Our prayers go to the many Iowans who have suffered the effects of this summer’s floods.
CAMPAIGN TIME
As we enter the late summer months, campaigns for elective office in Iowa are heating up.
The Iowa Catholic Conference is preparing our Faithful Citizenship voter education material to be distributed through the parishes this fall. As you know, we do not endorse candidates or parties, but wish to help people inform their conscience and exercise it in the voting booth.
Here on our web site, you can click on “Action Center” and then on “Elections” to get information on how to contact your local candidates. We also have posted our “votes of interest” from the past legislative session.
Now is the time when candidates are paying very close attention to what you’re saying. Don’t hesitate to contact them! It’s important to hold candidates accountable.
The Iowa Catholic Conference and other Catholic organizations in the state are also co-sponsoring “Faithful Citizenship” presentations this fall. At these meetings, participants will learn about what the church has to say about voting and conscience. If your organization is interested in hosting a presentation, let me know.
ABORTION AND HEALTH CARE
The states of Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Maryland recently announced that elective abortion would be covered by new “high-risk” insurance plans created by the new federal health care reform bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). These plans had been approved by the federal Health and Human Services department.
However, after complaints by pro-life groups, the government changed course and stated that the new plans would in fact not be able to cover elective abortions, only in those cases of rape, incest or danger to the mother’s life, as has been true for many years in federally subsidized health plans for federal employees.
PPACA provides $5 billion to set up interim “high-risk” pools for people with a previously-existing condition who were not able to get health insurance coverage. These pools will exist for a few years until the health care reform efforts take effect in 2014. Here in Iowa, the state’s current high-risk pool and proposed federal pool do not include elective abortion coverage.
The U.S. Catholic bishops’ conference supports HR 5111, the “Protect Life Act,” which would clean up problems with conscience and abortion funding in PPACA.
As chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Migration, Bishop John C. Wester of Salt Lake City applauded the July 28 decision by U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton to halt some of the most controversial provisions of Arizona SB 1070 from going into effect the next day. Bishop Wester lamented the status quo on immigration as “unacceptable” and called for the federal government to act immediately on immigration reform.
“It is the right decision,” Bishop Wester said. “Any law that provides legal cover to profiling affects all members of our communities, including legal residents and citizens. It is a very slippery slope. What is needed now is for Congress and the Administration to live up to their responsibilities and address this issue by passing immigration reform.”
Regular readers of this newsletter are well aware of the Church’s position on immigration, which is sometimes caricatured as being in favor of totally open borders, mass amnesties without consequences and such. As Bishop Wester has said, “The U.S. bishops and the teachings of the Catholic Church have consistently respected the right of the sovereign to control its borders, as well as the rule of civil law. However, the Church, along with other members of our democratic society, has the right to work to change laws which are believed to violate basic human dignity, dignity imbued by the Creator.”
I recently attended the summer meeting for state Catholic Conference directors. It is a good opportunity for me to catch up on issues and learn from the experiences of directors in other states. This year there was much discussion about the federal health care bill and abortion funding.
We also listened to a presentation by a newly-formed group, connected with the U.S. bishops’ conference, called “Catholic Mobilizing Network to End the Use of the Death Penalty.” The Network will be offering a workshop on the Oct. 9th Institute for Social Action held in Elkhart, Iowa (halfway between Des Moines and Ames on I-35.)
Other topics covered at the meeting included same-sex marriage, parental choice in education, and immigration reform. We also had a theological presentation on discerning the common goods of society and our government’s role in helping define the means society can achieve the common “goods”.
The directors also had a conversation about fighting efforts to legalize assisted suicide. Since I haven’t covered this topic recently I thought I would go into it a little more.
The Church believes that consciously choosing to end one’s life is wrong, and assisting with someone’s suicide cannot be condoned. It is the destruction of life. While many in our society want to retain a perceived total autonomy over their own life and death, as Catholics we believe we are ultimately responsible to God for the stewardship of our life. The Resurrection of Jesus Christ gives us all a welcome message of hope.
Efforts to legalize assisted suicide can gain ground because many people are understandably scared about what they may face as they near the end of their earthly life. People don’t want to suffer and are afraid that they’ll be painfully hooked up to life-support machines indefinitely.
Many Catholics wrongly believe that the Church says that life-support can never be removed. In fact, our teaching distinguishes between killing — which is an intentional action or omission to bring about the death of another, and allowing to die — which is withholding or withdrawing treatment that is no longer helping a patient and may actually be harming them. Medical and hospice care is such today that much pain and suffering can be relieved in acceptable ways.
On a practical level, the legalization of assisted suicide would inevitably mean pressure being put on people to kill themselves if they become a perceived burden. What kind of demands will be put on patients who will be perceived as a financial drain on the health care system?
We also should consider what physician-assisted suicide would mean to the medical profession. Trying to distinguish “treatment” decisions from “killing” decisions would be difficult at times. It would bring a new dimension to the healing profession – that of killing.
BISHOPS CONCERNED OVER FEDERAL COURT RULINGS REJECTING MARRIAGE AS BETWEEN ONE MAN, ONE WOMAN
Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, expressed grave concern regarding recent rulings by a federal judge in Massachusetts rejecting the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.
Archbishop Kurtz offered his remarks after two rulings on July 8 that held that section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional. Section 3 provides that for purposes of federal statutes, regulations, and rulings, “marriage” means the legal union of one man and one woman.
“Marriage – the union of one man and one woman – is a unique, irreplaceable institution. The very fabric of our society depends upon it. Nothing compares to the exclusive and permanent union of husband and wife. The state has a duty to employ the civil law to reinforce – and, indeed, to privilege uniquely – this vital institution of civil society. The reasons to support marriage by law are countless, not least to protect the unique place of husbands and wives, the indispensible role of fathers and mothers, and the rights of children, who are often the most vulnerable among us. And yet, a judge has decided that a marriage-reinforcing law like DOMA fails to serve even a single, minimally rational government interest. On behalf of the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for the Defense of Marriage, I express grave concern over these dangerous and disappointing rulings which ignore even the most apparent purposes of marriage and thus offend true justice,” he said.
“To claim that defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman is somehow irrational, prejudiced, or even bigoted, is a great disservice not only to truth but to the good of our nation,” Archbishop Kurtz said. “Marriage exists prior to the state and is not open to redefinition by the state. The role of the state, instead, is to respect and reinforce marriage. Thursday’s decision, by contrast, uses the power of the state to attack the perennial definition of marriage, reducing it merely to the union of any two consenting adults. But only a man and a woman are capable of entering into the unique, life-giving bond of marriage, with all of its specific responsibilities. Protecting marriage as only the union of one man and one woman is not merely a legitimate, but a vital government interest.”
CONFLICT MINERALS
It’s nice to win a victory now and then. In this case, advocates were successful in efforts to include provisions in the financial reform bill to require companies to disclose the payments they make to foreign governments for the natural resources they extract.
How will this help reduce violence, for example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo? Well, much of the instability, displacement, conflict, and sexual violence in the Eastern DRC are financed by armed groups’ control over lucrative mines and mineral trade routes.
AND FINALLY,
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Tom Chapman Executive Director Iowa Catholic Conference
