Catholic Bishops Can't Have it Both Ways

A controversy ripe for Republican demagoguery is simmering across the country.

Catholic bishops are blasting the Obama administration's decision that under the Affordable Care Act Catholic affiliated institutions must include contraceptive coverage as part of the free preventive care provisions in their employer-sponsored health insurance plans, as is already the case in 28 states.

The administration based its decision on medical findings that free access to birth control - which studies show nearly 100 percent of women, including Catholics, have used - is an essential ingredient in women's health care.

The administration has exempted actual churches but refuses to extend the exemption to the myriad organizations such as universities, hospitals, nursing homes and social service agencies that claim, often loosely, Catholic affiliation.

In another issue, several diocesan Catholic Charities organizations have shuttered their foster care and adoption services rather than comply with state contracts requiring same-sex couples receive the same consideration as heterosexual couples in foster care and adoption decisions.

Church officials claim these rules breech the First Amendment's separation of church and state by infringing on their doctrinal objections to artificial birth control and homosexuality and that individuals choosing to avail themselves of Catholic-based employment or services must live with their rules or go elsewhere. Both arguments are spurious.

Catholic Charities receives a total of nearly $3 billion a year from taxes, over 60 percent of its annual revenue. Catholic hospitals and nursing homes collect billions in Medicare and Medicaid reimbursements. Catholic colleges rely on government research grants and financial aid for their students.

There's no constitutional right to public contracts and no one's forcing the church or its affiliates to accept them nor employ or serve non-Catholics. But once they do they are obligated to observe the same rules that apply to any recipient of government funds.

The bishops don't get to keep the cake and eat it too.

That's not saying this whole distressing but inevitable impasse isn't unfortunate. Historically, Catholic agencies' ministrations to the young, poor, sick, elderly, fragile and underserved have been a godsend - no pun intended. My undergrad experience at a working class Jesuit college remains an integral influence on my life.

No surprise however that Republicans are their usual duplicitous selves, denouncing this as a violation of religious freedom without the slightest acknowledgment of how outraged they become when some imam wants courts to apply Sharia law in civil cases that exclusively involve Muslims. How is that any different than bishops expecting the state to make public policy decisions based on Catholic Church doctrine? It's not. Both are unacceptable and the Obama administration mustn't back down.

To paraphrase Justice Oliver Wendell Homes, your freedom to swing your religion ends where my soul begins.