Wrong for ND to deny health services to non-Catholics

“In a pluralistic society, committed to religious freedom and diversity,” Richard Garnett wrote to justify the Rev. John Jenkins’ request to relieve the University of Notre Dame from obeying a mandate of the Health and Human Services Department, “it is often both wise and just to accommodate religious believers and institutions by exempting them from requirements that would require them to compromise their integrity” (Voice, Dec. 31).

This mandate ordered religious institutions (Catholic churches, grade and high schools which require most students and workers to be Catholic are excluded) to offer family planning services, such as contraceptives and sterilization services, to all their employees covered by their health insurance plan.

Jenkins argues that, since Catholic members of his administration, faculty and students in their private conscience regard artificial birth control, contraceptives and sterilization surgery as gravely sinful, the university should be exempted from following their mandate. Jenkins said that the government could not force the university to violate its private consciences and its Catholic identity because of the separation of church and state clause in the U.S. Constitution.

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The crucial question is this: Do the private consciences of Jenkins and the Catholics at Notre Dame take precedence over the private consciences of Protestant and non-believers who are members of the faculty, student body or staff (notice, most of these people affected are women) who believe that the use of contraceptives and a tubal or vas deferens ligation surgery are morally good actions? How is this dilemma to be resolved?

In an introduction to the 1965 Constitution on Religious Freedom from Vatican II, Father John Courtney Murray, its chief architect, writes on how this dilemma was handled in previous centuries in the Catholic Church by using a double standard: “… freedom for the Church when Catholics are a minority, privilege for Church and intolerance for others when Catholics are a majority. This declaration has opened the way … toward a new straightforwardness between the Church and the world.”

It appears that Notre Dame is invoking “privilege for the Church” when they are in the majority and intolerance for others (Protestants and non-believers). In other words, non-Catholic staff members who need contraceptives or a sterilization surgery and believe in their private consciences that these are morally good actions are treated with intolerance and denied access to these important health services. This action is reminiscent of the Concordats the Vatican made with Italy and Spain in the 1920s to 1940s which stated that Protestants were heretics and had no right to worship in these nations. This Constitution on Religious Freedom corrected this injustice.

Will Notre Dame continue to treat their non-Catholic members with intolerance by claiming privilege and denying them important health services?

In addition, the Catholic teachings on contraceptives and sterilizations are problematical. Many respected surveys over the past 50 years have shown that more than 80 percent of Catholic women of child-bearing years have used or use contraceptives. In the late 1800s, Cardinal John Henry Newman wrote that there are four elements in the acceptance of church doctrines and important teachings: Scripture, Tradition, Theologians and Sensus Fidelium. Certainly, the 80 percent of Catholic women of child bearing age who do not accept this church teaching are the “Sense of the Faithful.” Does this mean that the Catholic teaching on contraceptives is problematical and not authentic teaching? I believe it does.

The Catholic Church says that it is a grave sin to “mutilate” a healthy organ in a human body. In the early 1990s while a chaplain at a local hospital, I called a priest official at the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. I asked if it allowed tubal ligitation if a woman’s life might be threatened by another pregnancy or for other serious reasons. He said that it did if the woman, with a doctor’s diagnosis, had a serious reason for having her tubes tied.

Again, a double standard. The history of the Catholic Church shows that in 1587 Sixtus V’s bull, Un pro nostri temporali munere, reorganized the choir of St. Peter’s so that “castrati” could be members. Castrati are boys who were castrated to preserve their high tonal voice. Church choirs and opera companies utilized these castrati until 1903 when Pius X stopped the practice. At times, more than 4,000 boys in Italy annually went through these dangerous operations. Was not this surgery the “mutilation” of a healthy organ? Certainly!

I believe that the University of Notre Dame has a responsibility to see that the private consciences of non-Catholic staff members, especially women, are respected so that they can receive these very important health services.

The Rev. Edward J. Ruetz lives in South Bend.