It has been eight days since the Department of Health and Human Services has issued its latest attempt at regulations covering what is called the “contraceptive mandate” as contained in the Affordable Health Care Act (“Obamacare”). The regulations are some eighty pages in length but two thirds of those pages outline the management of the funds for the program once fully implemented. Every bishop in the country now has access to legal opinions on how these revised regulations will effect the Church’s approach and response to the “mandate.” I and almost every other bishop have waited while our own attorneys have studied the “regs” in detail. I also have the added assistance as a member of the Catholic Health Association Board of Directions, having listened to their General Counsel’s careful opinion of what influence these new regulations would have on Catholic Health Care interests. The wise and prudent approach has suggested not rushing into comments without the assistance of those more skilled in reading and understanding government “legalese” than most bishops. So what follows are my personal impressions of the Administration’s latest proposals.

1. Clearly, the Administration has been desirous of listening to and accommodating the concerns of Catholics and other people and institutions of conscience, like myself, who had real worries about the regulatory language in possession up till last Friday. There has been a serious effort to accommodate some of the conscience concerns of the Catholic bishops and I feel some expression of gratitude is due to the Administration.

2. One would be hard put to find any other segment of the American public whose concerns about the Affordable Health Care Act have attempted to be dealt with than those of the Catholic bishops and other like-minded people on this very important matter. There have been moments when I think we should consider ourselves lucky that they are still talking to us.

3. The result has been that many of our concerns, about religious freedom and conscience have been attempted to be met. For me the first attempt of the government to define religious ministry outside of our houses of worship has been addressed in the removal all together of the first three prongs of the prior definition and I am personally at peace with this aspect of the challenge.

4. By opening again, for the third time, a comment period (all must be submitted by April 8th), the Administration has offered an invitation to all interested parties, the Catholic bishops included, to raise any additional concerns which this new draft may have given birth to. There are no promises and anyone who has worked in Washington, as I have, should be prepared for the reality that whatever finds it way into law eventually will be “imperfect” in some way, but so was the much missed “Hyde Amendment.” Cardinal Dolan has made it clear subsequent to the statement issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops that the USCCB has not rejected the HHS draft but seeks to continue to explore progress on some points which would lead to improvement.

5. As a former teacher of English (long ago), I find any discussion of the difference between exemption and accommodation to be interesting because as I look them both up in the OXFORD DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE I am led to believe that it is a distinction without a difference. I find this especially true when studying the manner in which HHS would allow other religious entities for whom the mandate presents an issue of “conscience” to decide that they were worthy of the accommodation. Not many other entities of American life are treated with this level of trust (and this would be especially true of the tax code) and some thanks should also be due to the Administration for trying to find a solution which might satisfy us and other constituencies who think otherwise.

6. In the last eight days or so, I have found myself wondering who speaks for the Church? Cardinals, archbishops and bishops are certainly entitled to their opinions (as I hope I am amply demonstrating in this blog post) but since the Second Vatican Council, our collegial voice has almost always been the elected leader of our episcopal conference, currently Cardinal Dolan. His opinion is certainly not binding on every Catholic, but should be accorded greater respect than any of us. But he speaks for the bishops who elected him, as did his predecessors and as will his successors, not necessarily for the whole Church.

7. Which brings me to my final point. As far as I know, at no time up to yesterday (Friday)since the new HHS regs were made available for review and public comment, has anyone from the conference structure consulted with legal counsel for other entities in the Church (hospitals, college and universities, Catholic Charities)to ask their read on how this proposal will affect their ministry. Yet the USCCB statement, it seems, would have one believe that the above mentioned entities might fairly have their “noses out-of-joint” because they are being given consideration under the “accommodation” and not the “exemption.” I did not leave this week’s Board of Director’s meeting of the Catholic Health Association thinking that all those CEO’s of systems and related members felt they were being treated as second class citizens by these new regulations. Perhaps we bishops need a little more humility from time to time, recognizing that we are not the only “game in town” but that there are other players, women and men of great faith who also love the Church, and who can speak for themselves and their organizations, on what effect legislation, proposed legislation, regulations will have on their ministry. A more collaborative effort might lead to greater results.

We still have time to work to smooth out some of the rough waters which lie ahead. As one member, I would hope that our episcopal conference might be as open to listening to the issues and challenges which government seems to face as I believe they have been so far in hearing our concerns. But in the end, everyone must prepare themselves for what is likely to be imperfect regulations drawn from imperfect legislation. I still am grateful that that more universal health care coverage will be the first fruit of the Affordable Care Act and I am beginning to feel that I can say to my diocesan self-insured employees, all 1400 of them, that their moral right to health care coverage will survive this moment.

+RNL

I just left the Grand Ballroom of the Hyatt Atlanta Downtown, my daytime prison cell for the past two days. We just concluded our Spring Meeting of the United States Catholic Conference of Bishops (USCCB), which is distinguishable from the Fall meeting in several respects: it travels (which means that we never meet in the same city two years in a row), it is shorter (two days instead of three), it is slightly less well attended by the membership, and it usually results in nothing startling,  controversial, or seismic. A new innovation attempted this year, quite successfully I would say, was to spend an entire afternoon listening to and responding to presentations on an issue of importance (this year the HHS Mandate debate). Quite frankly, I enjoyed the opportunity to spend some time in a matter of great importance to me, with insights and presentations given by experts in the field of religious liberty.

Dr. John Garvey, the President of the Catholic University of America and himself a lawyer, spoke about recent incursions into the freedom of religion. Citing five recent incidents in recent years, Dr. Garvey made a compelling case for the USCCB doing what it is doing relative to the Affordable Health Care Act and their attendant regulations from the Department of Health and Human Services. You may read Dr. Garvey’s talk to us by clicking here. A second presentation on the topic of international religious freedom was given by Ambassador Thomas Farr, currently on the faculty of Georgetown University and entitled “The Church and the Global Crisis of Religious Liberty” and it can be accessed by clicking here. The final presentation of the day was the most compelling to me and was given by Bishop Shlemon Warduni, a Catholic bishop of the Chaldean Rite from Iraq. Quite frankly, the bishop’s recounting of the cost to Christians in Iraq caused by the US invasion made me sick at my stomach. You may read Bishop Warduni’s brief talk here. Sometimes we bishops are accused of being the “Republican party at prayer” but this monstrosity was led by a Republican President. He ended by saying that the US had managed to get rid of one crazy dictator who has been now replaced by many crazy dictators. How sad and tragic and talk about an assault on religious freedom!

We spent a good deal of time dealing with the HHS regulations, the Conference’s response to them, the strategy of the lawsuits brought against the regulations, and where do we go from here. Starting next week, many dioceses throughout the United States will observe what is being called a “Fortnight for Freedom” which will end on July 4th. I will be celebrating Mass at St. Paul’s Church, just off Dale Mabrey in north Tampa, on Friday evening June 29, 2012 (The Solemnity of the Feasts of SS. Peter and Paul) and speaking in the context of the Fortnight for Freedom observance and I hope as many of you as possible can come that evening at 7:30pm. For more information on the June 29 Mass and to see how our Diocese is participating in the Fortnight for Freedom, please click here.

We talked about communications and how poorly we do it in the Church at the moment. Three bishops tweeted during the meeting and several posted to Facebook. There is wide-spread agreement among the bishops that the Church’s and the Conference’s communication efforts need to be improved and more use made of the modern means of social communication today – ah, like this blog! (Sorry, I could not resist.) There were some currents in the discussion which made me nervous as I feel the mantle of censorship coming to NC News which has since its founding enjoyed editorial freedom but may soon lose its “religious liberty.” I would rue that day. There is also a push for a spokesperson for the Conference (read that “easy to look at” and Walter Cronkite-ish in their credibility) and I would not want that job for all the proverbial tea in China. Nuance one thing in a way that upsets one bishop and that person’s livelihood would likely be at stake, a position Archbishop Wilton Gregory made on the floor in much kinder, gentler words.

We didn’t vote on anything except to authorize a statement to be written on the effects of the economy on people today. Today we spent ninety minutes in a regional meeting which is considerably longer than we are accustomed to doing. The day ended with an afternoon in Executive Session and then I am out of here and headed home tomorrow (Friday). If this blog has been less than scintillating, blame it on the fact that there is no train service from Atlanta to Tampa and I had to fly both ways. I tend in November to think better and perhaps even write better on the train coming home from Baltimore. It is always good to see friends at these meetings and the liturgies are well done in the morning. The Hyatt in Downtown Atlanta could, if it chose to do so, boast of the smallest hotel rooms for the steepest price on the eastern seaboard and while charging an arm and leg per night, there were no glasses in the room to be found and no room service from noon to five p.m. So that’s it from slumming it in HotLanta. Home sweet home awaits me.

+RNL

I think by virtue of circumstances it is time to revisit the matter of the Health and Human Services implementation plan (hereinafter “HHS Regs.”) which is a part of the Affordable Health Care Act and bring you up to date on what is the current state of the question. Two things in the last forty-eight hours suggest that this is a good moment. When last I wrote in this space about the matter in February, President Obama had announced a “fix” for most of the matters which concerned Church leaders like myself. After careful study, I found it not a “fix” but perhaps only a “first step.” While privately assuring some people in our Church with whom he was in personal contact that the Administration would address to our satisfaction the “self-insured” question later, it has not been done so far, at least publicly. Following that announcement, the public perception of the issue changed from what I am most concerned about “the freedom of religion to define its own self instead of the government” to a question solely of contraception/sterilization, painting the bishops as once again wishing to control women’s reproductive freedom. And there much of the public perception has sat for the last four months as one can witness from the op-ed piece in this morning’s TAMPA BAY TIMES.

On Monday, twelve different lawsuits were filed by forty-three entities including archdioceses and dioceses, Notre Dame University, and other Church institutions in thirteen federal court jurisdictions challenging the present HHS Regs. on religious freedom grounds. Is this judicial overkill? As I wrote in February, it looked at that time to me that only the judicial system could resolve with finality this issue and somewhere in this great land there must be judges, appeals court justices at the right time, etc. who agree enough to hear the case. We only have a window of sixteen months at this writing to settle this. So what exactly is at stake?

On the religious freedom question, the government wishes to define as “legitimate ministry of a Church” only those activities which pertain to, in our case, baptized Catholics (more simply put that which happens at Mass or within a worship place). So, for example, in this diocese, the following would not be “Catholic ministries” at least as defined by the HHS regs in their present language:

1. St. Joseph and St. Anthony Hospital – most patients are not Catholic and Catholic baptism is not required in either the hiring or admitting office.

2. Jesuit High School and the Academy of the Holy Names - approximately a third of their student bodies are not baptized Catholics and one’s religion has never been an admissions criteria.

3. Pinellas Hope and our ministry to people with HIV-AIDS  and most programs of Catholic Charities where we never ask a person’s religion before helping them. Would the people of this nation wish Catholic Charities to simply disappear or hide under the biblical bushel basket of anonymity?

4. Many of our high and elementary schools if their enrollment contains more than 10% non-Catholics and while the exact percentage remains to be defined it is clear that ten percent is about the most that would be required for an exemption.

While contraceptive/sterilization coverage is the issue the government has chosen to launch this new definition of what constitutes “Church ministry,” it could morph into abortion coverage at some time (abortifacients such as the morning after-pill are already to be included under the HHS regs. - so in some senses we are already there). Where does a demonination, a Church draw the line in allowing  government to define what is “legitimately Church ministry?”

I, as bishop, have no desire to control the contraceptive access of the general citizenry. As a bishop, I will continue to teach and affirm the beauty of Pope Paul VI’s total teaching on marriage and procreation in Humanae Vitae, while acknowledging that a part of that teaching can place great stress on a young couple beginning their married life. But that is a part of my teaching responsibility as a bishop. And quite honestly I think the Church has learned how to strongly affirm the teaching while respecting individual conscience  formation in the last forty some years, as well as provide an option with little to no cost. But, I also do not believe my government should ever force my Church to provide something for its own employees which is against its teachings and beliefs. This is a dangerous, steep and very slippery slope.

Neuralgic in this debate is the matter of defending the consciences of individual employers who seek to opt out of providing coverage because of their personal religious beliefs. To me, this can possibly appear as an opening for exceptions large enough to endanger the good that is clearly at play here – enlarging the health care coverage to more people and making it more affordable to access. The goal of universal coverage has been an important goal of the Catholic bishops of the United States for at least two decades. We should neither lose sight of this  goal nor ignore our serious concerns in the area of religious liberty. We remain strong proponents of care for the poor.

So we are currently in a state of “check” but not yet “check-mate” on this issue. Stay tuned, as the old Irish song goes, “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary” still.

+RNL

To bring you up-to-date on the latest regarding the regulations issued by the Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, what follows is a letter from Cardinal Dolan, our United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) President and Bishop William Lori, the chairman of our Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty to the bishops of the U.S. that was issued late last week. It says it all:                          

Office of the President
3211 FOURTH STREET NE WASHINGTON DC 20017-1194 202-541-3100 FAX 202-541-3166
Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan Archbishop of New York President

February 22, 2012

Dear Brother Bishops,

 
Since we last wrote to you concerning the critical efforts we are undertaking together to protect religious freedom in our beloved country, many of you have requested that we write once more to update you on the situation and to again request the assistance of all the faithful in this important work. We are happy to do so now.

 
First, we wish to express our heartfelt appreciation to you, and to all our sisters and brothers in Christ, for the remarkable witness of our unity in faith and strength of conviction during this past month. We have made our voices heard, and we will not cease from doing so until religious freedom is restored.

As we know, on January 20, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a decision to issue final regulations that would force practically all employers, including many religious institutions, to pay for abortion inducing drugs, sterilizations, and contraception. The regulations would provide no protections for our great institutions—such as Catholic charities, hospitals, and universities—or for the individual faithful in the marketplace. The regulations struck at the heart of our fundamental right to religious liberty, which affects our ability to serve those outside our faith community.

Since January 20, the reaction was immediate and sustained. We came together, joined by people of every creed and political persuasion, to make one thing resoundingly clear: we stand united against any attempt to deny or weaken the right to religious liberty upon which our country was founded.

On Friday, February 10, the Administration issued the final rules. By their very terms, the rules were reaffirmed “without change.” The mandate to provide the illicit services remains. The exceedingly narrow exemption for churches remains. Despite the outcry, all the threats to religious liberty posed by the initial rules remain.

Religious freedom is a fundamental right of all. This right does not depend on any government’s decision to grant it: it is God-given, and just societies recognize and respect its free exercise. The free exercise of religion extends well beyond the freedom of worship. It also forbids government from forcing people or groups to violate their most deeply held religious convictions, and from interfering in the internal affairs of religious organizations.

Recent actions by the Administration have attempted to reduce this free exercise to a “privilege” arbitrarily granted by the government as a mere exemption from an all encompassing, extreme form of secularism. The exemption is too narrowly defined, because it does not exempt most non-profit religious employers, the religiously affiliated insurer, the self insured employer, the for-profit religious employer, or other private businesses owned and operated by people who rightly object to paying for abortion inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. And because it is instituted only by executive whim, even this unduly narrow exemption can be taken away easily.

In the United States, religious liberty does not depend on the benevolence of who is regulating us. It is our “first freedom” and respect for it must be broad and inclusive—not narrow and exclusive. Catholics and other people of faith and good will are not second class citizens. And it is not for the government to decide which of our ministries is “religious enough” to warrant religious freedom protection.

This is not just about contraception, abortion-causing drugs, and sterilization—although all should recognize the injustices involved in making them part of a universal mandated health care program. It is not about Republicans or Democrats, conservatives or liberals. It is about people of faith. This is first and foremost a matter of religious liberty for all. If the government can, for example, tell Catholics that they cannot be in the insurance business today without violating their religious convictions, where does it end? This violates the constitutional limits on our government, and the basic rights upon which our country was founded.

Much remains to be done. We cannot rest when faced with so grave a threat to the religious liberty for which our parents and grandparents fought. In this moment in history we must work diligently to preserve religious liberty and to remove all threats to the practice of our faith in the public square. This is our heritage as Americans. President Obama should rescind the mandate, or at the very least, provide full and effective measures to protect religious liberty and conscience.

Above all, dear brothers, we rely on the help of the Lord in this important struggle. We all need to act now by contacting our legislators in support of the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, which can be done through our action alert on www.usccb.org/conscience.

We invite you to share the contents of this letter with the faithful of your diocese in whatever form, or by whatever means, you consider most suitable. Let us continue to pray for a quick and complete resolution to this and all threats to religious liberty and the exercise of our faith in our great country.

Timothy Cardinal Dolan                               Most Reverend William E. Lori
Archbishop of New York                                Bishop of Bridgeport
President, United States Conference     Chairman, Ad Hoc Committee for Religious
of Catholic Bishops                                             Liberty

The letter has also been posted on the diocesan website (www.dosp.org) and can be read as a PDF version in English or Spanish.

+RNL

I am late in responding to yesterday’s announcement by President Obama that his administration is willing to “tweak” [my word, not his] the regulations which I and so many of you have found objectionable in the HHS regulations requiring of religious employers contraceptive coverage including abortifacients in the Affordable Health Care Act for their employees. First, the good news of sorts. He has heard the protests being raised all over the country on this egregious violation of religious liberty. I repeat, this is not a battle about contraception but about religious liberty.

For the Diocese of St. Petersburg, however, it falls far short of a “fix.” We are self-insured with an Administrator managing our program for us and gaining the discounts that come with belonging to a larger health care operator. It still appears that the Diocese would be required since it acts as a health care insurance provider to provide the coverage and now we would have to pay for it making these morally objectionable provisions even worse. So while it was nice to hear the President say that no religious entity who finds this requirement of law objectionable on conscience grounds would be required to participate (I now know that our schools, Catholic Charities, St. Leo University, the cemetery are exempt and that was some progress in clarification yesterday) I as the employer who just happens to run an insurance company for my employees get hit even worse!

Perhaps in the days ahead there will be further clarification by the Administration on this requirement but we need to continue to strenuously make our case, seek legislative relief if that remains necessary, and “bang the drums loudly” for the essence of the first amendment guarantee of freedom of religion which we have thus far raised so effectively. A nod in the right direction is at least a start but it is still a long way to Tipperary.

+RNL

*Originally posted on the Diocese of St. Petersburg website on Friday, January 20, 2012.*

The White House announced this afternoon that there would be no change in the regulations issued previously by the Department of Health and Human Services which would require the Diocese of St. Petersburg to change its existing health care plan that presently covers all employees (including priests and religious) to include provision for contraceptives and contraceptive and aborti-facient procedures. These prescriptions violate our institutional and personal consciences and I have warned before that this bishop and this diocese will not accept nor provide them. The callous disregard for long held personal and ecclesial beliefs augurs a chilling moment for believing and practicing Catholics in these United States. It is my hope that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops will immediately challenge these regulations in court and right up to the highest court and that a stay of their implementation will await final judicial disposition. Our forbearers left Europe because of religious intolerance such as this and founded this nation promising religious tolerance and freedom.

I will write a letter to be read and/or distributed in every parish in the diocese next week-end and I hope that no Catholic voting adult will soon forget this egregious and insensitive intrusion by our government into our rights of conscience.

+RNL

Taking the Oath of Attorney during the Red Mass. Photo courtesy of Maria Mertens.

Yesterday at beautiful Sacred Heart Church in Tampa we celebrated the annual Red Mass invoking the blessings  of the Holy Spirit on all judges, lawyers and clerks in our area. The Mass derives its name not from the color of vestments which the priests wear, but when the custom originated in Britain many centuries ago, the judges all wore red robes, hence “the Red Mass.” Yesterday was also the Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle and since all the apostles suffered a martyr’s death, we always wear red when we remember them. The largest assembly of lawyers and judges in my time gathered to pray for the gift of divine guidance through the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We have great Catholic lawyers and judges and it has always been a pleasure to be with them. Each year on the Sunday prior to the first Monday in October opening of a new session of the Supreme Court, many of the nine justices travel to Washington’s St. Matthew Cathedral for what may be the largest and most important Red Mass held in the nation.

In my homily I chose to bring up a possibility arising from Health and Human Services regulations which bother me deeply precisely because I and many others find them   violative of the religious liberty assured us by the first amendment to our Constitution and also of our personal moral consciences. These regulations will apply to the implementation of the soon to be fully implemented federal health care law.

The Diocese of Saint Petersburg has approximately 2300 employees who participate in a generous health care plan as part of their employment. While it covers almost everything, it excludes contraceptives, abortifacients, sexual enhancements like “Viagra”, etc. The first draft of the regulations for implementation issued by the Department of Health and Human Services mandated these and more services which I and others think violate the freedom of religion of our Church as regards procedures which we believe to be not in keeping with God’s law.  Further, if a person is required by law to provide, perhaps in a hospital emergency room situation procedures violative of their individual conscience( in the past they have  been exempt because of conscience concerns), they would be forced by this law to do so. Reacting to the first wave of complaints from the Catholic Church the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services modified the regulations slightly to exempt only Catholics working for a Catholic employer (other religions with serious moral concerns would also be included). Alas, I would still be required by law to provide the services to non-Catholic employees. What kind of sense does that make?

But there is an even larger problem for the Diocese of St. Petersburg. It is self-insured and our plan is only administered by a health care agency. Therefore the diocese by this law is an insurance company and all insurance companies must provide these services with currently no exemptions allowed. There are no exemptions to even include the situation outlined above. If the argument focused on abortion, a matter of public morality since the life of another person is involved, I suspect many more people would carry the fear which I have about this exercise of regulatory authority but because it seems to focus on contraception, a matter of private morality, lots of people do not understand what is at stake here. My genuine concern is that it is simply the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent. In my homily I outlined perhaps the only option left for the diocese as an employer if these regulations stand and believe me, colleagues in ministry and service and I will experience a marked loss of health care insurance coverage. A Church cannot be forced to violate its teaching, do something which is possibly immoral, and stand idly by and watch our Catholic doctors, nurses and aids forced to perform procedures which are both against their conscience and previously protected.  That’s what involved in this and there is considerable opposition to the position of the Church coming from Planned Parenthood and other organizations which see this moment as an opportunity to close the conscience clause exemption which they have long despised. If you don’t believe me, read the blogs of those other groups. No one in yesterday’s congregation has the power to fix whats wrong with the Affordable Health Care and Patient Protection Act of 2010. Only the President of the United States and his Secretary for Health and Human Services can do that but a gathering for Mass such as yesterday’s does provide me a forum for vetting a serious question of the intersection of law and morality and learning from those far more skilled at interpreting and applying the law than myself. From the reactions which I immediately received and throughout the day yesterday by e-mail and personal contacts, posing the matter of religious freedom was appreciated and as you can see below, I asked nothing of those present but to listen, reflect and pray.

Here follows my homily to those attending the Red Mass. I believe you will find it simply a pastor raising a moral v. potentially legal dilemma before people far wiser than I about the law, individual rights, and the danger to something many deeply cherish and love love about our country to date.

Distinguished Judges, members of the bar, clerks and friends of the courts

            It is an honor for me to join you once again in our annual invocation of the Holy Spirit for each of you in your respective and awesome responsibilities as dispensers and arbiters of justice in this time and place. Realizing fully my own need for the gift of wisdom from on high, I am certain that it is this gift of God and this gift alone which unites us this afternoon in this place and for this celebration.

           “Come follow me” is the invitation, which our Lord extends to Andrew, the apostle whose life and death the universal Church celebrates today, and to his brother, Simon. Such an invitation is also a generic call to all of us to follow Christ in the path of discipleship and service to humankind. No one living near Capernaum along the Sea of Galilee that day would have thought a thing about it because both men were simply uneducated fishermen. They were not antiquities forerunners of Rhodes scholars or McArthur fellowship award winners, they were what they were, fishermen.  But in addition to three years spent in the close company of the master teacher, Jesus, they would with nine others gather in one room and await the infusion of wisdom, courage, understanding, knowledge, piety, counsel, fortitude and fear of the Lord, all gifts of the same Holy Spirit to whom and for whom we pray today. The Lord heard their prayers, gave them the gifts necessary to shape, form, and lead His people then and  until His Son returns again in glory.

            Today in many ways attempting to follow the Lord requires that each of us know our limitations and return from time to time to seek divine assistance. I am sure that you can say the same as I do each morning when at prayer: “Lord, I do not know what is in store for me today but I am sure that today will be unlike any other, give me grace and strength, wisdom and patience.” The words of St. Paul in the first reading are assuring to those of us who realize that we were not born with all of life’s answers: “no one who believes in him will be put to shame. . . .For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. “

            Life on planet earth, the North American continent, and the United States has over time become exceeding complex and challenging and matters which the framers of our Constitution could never have envisioned now propel daily discourse. It is incumbent upon religious leaders like myself to present a consistent moral vision faithful to the law of Christ and the teachings of the Church and upon members of the judiciary and bar to navigate the tricky waters of law and precedent. But both of us are bound by vow or oath to be faithful to something, which must stand the test of time, be it creed or constitution. Occasionally our paths cross and less frequently but still occasionally they collide. I have such a fear at this moment in time.

            You probably have heard that the Catholic bishops of the United States have focused a significant amount of attention in the last few months on the matter of religious liberty and the rights of individual conscience. The matter is headed, of course, to the courts bit it is not that direction which I wish to call to your respectful attention today. Rather I think you should know that the Catholic Church through its bishops are in conversation with the Administration on certain published regulations of the recently enacted Health Care Plan which we find both unacceptable and worse still which we see as frontal attacks on our liberty of freedom of conscience. As employers we would be forced to provide in health care plans services and procedures which clearly are contrary to our beliefs and teachings and individual Catholics would be required to participate in procedures which in the past have enjoyed conscience protection in the law. So far the Administration has not publicly blinked on any of these matters of deep concern to us. If they fail to shift in their present positions, then 2300 employees of the Diocese of St. Petersburg will lose their health care coverage which they have come to treasure and rely upon – I would simply give them what we would have paid for their healthcare and tell them they have to look for coverage elsewhere. For the first time in my adult life, I foresee the possibility of some form of civil disobedience and I am extremely uncomfortable at even the hint of such a thing.

            We just celebrated the national feast day of Thanksgiving. The Puritans and Pilgrims of Massachusetts and the Catholics of Rhode Island and Maryland came to these shores precisely to found and build a nation which would respect and honor religious belief. The First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of religion reflects those foundational principles. Our founding mothers and fathers fled and escaped precisely what my Church and other denominations are coming to see now as assaults on their freedom of religious exercise and conscience protection. As difficult as it is for me to understand the reluctance of Christian Scientists to seek medical assistance, it is at the heart of their creed, their faith, their belief and I would fight to protect their rights in conscience. I hope others will see what we find at stake in this moment in history. One federal judge in California has said that the guarantee of “religious freedom” and lack of interference from the government pertains only to what we do on Sunday in our Churches and Friday nights in our Synagogues. All else is subject to government regulation. Dear sisters and brothers, we need the Holy Spirit badly.

            You heard the Gospel of Matthew a short while ago and its retelling of the call of the apostles. There is a different account to be found in the Fourth Gospel of John. There Andrew sees Jesus and asks, “Rabbi, where are you staying?” Jesus responds, “come and see.” After spending a few hours with Jesus, in John’s Gospel Andrew then quickly seeks out his brother Simon and says, “we have found the Lord.” Today we pray that the work of the Lord can be found in our system of laws and their administration, in the women and men of the bar, rooted in justice and desirous of proclaiming liberty to all. Come, Holy Spirit, Come!

Pray for your country and its leaders. It is not too late to fix what needs to be fixed.

+RNL

The “Silver Star” is about to appear over Tampa’s Union Station; right on time I might add as it has been throughout the night on its 1120-mile journey from Baltimore yesterday afternoon. I slept like the “Chessie Kitten” albeit with some help from an “Ambien” tablet, falling asleep while standing in the station at Cary, North Carolina (twenty miles southwest of Raleigh) and waking up in Palatka, Florida this morning. Columbia, South Carolina, Savannah, Jacksonville were all just dreams. However, I think I have one more post of observations about the bishops’ meeting that just concluded.

First, our new President, by sheer bent of his wonderful personality, managed to make what could be tense moments less so and I think his gifts as chair were appreciated by the majority of bishops present. By nature he is kind and patient, both qualities very necessary in a bishop leader today. There was quite a bit of concern expressed in the Catholic and secular press that the USCCB has lost its moral compass on social issues like jobs, the economy, justice, capitol punishment, etc. These same critics see most of our time and attention when congregated directed to issues like abortion, contraception, the government and President of the United States, etc. These comments and reflections at this moment in time are quite fair I believe. As a body of bishops, we seem to be in a period of navel gazing at the “safe” issues and have lost for the moment our zeal for those which society largely ignores, even though I readily admit advocacy on behalf of human life also fits into this general category. Some voices were raised by my brothers about immigration but not a lot. Some voices were raised by my brothers about atrocious injustice at home and abroad but not a lot. And as proof of this reality, there is not a lot if anything in the hopper of future USCCB concern which might portend the prophetic engagement of many of these issues. This is the period of the life issues, almost  p-e-r-i-o-d-“ We long have been the most consistent and persistent voice on behalf of human life from conception until natural death and I would not wish that to change one bit. But we used to be able to be that voice as well as a voice for other issues of deep social and societal concern. It is that second “edge” that I feel we are losing.

The whole movement to engage and enlarge the issue of religious liberty flows primarily from assaults on Church teaching on human life currently seeming to arise from the Obama administration and more so from the Department of Health and Human Services. We would not be so keenly interested perhaps were it not for the fact that HHS seems to be having a field day threatening to require religious employers to provide a vast range of contraceptive and abortifacient services in the new health care law, certainly with nothing but total disregard it would seem to date for the Church’s longstanding teachings on these matters (and here I would enjoin our Mormon brothers and sisters as well as the Christian Scientists and other evangelical religions) which want nothing to do with provision of services which are against our (their) conscience belief. Let me give you an example of what I, as your bishop and the diocese of St. Petersburg might be up against if the individual mandates remain in the law and are regulated as HHS currently plans. On its face, I would be required to provide all our employees a full range of contraceptive opportunities not currently covered by our health care plan. Ah, but HHS might say, we can make you exempt as a religious employer (please note that to this moment they have not yet been this generous). But for the diocese that is just hurdle number one. Hurdle number two is the fact that we are self-insured, which means we are an insurer acting as an insurance company and we would seem to still be even more compelled. Thus, I and every other head of a Catholic institution would have to in conscience terminate the health care plans for myself, my priests and all our 2300 employees, perhaps give them a check the equivalent of what would have been our contribution to their health care and send them looking for a plan and carrier that will come the closest to matching the plan they had. Our religious freedom to fashion a health care plan consistent with our beliefs will have been denied and removed. And as diocesan employees would readily admit, a great health care benefit which until now we could mount on would be taken away. That’s not progress in health care, that is sheer regression.

This week the Supreme Court has agreed to five hours of oral arguments in the New Year on several aspects of the health care plan including the mandate. We should know prior to the fall election what our fate would be on this matter. Soundings from Secretary Sibellius’ HHS are not promising. It is an important moment in the history of Church and State in this land of freedom of religion and I agree the signs are so far ominous.

But, as I conclude the last of these reflections on this year’s fall meeting, the Presidential Address of Archbishop Dolan was a bright spot precisely because it can serve as the launching pad for what I believe to be the most important work of the Church over the next two decades – the new Evangelization.

Quite truthfully AMTRAK’s “Silver Star” is presently “backing up” into Tampa’s Union Depot to drop me off. Like others remaining on this train and continuing south, I look to more forward progress in the days, months and years ahead.

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