You guys all keep wandering out into the weeds. The point is very simple:
Most dioceses in the US have been self-insuring and have never covered abortion for their employees. Abortion is held officially to be an objective evil by the Catholic Church. You can look that up in the Catechism of the Catholic Church if you don’t believe me.
Anyway, dioceses cannot both teach that abortion is an objective evil and participate in any way in the procurement of abortion. This is what is behind all this. Assisting in the procurement of abortion is itself an objective evil. Dioceses can’t do it. Not only because they might not want to, but because they’d be contradicting their own teaching. I also think the rest of the Church would have something to say about it.
Anyway, most Catholics don’t really know what the specifics of the HHS mandate really are, even though we’ve heard a bunch of generalities. The rest of this post is precisely about the specifics because it’s important that you see them. This is deadly serious. If Obamacare is not repealed before 2014, many Catholic institutions ARE going to shut down. Why? Because they will not be able to pay the fines levied against them.
There is an exemption that applies to “religious employers” but the requirements for the exemption are incredibly tight and they attempt to re-define the nature of religious activity in the United States. There are four requirements and ALL FOUR must be met, in the opinion of the HHS, to get the exemption. They are in the next paragraph, and they are numbered.
The exemption is only for a “religious employer,” defined as “one that (1) Has the inculcation of religious values as its purpose; (2) primarily employs persons who share its religious tenets; (3) primarily serves persons who share its religious tenets; and (4) is a non-profit organization under section 6033(a)(1) and section 6033(a)(3)(A)(i) or (iii) of the [Internal Revenue] Code.” HHS notes that these provisions of the Code refer to “churches, their integrated auxiliaries, and conventions or associations of churches, as well as to the exclusively religious activities of any religious order.”
Note: “exclusively religious activities of any religious order” which means staying in the convent and attending only to religion, not running a food bank or a soup kitchen because those exceed the rule #3 above.
And what is the penalty?
For non-compliance, which is buying insurance that does not cover abortion: $100 per day per employee, for a grand total of $36,500 per year per employee.
For avoidance, which is dropping the insurance plan and giving the employee some money to obtain his own insurance: $2000 per employee per year PLUS other penalties to punish the employee.
Now, if you don’t care if soup kitchens, food banks, schools, retreat centers, hospitals, clinics for the poor, Catholic bookstores, Catholic universities & libraries, St. Vincent de Paul, Catholic printers and book publishers, and a host of other Catholic things shut down, by all means wade around in the weeds all you want. But if this bothers you, then your choice is clear. We have to get rid of the HHS mandate and there is only one way to do that. Vote Obama out.
