You’re supposed to be having a democracy there, and in democracy, by definition, majority wins.
The Catholic Church recognizes democracy as the most representative form of government:
vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/documents/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20021124_politica_en.html
But governments only are licit if they constitutionally protect the inalienable rights of the human person. For example, racism is intrinsically evil in Catholicism (Gaudium et spes, the Pastoral Constitution of the Church). So, even if the majority wants to give fewer rights to people of a certain ethnicity, we would not consider that licit.
There is some legitimate debate as to whether the HHS mandate truly represents an immoral obligation or if any cooperation with evil is remote, but ‘majority always gets it’s way’ is not how we see a valid democratic nation.
Now - Speaking to the OP…if the matters under discussion were issues of life and death that would be one thing. Blood transfusions might be a case in point here where certain religious sects do not allow for blood transfusions. But that is a life saving treatment. Cancer treatments can be seen in this same light.
Coverage for contraception and abortion are not “life saving” treatments. They really fall more under the realm of “electives”…Not unlike plastic surgery. Does the HHS mandate cover “nose jobs”?
And that is the bottom line. Contraceptives are ELECTIVES…they are not a life saving treatment.
No offense intended, but I do not think that is an especially fair projection onto the people we are disagreeing with. In a secular, pluralistic society health decisions are probably best made by best available health science. From a health science point of view, contraception access appears to pretty beneficial.
It might make Catholics uncomfortable, but ready contraception access does appear to have a strong statistical correlation to lowering certain societal ills, like abortion, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, etc. It also appears to lower the overall cost of health care. The goal of health care reform was to bring more people into the health care system while containing unsustainable runaway costs. Those goals are strongly supported by the Catholic Church.
The standardization of care is because the US reform is still primarily a private sector insurance system, not a universal single payer system like the Church and local bishops have recommended. The point is to take health care, which is largely immune to normal market pressures, and create mechanisms, like exchanges, to inject competition.
Analysis of cost factors has been going on for many years. The National Institute of Health has been pointing to the available research and cost factors from analyzing coverage around the world for some time. That recommendation is for contraception coverage with no religious exceptions at all. That is, health science points to that as the best outcome in public health and the lowest cost.
The Obama administration added a religious exception up front, and has now compromised twice more to greatly expand that exception. So it doesn’t seem particularly Christian to me for us to act as if they are simply pursuing evil and facilitating people of low moral standards with a convenience. Even as we disagree, they are trying to expand something we hold to be a universal right to more of our fellow citizens. And they are trying to balance different moral views, health science, and religious conscience. I, personally, do not envy their position and responsibilities.
And, as I said before, I, personally, think that the ‘religious freedom’ argument is dubious. By the same reasoning, a Westborro Baptist could argue that cancer treatment for Catholic employees is against his/her religious freedom because the cancer is punishment for our “Fag pedophile church.”
I think that it would be much healthier to lovingly work on changing the hearts and minds of our fellow citizens. We do not dismiss science as a ‘cheat’ or a ‘fraud’. But, in this case we view the answers it is providing as incomplete. We hold that the true costs, fiscally, morally, and spiritually, of a sex without consequence society are very high and difficult to directly measure.
Again, I mean no disrespect, I simply think that when 98% of Catholic women use contraception (as opposed to 99% of their sisters) and over 80% of lay Catholics do not even consider contraception to be immoral, we are not in a position to be demonizing anyone. We need to educate our own hearts and minds better. That is, we need to tend to the proper development of our own moral consciences and heed the Beatitudes while we try to bring our beliefs into the public square (CCC 2478 applies to everyone we disagree with, not just fellow Catholics).
Peace
