights of Catholics employers outside the physical Church and associated bodies itself if it even does that.

America Editors might need to review some recent Church Documents that states the "Church" , AKA the Body of Christ , is a tad more than the physical Institutions that are are found in articles of incorporation .


As George and company points out:

Imagine too that the “compromise solution” were more than the election-year I.O.U. of a politician who had already revealed himself to be reckless about religious freedom (and even averse to that term). We still face the fact that the mandate would require Catholic and other religiously opposed employers to provide plans that cover services they find morally abhorrent, or else pay crippling fines. Insurance companies would be the ones to advertise (and, officially, to fund) the plans’ controversial parts, but objecting employers would in practice bear their costs. Which of these tweaks, we wonder, moved Dionne, Shields, Kaine, and Casey from indignant opposition back to gushing support? The America editorial, long on assertion and innuendo but short—very short—on argument, doesn’t say. Let’s go through the possibilities.

The Bishops at the very least seem not to have forgot at least this is not only about their own rear ends but the butts in the pews too. Something again the apparent Jesuit chaplains to the court have forgot.

This fight is also about precedents and rights for the future. Both for the Church and the ability of individual members to live their Catholic vocation whatever that may be. We saw a case of this last week as to Pharmacists out west .

This fight is just beginning , and unlike the Editors at America I would suggest a laid back approach is not going to help.

As Professor Vischer noted last year:
This language seems to suggest protection for a provider’s conscience beyond abortion and sterilization. Perhaps the existing law puts greater constraint on current office-holders than culture war combatants would wish?

The second question: how did rolling back – or at least holding the line on – conscience protections become a hallmark of a progressive political agenda? This is a much trickier inquiry than parsing regulatory language. One relevant development is progressives’ tendency to conceive of freedom – and the government’s responsibility to safeguard that freedom – in terms of positive liberty, not just negative liberty. Negative liberty requires protection against interference with the pursuit of basic goods; positive liberty requires affirmative assistance in securing basic goods. As progressives have tended to expand the range of goods for which the government’s affirmative assistance is required, the potential for conflict with a provider’s liberty becomes greater. Nowhere is this trend more pronounced than in the debates over reproductive rights. Arguments for conscience protection emerge from a long tradition of negative liberty; arguments for guaranteed access to a particular good or service – backed up in many cases by state power – emerge from a much more recent tradition of positive liberty.

A closely related development is a shifting view of professional licenses. Generally the state’s licensing authority has been viewed as a means by which to ensure a provider’s competence. As access to goods and services becomes an essential dimension of meaningful liberty (in progressives’ eyes), there is a stronger justification for viewing licensed providers as quasi-public officials, and the license becomes a means of ensuring that governmental objectives are met.

Progressives are quick to rally to the defense of a student forced to violate her conscience by participating in the pledge of allegiance. Few progressives have rallied to the defense of pharmacists required by state law to sell the morning-after pill. In my view, this is a progressive blind spot that stands in tension with the overarching progressive commitment to freedom from state coercion in matters comprising a person’s moral identity and integrity. Progressives have shown a steady shift in their willingness to accept incursions on conscience in order to further other socially desirable goals. Progressives may eventually come to regret this shift – state power unbounded by conscience protections is not necessarily captive to progressive causes – but so far there is very little indication of remorse. President Obama’s foray into the debate, though certainly not a disastrous turn of events, shows little indication that the partisan presumptions about conscience will change anytime soon.

It's not clear if this insight has even occurred to the editors of America , but if it has not they need to get themselves informed