Archbishop Aymond encourages Catholics to be aware of an unprecedented attack on religious liberty by Obama Administration

Archbishop Gregory Aymond calls health coverage mandate a threat to conscience for Catholics

Published: Thursday, January 26, 2012, 10:00 PM

By Bruce Nolan, The Times-Picayune

 

Archbishop Gregory Aymond this weekend will issue a relatively rare pulpit letter urging tens of thousands of Mass-going Catholics to pray, brief themselves and write Congress protesting a new federal rule requiring Catholic employers to provide health insurance coverage for birth control and other reproductive services the church finds objectionable. Aymond’s letter, which he asked to be read or circulated in 108 parishes, is part of Catholic bishops’ immediate push-back to the new rule, being implemented as part of the Obama administration’s health care reform.

View full sizeEliot Kamenitz, The Times-Picayune archiveNew Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond

 

Aymond called it “an unprecedented attack on our religious liberty, which is a founding principle of our nation.”
The rule requires that almost all employers provide employees health insurance that provides access, without co-pays, to artificial contraception.
It also mandates coverage for sterilization services and the so-called “morning after” birth control pill.
Those services and more, such as annual HIV screening and counseling on domestic violence, last year were urged on the administration by the Institute of Medicine, an independent nonprofit that advises the government on public health policy.
Women’s groups and many public health advocates praised the ruling for broadening families’ access to preventive medical services.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced last week it had adopted those recommendations and would require employers to provide that coverage.
The administration carved out a narrow conscience exception, but the exception does not cover employers and ministries, like schools and charities, that provide services to people of other faiths.
The administration also delayed implementation of the new rule for a year.
The Catholic church objects to artificial birth control, vasectomies and tubal ligations on grounds that they artificially sever sex from the possibility of procreation.
However, polls have repeatedly showed that large majorities of Catholic families use artificial contraception, despite church teaching.
Many Catholics and evangelicals as well object to “morning after” pills, viewing them as producers of very early abortions.
Archbishop Ltr.pdf
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary is another employer with ethical objections to the rule, particularly as it touches on the morning after pill.

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• Archbishop Gregory Aymond's pulpit letter

But it was not immediately clear Thursday whether or how the seminary or the larger Southern Baptist Convention planned to respond.
“This is bad news for freedom of conscience and for respect for the freedom of religion protections guaranteed in the American Constitution,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission after the rule was announced.
The National Association of Evangelicals also decried the ruling, urging Congress “to enact legislation restoring conscience protects for all Americans.”
But the Catholic church so far has responded the most aggressively.
After decades in which abortion was at the top of the Catholic social agenda, that spot is now shared by this health insurance mandate and its implication for the church as an employer.
In New Orleans for example, Catholic leaders have not often asked rank and file Catholics to write Congress, but when they have done so, the issue usually has been abortion.
In an interview from Rome, where he is currently making an “ad limina” visit to report on conditions in the archdiocese, Aymond said the issue is the topic of conversation everywhere among American colleagues and some Vatican bureaucrats.
“Everybody is asking about it, directly or indirectly,” he said.
Sarah McDonald, the spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of New Orleans, said health insurance for the church’s 6,500 employees in parishes and schools currently does not include the services the church finds objectionable.
Loyola University, another major Catholic employer, declined to respond to a question about its health insurance coverage.
But some Catholic institutions around the country have provided such coverage to employees for years.
One is Dignity Health, a chain of 40 hospitals operated by the Sisters of Mercy and formerly known as Catholic Healthcare West.
Judy Waxman, vice president for health and reproductive rights for the National Women’s Law Center, said that organization believes federal law and a 2000 ruling by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission required all employers offering perscription drug benefits to offer birth control as well.
She said the new Health and Human Services ruling “is only new around the edges” in that it removes co-pays and extends birth control coverage beyond oral medication.
“In our view the moral judgment or religious freedom rests with the individual,” she said. “No one should be denied what every other American is entitled to because their corporate entity says no.”