This Isn’t Really About Contraception, is it Mr. President?

On January 20, 2012, the Health and Human Services agency, led by former-governor Kathleen Sebelius, presented a rule that would require most employers to provide contraceptive services and products to their employees at with no copay requirements. The exemptions to this rule are so slim that it is speculated that even Jesus Christ and His Apostles may not have qualified for the religious exemption, because He chose to serve those that may not have been members of his specific religion.

The ensuing uproar caught the President off guard it is said. Others say the President knew exactly what he was doing. Did he really expect that virtually every Roman Catholic Bishop in the United States would rise up against this evil regulation? Did he expect the Bishop of Phoenix to tell his flock “We cannot- will not- comply with this unjust law”?

Did he expect that other Bishops and priests would start praying the St. Michael the Archangel prayer at the end of Mass?

St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle! Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, oh Prince of the Heavenly Host, by the power of God, cast into Hell, Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the earth, seeking the ruin of souls, Amen.

I seriously doubt that the President expected he would lose the support of his toadies who proclaim themselves Catholic, yet openly discount the teachings of the Church as wrong, or not applicable to them. At least for the moment, anyway.

Never fear! Compromise is here! On February 10th, the President held a brief press conference, where he told the country that he would accommodate religious freedom while making sure that women have access to preventative health care, including contraception, at no additional cost, no matter where they work. Instead the insurance company will be required to directly offer the woman contraceptive care at no additional charge. He goes on to say that even if a woman’s employer is a charity or hospital that has not a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan, the insurance company, not the hospital or charity, will be required to reach out and offer the contraceptive care free of charge without copays and without hassles.

Let me break here for a moment- at no point do I think that contraceptive or abortive or sterilization services should be provided. I do not think it is a personal choice, I think it is inherently and intrinsically evil. The end does not justify the means.

As a businessman and insurance professional, I can tell you, nothing is free. Every item of coverage is calculated at some point. On the non-insurance side, let’s look at mobile telephones. At some point most carriers offer one or more of their handsets for free (subject to signing a two-year contract. How free is that?) This does not mean I can walk into the local Sprint store and ask for two or three of their free phones, unless of course I am prepared to commit to and pay for their service. Likewise, in the case of where the President is mandating that insurance companies pay for services that they do not “charge” for, at some point, you can sure believe a cost is calculated. Someone pays for that. You guessed it. The employer, the employee at some level (most employers do not provide free healthcare to their employees, even hospitals), and guess what? You the consumer end up paying for those services as well when you buy the employers products.

Well, after the President’s statement on 10 February, most of the Presidents toadies fell right back into the fold, saying that this compromise was great, and awesome and wonderful, and oh, never mind, it just made me sick. Later in the day, the USCCB issued a statement condemning the “compromise” calling it no compromise at all.

The President calls the rule “cost neutral” since it saves money by keeping women healthy. Pregnancy is not a disease! Has it been forgotten that chemical contraception causes cancer? Has it been forgotten that chemical contraceptives are abortifacient? What happens when the chemicals cause a miscarriage and results in excessive hemorrhaging, frequently resulting in hospitalization?



As I say at the beginning, this is not about contraception, is it? Fundamentally, what we must realize is this an attack upon the religious liberties granted us by the First Amendment of the Constitution. It is an attack upon our freedom of speech as well. These are core tenets of the fabric of our nation, and with the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen, we are seeing them taken from us not by legislation, but by regulation. The fact that this rule is has been given until August of next year to be implemented further suppresses our right to free speech and religious liberty by attempting to not make it a “political” issue.

I never thought I would find myself in agreement with Cardinal Mahoney of Los Angeles, who is well-known for his liberal stance on a number of issues. To say I was thunderstruck when I read his February 11, 2012 blog post entitled "Just a Minute, Mr. President!" would be an understatement. His statement says exactly what the problem is, and what is the greatest outrage:

As a Catholic American, I am outraged not only by your incredulous contortions to justify your untenable position, I am insulted that you would think that Americans who value and treasure our Constitutional freedoms would even question your overreaching infringement on individual freedom of religion and freedom of conscience.Your "accommodation" actually makes the entire matter far worse. Every effort must be undertaken to reverse your ill-conceived revocation of our Constitutional rights

So Mr. President, while I appreciate that you would like for us to believe that you are looking out for the women of our nation, I believe you have shown us your true colors, and that what you most ardently desire is a nation formed in your image, and for your newly minted ruling class to be the arbiters of what amounts to conscience and morals. I realize that you are not the morally relativistic man I thought you once to be, but find your moral compass pointed in a direction I cannot accept. Your path to morality threatens the existence of our nation and of our people. You perpetuate a Culture of Death, and whether you wish to acknowledge it or not, formally cooperate with evil when you support the notion that a child in the womb has no rights, making it perfectly okay, by your standard, to end that life with no sense of remorse that a human life has been lost. How many future Presidents have died because of this? How many chances for the cure to cancer have been lost for the sake of convenience?

No Mr. President, this is not about contraception, it is about LIFE! It is about freedom, seeking to do the will of God because it is good, not doing what you want because it feels good. And you cannot tell me that you support good morals in private, yet assert the right to make poor decisions in public. One day, you will be called accountable for your actions, and I pray that mercy is had upon you on that day.

Educating our Children, or Who Do You Think You’re Foolin’?

What exactly does it mean to have an education today, or for that matter to be educated? We’ve spent the last week or so discussing things that are right, wrong, and indifferent about how and why our children are educated today. We have the parochial and private school option, the public school option, the charter (quasi public/private) school, and of course, lest we forget, the home school option.

In my own opinion, there is not a great deal of difference today between the private/parochial school and public school options, except for perhaps a religion class tossed in, to be able to identify a school as a teaching arm of the particular flavor of that religion. There are, after all, Christian schools, Catholic schools, Jewish schools, Muslim/Islamic schools, and so on. There are private schools with no outwardly apparent religious agenda, but many times there is an agenda catered to.

Hilaire Belloc wrote in “Survivals and New Arrivals” about attacks upon the Catholic faith coming from nationalized education. He rightly commented that our Faith, indeed any faith, is under attack when subjected to such a system. The reason: a standard is established- to the exclusion of all others. In such a situation, truly one’s faith is put to the test just as certainly as the sun will come up in the morning.

So what do we do? I think that as parents, as primary teachers of our children, we need to be certain that our children know certain things, key among them, of course, being our faith. I happened upon “The Dangerous Book for Boys” recently, and perhaps inspired this piece. The list of topics is too long to repeat, in reading the titles, some are humorous, but all make a point- to be a good boy, you have to be well rounded. Subjects include science, poetry, literature, knot tying, fire lighting, games, history, grammar, even a section on girls (only two pages, but I figure the author is trying to get the lads to pace themselves). Perhaps one of my favorite sections, not to be bested by A brief history of Artillery, was Essential Gear. Please indulge me as I enumerate appropriate “gear” for a boy:

Swiss Army Knife Compass Handkerchief
Box of Matches A shooter (marble) Needle and thread
Pencil and Paper Small flashlight Magnifying glass
Band-aids Fishhooks

Notice a lack of Ipods, Cell phones, laptop computers, big screen televisions? Many of these things I had as a boy, except for probably the Shooter (though my mother reminds me that early on I did play marbles). And I didn’t feel lacking or incomplete. But I wonder that even my own son couldn’t hunt and skin a rabbit.

At the risk of inciting an onslaught of criticism, I quote Robert Heinlein, “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.”

I know, I know, many of his other quotes are completely heretical, but I would contend, after conversing with my bride, that Heinlein was a wounded man in many regards. I suspect that if one had suggested to him that many of his thoughts were indeed Catholic, he would have scoffed, and quoted another of his characters, and disparage religion altogether.

In fairness to the ladies, I perused the “Dangerous Book for Girls” and came away wanting. Many of the topics were similar to the boys, but almost saccharine in their approach. I submit there should have been more than one page devoted to boys, but alas, I am not the author, but would contend there is far more to know about us men than would fit on one page of a book guiding young ladies. The girl’s book also boasts its own list of essentials, and I find my approval returning:

Swiss Army Knife Bandana Rope and Twine
Journal and Pencil
w/backup pen Hair band Bungee cord (not for boys?)
Flashlight Compass Safety pins
Duct tape (what???) Deck of Cards A good book
Patience

Now I find my blood boiling (well, not really boiling, but you get my point). Why do the girls get a compass, and the boys don’t? Are we not establishing a stereotype early on that men won’t use it anyway, so why waste it? Duct tape? We all need duct tape. And I can find at least a hundred uses for bungee cords, thank you very much. And how is a boy to learn how to play poker, a section that has SIX WHOLE PAGES devoted to it? Perhaps the cards are a tradeoff for the section devoted to timers and tripwires.

There are any number of things that one can argue effectively are needed to be known in order formulate a proper education. As parents, we draw upon our own experiences and the counsel of those within our circles to discern what is appropriate, and what is not. We can choose to shelter our children from the world and leave them ill-prepared to operate within it. Or we can give them the tools to be what God has intended us to be, as Christ tells us in this Sunday’s Gospel reading, “You are the salt of the earth.” As Fr Oliver Vietor exhorts us in his homily, “Be Salty!”

If we remember Christ telling us the most important commandment, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength,” and the new commandment He gave us, “Love your neighbor as yourself”, then we would do well in teaching our children what it means to be children of God, and to prepare for the eternal kingdom.