Posted on 01/02/2003 2:02:21 PM PST by marshmallow
ALBANY, New York, Dec 31, 02 (CWNews.com) - The eight Catholic bishops of New York state filed a lawsuit against the state on Monday to overturn a new law that requires employers to offer health insurance that covers birth control for women.
The bishops contend that the law forces the Catholic Church to endorse immoral and sinful practices. "Such an outrageous law ought to alarm anyone who loves America and the freedoms for which it stands," the eight bishops said in a statement. "We cannot let this unprecedented intrusion on our religious rights go unchallenged."
The law, which takes effect tomorrow, requires that worker health insurance provide coverage for birth control and other women's health services, such as mammograms. Supporters of the law said they believe the law will stand up in court.
The bishops had requested an exemption for the contraception mandate from the New York Legislature, but while the Republican-led Senate seemed initially receptive to the idea, it later capitulated to pro-abortion groups and agreed to the Democratic-led Assembly's harsher version of the bill.
Under the version approved, the state exempts employers only if their primary function is religious, most of the people they serve share that religion, and most of the people they employ also share that religion. As a result, the exemption does not apply to Catholic hospitals or schools.
I presume "birth control" includes contraception and abortion , though it is not stated explicitly.
New York Republicans have embraced the dictum of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" and have jumped on the abortion bandwagon. They are not morally conservative. They are a bunch of sell-outs.
Surely most of the people who work at Catholic schools are Catholic as are most of the pupils. If this is not the case, then they are really no longer Catholic. In which case, the Church should dispense with them. Otherwise, they deserve the exemption.
Catholic hospitals too, have come a long way since they were staffed largely by religious and volunteers who dispensed Christian charity aimed at healing both body and soul. They too, have largely lost their Catholic character. However, even if they were staffed by Catholics, they would still not qualify for the exemption because of their non-Catholic patients.
Therefore, this law ought to be disobeyed. Unfortunately, the Church has become way too comfortable with secular laws and the "culture of death". Yes, we give lip service to rolling back Roe v Wade. But we're not prepared to suffer doing it. We've made our peace with the sin that surrounds us.
If Caesar feels a need to meddle in the affairs of religious groups, then let Caesar figure out what to do with a bunch of additional Medicaid patients.
Yeah.
Are they represented by John Edwards? He's for the little guy!!
Those employees are not going to be able to afford the insurance under any circumstances -- they'll either do without the insurance or they will become wards of a state that is already broke.
Something similar to this happened in Vancouver a few years ago, and the government of British Columbia went scampering back to their holes when the bishop announced that on the day the law took effect he was going to close every Catholic hospital in the city.
The Church can't impose its laws on the general public, but it sure as hell can impose them on its employees.
If you have any doubt about that, you should get a teaching job in a Catholic school and then announce that you're co-habitating with your boyfriend/girlfriend. The school can and will terminate you without any due process -- there's probably a clause in every Catholic employees' contract that says something to this effect.
Yeah - hard to believe - but good to see. Maybe a taste of good things to come.
Under the version approved, the state exempts employers only if their primary function is religious, most of the people they serve share that religion, and most of the people they employ also share that religion. As a result, the exemption does not apply to Catholic hospitals or schools.It would be easy to argue (and difficult to disprove) that the primary function of a Catholic school is education rather than religious, and even easier to argue that the primary function of a Catholic hospital is medicine rather than religion. Therefore, the law was written to unfairly deny these institutions the exemption.
It would be very easy to prove beyond any shred of a doubt that the primary function of a Catholic school is religious -- the legal landscape is littered with "separation of church and state" cases in which courts on all levels have ruled that public funds cannot be used for Catholic schools. In every case, the court's ruling is based on the rationale that religious schools cannot receive public assistance because -- get this -- THEIR PRIMARY FUNCTION IS RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION.
And I'm one of them -- at least in terms of how most Catholic hospitals function no differently than their secular counterparts.
Catholic institutions play such a major role in many northeastern states that the closure of every one of them would result in bedlam of catastrophic proportions.
It isn't -- they're perfectly free to purchase contraceptives on their own. The Church is being forced to violate its own laws by the State. Big difference.
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