Catholics and Health Care

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/10/30/catholic-bishops-urge-parishioners-oppose-abortion-funding-obamas-health-care/

This weekend the Bishops of the United States are beginning a campaign to urge American Catholics to oppose the possibility of abortion funding in the health care bill now before congress. Of course as Catholics we have to do our best to defend the sanctity of life in every arena! However, when eventually tax dollars start to pay for abortions in this country, as I am sure they will one day in the near future--the Bishops will be at least in part to blame.

-They will be at blame because for many years now they have equated the Christian Gospel message of social justice with (soft) socialism.

-They will be at blame because they have ignored the Christian moral principle of subsidiarity, which teaches that true Charity begins with the individual not with the state, because statism is easier than preaching the gospel and treating poverty, illness and old age as problems to fix rather than as opportunities to love seems to have more of a chance of sucess.

-They will be partially to blame because they have (frequently) ignored the principle that as Christians we are morally obligated to obey the laws of the state even if we don't like or agree with them so long as they are not immoral. And that this moral duty extends to the Constitution, a document establishing limited government to defend against statism so as to safe guard freedom of conscious against things like abortion and contraception.

As Christian's we have a moral duty to care for the poorest of the poor and the weakest of the weak. However deferring our obligation to the state does nothing to help individuals grow in holiness through acts of sacrificial love. It nothing to re-enforce the dignity of the human persons who become cogs in a state bureaucracy rather than the little ones that Christ instructs us to care for. And it does nothing to help individuals learn responsibility so that they can maximize their individual potential.

Socialism may (and I stress may) be a legitimate option, but it is also a prudential issue on which Catholics of good will can disagree. Too often the Bishops have come down on one political side of this issue making it sound like socialism is the Catholic way on issue after issue after issue. But if history is any indicator the more power the state gains over and ever widening portion of our lives the more of a possibility there is that the state will begin to use this power to persecute the faithful, to oppose the Gospel, and to violate the dignity of the human person.