Wisconsin Diocese offers birth control insurance, but warns employees not to use it

[Neil_Anthony]

I am comfortable making distinctions about degrees of culpability, but to say you have NO culpability when you are sending large sums of money to a company you know facilitates activities you think are immoral – indeed, you consider quite a few of those activities to be murder – seems like the worst kind of rationalization. On the face of it, it would seem to me that you have much more to worry about there, than you do from your employees who have signed contracts saying (in effect) they will not use birth control.

Hypatia,

You’re right, even in cases of remote cooperation with evil there is some moral imperative to not cooperate. The difference is that, in cases of remote material cooperation, you have to balance the evil and good from cooperating vs. not cooperating. So, if you can do a large good by remotely cooperating with a small evil, that becomes moral choice.

This is distinct from formal cooperation with evil, which can never be done no matter what the alternative is.

This distinction is important because it would become impossible to do any good if we could never cooperate with evil in even the slightest way.

Neil

 

[Elizabeth502]

Why would that matter? The Church doesn’t teach that it is immoral for Catholics to use contraception. The Church teaches that contraception is a grave evil. The Church should not be forced to provide something she believes to be intrinsically wrong to anyone - Catholic or not.

That line of thinking is like saying Catholic hospitals should provide sterilizations (or abortions) to patients just as long as the patients aren’t Catholic.

I don’t appreciate your tone, actually. I don’t have “a line of thinking.” I have experience reading the news about a local, extremely large diocese (archdiocese), where the Church must provide “equal benefits (as provided to heterosexually married couples),” which includes (for example) bereavement rights for same-sex partners, a lifestyle and status that the Church opposes as a grave evil on 2 counts. It has nothing to do with whether the Church deems it a grave evil. It has do with secular law, which the Church must abide by, despite its moral tenets, for those employed in the archdiocese and covered by local secular laws.

Reporting on the news hardly equates to “a line of thinking.”

 

[irishpatrick]

The law does not establish a religion, so they are free and clear there. Nor does it keep the Catholics from practicing theirs. So, again, the state seems pretty free and clear. The diocese has options if it doesn’t want to offer birth control to its employees. Nor is the state requiring the employees to receive or use birth control. You would be hard pressed to find a First Amendment case here.

The law makes it impossible for the Diocese to offer an affordable plan to its employees. Thus making it difficult to retain employees.

I agree, I would be hard pressed, which is my point exactly…people (including most judges it would seem) have their own interpretations of the 1st amendment.

 

[irishpatrick]

So short, so simple, yet so brilliant:

***Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise *thereof;… **

The only “wall” I see is one that says the state cannot prohibit, in any way, the free exercise of religion. Not the other way around. Yet, today the truth of the 1st amendment in all its simplicty and brilliance has been washed away by agendas from the left.

 

[Eric_Hilbert]

Stop the bickering and stay on topic.

 

[Dale_M]

Cases on birth control and insurance companies have gone through the court systems in several states. The courts have consistently ruled that insurers must treat birth control in the same manner they do all other prescription medications, and that the failure to do so constitutes gender discrimination since it forces women to pay higher health costs in order to receive what is standard health care…

The Supreme Court has refused to hear any appeals of these cases, letting the state court rulings stand.

Hypatia, thank you for that background. Apparently the Catholic Church challenged the New York law requiring insurance companies to cover contraception, and lost. Similarly, the Church lost its challenge to such a law in California.
query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9A00E5DD163FF933A15753C1A9609C8B63

I would note, however, that these seem to be state court decisions, and not federal court decisions. My sense is that insurance policies in the US are not legally required to cover contraception unless the state law requires it. So the Wisconsin law could be amended to provide a religious exemption. And that might be the easiest route to go, which is why the bishops are talking about it in 2010, whereas they were talking court challenge in 2009.