Religious Freedoms Are Limited
The recent to-do over insurance plans providing contraception seems to me to be a good example of exactly where the boundary to religious freedom lies -- with oneself and those who share ones beliefs. Thus it is perfectly fine, to my mind, for a church to be allowed to tell its clergy and its religious employees not to have a certain kind of insurance coverage -- or to let the coverage be there but unused, which it seems to me is the real ethical point. (I mean, just paying for something because you have to does not indicate approval --- Lord knows I can mention several foreign wars of the last five decades upon which I wish my tax money had not been spent.)
But it is wrong to assert that the mere provision of a benefit is unacceptable in the context of something not directly a religious institution such as a church, but what the old orders would call "a work" (a school or hospital, for example), in which employees may well not be adherents of the particular sect or beholden to its beliefs.
In short, it is fine for the Roman Catholic Church to teach against contraception, and to insist its adherents make no use of it, but completely specious to claim that they are morally compromised by providing insurance coverage that happens to include this benefit to people who are under no obligation to use it, nor, in some cases, under any obligation to adhere to the teaching.
Otherwise, any Jehovah Witness-sponsored organization
should have the right to insist that its secular employees not be
covered for blood transfusions; 7th Day Adventists should be able to forbid their non-church employees from being fed hospital food containing meat, and Jews and Muslims, pork. And let's not even get started with the Christian Scientists, who ought, under this understanding, to be able to refuse the need to provide health insurance to anyone who works for them.
On that, just to be clear, I do defend the right of any person not to have health insurance on the basis of their religious belief; and I think that Christian Scientists should be granted that individual exemption, just as some of the Mennonite (Amish) groups members are --- though for different reasons concerning opposing receipt of government assistance.
But let's be clear: the individual right to make moral decisions for oneself is not something to be spread and imposed on others. If you don't want health coverage, no one is forced to use it, even if you are required to pay for it. A truly principled "martyr" would pay and stand tall in refusal to use.
Tobias Stanislas Haller BSG
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