A March 26, 2010 column by the editors of Commonweal, a self-styled “liberal in temperament” publication, sheds light on the Church’s failed attempt to unite her members in opposition to the final version of the health care bill. Commonweal prides itself on being an “independent” Catholic magazine, and it has been frequently honored by the Catholic Press Association.

“Liberal” and “independent” are Commonweal’s terms, which can have both political and religious implications, and which, depending on the context, can be very positive qualities. Tragically, however, one dimension of Commonweal’s liberality and independence is its failure as a Catholic publication to stand with Church teaching and Church leaders.

In that light, let's look at what the editors had to say in the immediate aftermath of the passage of the health care legislation. Their article will appear in italics, with my commentary (surely not intended as a full rebuttal) interspersed.

The title of their column is “Crying Wolf,” which itself is instructive. Who was “crying wolf” according to Commonweal? Well, of course it was the U.S. Bishops, pro-life groups, and hopelessly ill-informed “conservatives.” So, the concerns of the Church are immediately cast as illusory and false, and those who share the Church’s moral concerns are misguided and politically motivated. But let’s turn to the column itself:

By the time you see this, the fate of the Democrats' health-care legislation will probably have been decided. The House of Representatives plans to vote on the Senate bill a few days after we go to press. Whatever the outcome, one thing is already certain: the debate over the bill has left a deep rift—and not only between the two major parties.

Prominent representatives of the prolife community, including the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops and the National Right to Life Committee, have rejected the Senate bill, claiming that it allows direct federal funding of elective abortion. Meanwhile, Catholic supporters of the bill, including the Catholic Health Association, have said that it does not.

The authors very easily cast as “Catholics” all those who choose to distance themselves from the teaching and leadership of the Catholic Church. They also clearly distance themselves from the wider pro-life community. As for the reference to the Catholic Health Association, click here.

One needs a good reason to oppose a bill that would cover 30 million uninsured Americans and greatly improve insurance for those who already have it.

One needs a good reason to support a bill that spends enormous amounts of money the government doesn’t have for a systemically flawed, inefficient system that seems to conflict with the Church’s social justice teachings, especially in areas such as solidarity and subsidiarity. Two can play that game. But since this is about the bill’s problems specifically in the area of abortion and conscience protection, this rhetorical assertion is beside the point.

If the Senate bill did clearly authorize the federal government to pay for elective abortions, prolife Americans might have such a reason. To conclude the bill does this, however, requires one to believe that every ambiguity—every possible complication the bill doesn’t explicitly address—is a ploy by pro-choice politicians to sneak abortion funding into the system. President Barack Obama and his party’s leadership have promised the bill won’t be used in this way.

Why is “ambiguity” necessary then? If nobody wants federal monies used to assist in any way in the funding of abortion, why not make this explicit?  Why is the Obama administration so adamantly opposed to an amendment that would facilitate the keeping of any such “promise”?

Their critics instruct us to presume that they’re lying.

That’s an irresponsible statement. Church leaders have not told people to presume that the Obama administration is lying. But President Obama does have a clear record of not supporting the right to life of unborn children, and many of those who voted for the bill and those who will be charged with administering it are clearly in favor of abortion subsidies. To claim that something like a Stupak Amendment was not necessary is disingenuous. In fact, Rep. Stupak was told by Democratic leaders that abortion coverage was necessary to keep down health care costs.

These critics point out that the bill departs from the Hyde Amendment’s ban on federal support for any health plan that covers elective abortion. They insist this is the only conceivable way for the government to subsidize insurance without paying for abortion. This is false, as the Senate bill itself clearly demonstrates. Under the bill, anyone who buys a plan that covers elective abortion would have to pay a separate, unsubsidized premium for that coverage. Such premiums would be segregated from premiums for all other services in a special account, which would have to cover the full cost of elective abortions and couldn’t receive a penny from the government. In other words, the bill would preserve the Hyde Amendment’s principle without applying its method.

Critics also claim that the money the bill appropriates for community health centers is not subject to the Hyde Amendment. No doubt the bill would be strengthened with the addition of language that clearly imposes the Hyde rule on any federal money given to health centers. But since such money will in any case be channeled through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS),  [Now headed by our notorious former governor, Kathleen Sebelius.] where the Hyde Amendment obtains, there is no good reason to suppose that it will be exempt from the amendment’s constraints. Besides, if HHS really could spend any part of the new funding on elective abortions, it wouldn’t matter that the Hyde Amendment keeps it from using the rest of its money for this purpose: as the bill’s critics never tire of telling us, money is fungible—the Hyde Amendment works only if it covers everything HHS spends. It’s also worth mentioning that none of the existing health centers, which provide care to one in eight children born in the United States, has ever offered abortion services.

I am a trained attorney. Even more, for several years I worked in the area of medical malpractice litigation, so I’m somewhat familiar with the intersection of legalese with medical and insurance terminology. Yet, I’m not going to give people the impression that I’ve personally studied the thousands of pages of complex legislation that have been continually refined and reworked in recent months. Heck, I don’t think all the Congressmen did! My point is that my local Democratic representative, when I spoke with his office a couple months ago, said almost the exact same thing that Commonweal says here, even with the same condescending tone.

Meanwhile, the USCCB has studied the legislation in depth. Check out the resources linked here, for example. Commonweal articulately repeats partisan talking points rather than engage (or even take seriously) the careful analysis of the bishops and other religious and pro-life organizations.

And on a basic, common-sense level apart from partisan rhetoric, why is an executive order—as weak and inadequate as it may be—even needed, if the law itself provides an adequate safeguard in terms of funding or subsidizing abortion?

And when it comes to Community Health Centers, check this out.

Many of the bill’s most prominent critics are lobbyists, and for the purposes of lobbying, a plausible falsehood is often as useful as the truth. But crying wolf is always a dangerous game. If prolife groups raise false alarms to bully politicians and scare up donations, they risk being ignored when a real threat arises.

Who’s calling whom the liars now? And I guess according to Commonweal only people who oppose the bill are "lobbyists" (LOL), which is used here in a derogatory way. And btw, who “bullied” the Catholic Democrats who were holding out for greater protection of the unborn? And one wonders what Commonweal would consider a “real threat” in the area of pro-life.

Some of the same groups that are now loudly predicting disaster if health-care reform passes warned that the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) was sure to be passed and signed into law if Barack Obama was elected president. People remember these predictions, and eventually they stop paying attention.

President Obama has come out strongly in favor of FOCA. Because of the staunch opposition of the Church and other groups (many were paying attention), the Obama administration backed off. Commentators on both sides of the aisle have asserted that the approach now is to introduce provisions of FOCA in a more gradual, piecemeal way. Hardly a reassuring thought.

Clearly FOCA wasn’t a big deal to the Commonweal editors, who seem to prefer to side with the abortion lobby than the evil Republicans even on such a blatantly cut and dried issue.

If the Senate bill does not pass, conservative lobbying groups, most of which are opposed to reform for other reasons, and the bishops conference, which supports reform in theory, will bear some responsibility for it.

Okay, this didn’t happen. I guess Commonweal stands in judgment of the Catholic Church. But as Archbishop Chaput and Bishop Morlino, among others, have noted, those dissident Catholics who opposed the Church on this do bear responsibility. Most faithful Catholics—and not just the U.S. Bishops—favor health care reform.  Unfortunately, those who opposed the very liberal, big-government bill that the Democrats forced upon the American public have been unfairly cast as being “anti-reform.” And at any rate, bishops and laity alike, while wanting some sort of health care reform, reject a bill that does not promote the common good by providing basic protection of fundamental human and conscience rights.

If one wants to claim that no politician who’s really opposed to abortion can support the Senate bill, it’s not enough to show that the bill’s provisions are inferior to the House’s Stupak Amendment; one must also argue that the Senate bill is inferior to the status quo.

That’s exactly what the bishops have been saying all along, such as here. It seems that Commonweal is the one passing off "plausible falsehoods."

The government is already subsidizing group plans that cover elective abortion by means of tax breaks for businesses that offer them. Millions of Americans must now choose between accepting such a plan and going without good health insurance; the only other option, a decent individual plan, is now just too expensive for them. The Senate bill would give such people the wherewithal to buy insurance that doesn’t cover elective abortion, which means that, in addition to its many other benefits, it would save millions of Americans from having to choose between their conscience and their health.

At the “About Commonweal” page on its website, Commonweal proudly lists its opposition (they “took issue”) to Humanae Vitae as an important part of its history, and dissidents such as Fr. Charles Curran as some of their most notable contributors. Yes, the present editorial is about abortion, not contraception. Yet, the revolt against traditional Christian teaching on this subject among Protestants (especially after the Lambeth Conference in 1930) and Catholics (especially after Humanae Vitae’s publication in 1968) points to what Pope John Paul II famously called an “eclipse” of the sense of God and man.  As he wrote in The Gospel of Life, no. 24:

“When conscience, this bright lamp of the soul (cf. Mt 6:22-23), calls ‘evil good and good evil’ (Is 5:20), it is already on the path to the most alarming corruption and the darkest moral blindness.”

And so there are Christians today without a moral compass beyond their own personal inclinations (or politics), as many have rejected God, many have rejected Christ, and many have rejected the teaching authority of His Church, especially when it comes to human life issues and married love.  Contraception is at the heart of all this, because the marital act was created by God as a life-giving and love-giving act that mysterious images the self-giving love of the Trinity.

So our work is cut out for us (Catholics, not lobbyists, that is!) to be agents of conversion, which begins with our own renewed commitment to Christ and His Church. In the coming days at My Catholic Faith Delivered we will be offering a four-lesson study of Humanae Vitae. This beautiful study, created by Catholic Scripture Study, features dynamic video presentations by Fr. Frank Pavone of Priests for Life. This resource is singularly helpful in terms of understanding and internalizing the mind of the Church on this pivotal issue.

As for Commonweal, certainly I bear no ill will toward the editors, and through the decades Commonweal has made positive contributions to contemporary social debates. I do pray, however, that they and others who compromise the Church’s witness on the pivotal issues of life and love will experience a profound change of heart. And sooner rather than later!