Because of the extreme importance and urgency of this issue, I am going to continue to write for a while on the question of the federal government attempting to abridge the right to conscience for Catholics and others, in light of new health care directives (see olv.org and usccb.org/conscience). Don’t be fooled by the fact that this isn’t making big news in the secular papers and on the secular TV channels. This couldn’t be more important. It is about far more than politics and even far more than the issues of abortion, contraception, and sterilization (as important as those are). This is about something so fundamental to our faith that Catholic martyr saints throughout the ages have given up their lives for it. They would rather die than violate their consciences in doing something they knew to be against the will of Christ. (I highly recommend the 1966 best-picture film A Man for All Seasons which deals with this question, when King Henry VIII’s chancellor refused to acknowledge that it was right for the king to divorce and remarry, and was eventually beheaded for this refusal to cave in to his demands.)
Our U.S. Bishops are insisting that this policy of the Obama administration would force Catholics and other citizens to violate their consciences. Why is that such a “big deal”? The teaching of the Church has an awful lot to say about that. [References are to paragraph numbers in the Catechism] First, as Catholics we can never deliberately do and intend serious evil, even if good can come from it [1789]. If we deliberately act against our conscience regarding a serious matter, we condemn ourselves [1790]. Because the most precious thing we have is our relationship with Jesus Christ and our eternal communion with Him, it would be far worse to suffer the punishments of a government for refusing to do something seriously evil (fines, jail time, even death) than to do it and risk losing our eternal soul [see Mark 8:36].
I am well aware that many people will believe that this controversy is about contraception, a teaching which even many Catholics don’t like and are not obedient to. So they might argue, it’s really not a big deal after all. There are several problems with that. First, it is about more than contraception alone: the health directive includes forced coverage of abortion-inducing drugs, which even many people who accept contraception can’t accept. Second, it is not really relevant what percent of Catholics are obedient to a teaching. What is right or wrong depends on Christ, not on an opinion poll. Third, forming our conscience is not just a question of some kind of emotion or “gut feeling.” We have an obligation to conform our conscience to the teaching of Jesus Christ through His Church, whether we like it or not. The Church teaches very clearly that the use of contraception is always intrinsically wrong (wrong by its very nature) [2370]. For these reasons, no Catholic institution could ever comply with the HHS rules.
Will we see bishops, priests, Catholic faithful, and others fined, punished and jailed? Will some Catholic institutions be closed? I don’t know. But we certainly have to pray and fast – hard – in this dangerous situation. More on this soon.
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