One of those big events was my daughter Emily's junior thesis presentation. At her classical, Catholic school, the juniors and seniors are required to write and present an Scholastic-style thesis (like those found in Aquinas' Summa).
She clarifies some of the ambiguity surrounding the HHS mandate and why it is an infringement on the religious liberty of those who find certain requirements to be morally objectionable, so I share it here:
Whether it is Morally
Permissible to Cooperate with the HHS Mandate
Objection 1: Cecilia Munoz wrote on the White House
Blog: “According to a study by the Guttmacher Institute, most women, including
98 percent of Catholic women, have used contraception.” It seems from the
statistics that even though the Church denounces contraception, hardly any
Catholics find that contraception and religion are in opposition with one
another, so it is morally permissible to cooperate with the mandate.
Objection 2: President Obama announced that not only
some churches will be exempt from the mandate and religious organizations will
be granted a one-year transitional period, but also that a new accommodation
will be put into place for religious employers who object to the mandate. Now,
if an employer does not want to pay for services that the Church condemns, the
insurance company will offer the services free of charge. Therefore, it seems
that it is morally permissible to cooperate with the mandate, since the mandate
no longer forces employers to pay for any objective evil.
Objection 3: In Mark 12:17, Jesus says, “Render
therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.” American Catholics obey this
by paying their taxes to their government, even though it uses taxes to fund
Planned Parenthood. This year, Planned Parenthood has received $542,400,000
from government grants and reimbursements. If it is morally permissible to pay
taxes that may go to fund abortions, then, similarly, it seems that it is permissible
to cover an employee's abortion-inducing drugs.
On the contrary, St. Peter says in the Acts of
the Apostles, “We must obey God rather than men.”
The HHS
mandate requires employers to provide health insurance that covers
contraception, including abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization, to their
workers. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that sterilization
and contraception are morally unacceptable [no. 2399]. Some kinds of
contraception are actually abortion-inducing drugs; the Catechism
states: “Direct abortion, that is to
say, abortion willed as an end or a means, is gravely contrary to the moral
law.”
When an
individual cooperates with the sin of another, he may, by doing so, be sinning
himself. There are two main categories of cooperation. One is called formal
cooperation, which occurs when a person freely and directly cooperates with
the objectionable action of the principal agent and shares the intent of the
agent. For example, if a person were to drive the getaway car for bank robbers,
he would be formally cooperating in the robbery. The other, material
cooperation, occurs when a person knowingly cooperates with a morally
objectionable act principally performed by another [the principal agent]. If
a person was forced at gunpoint to open a safe for bank robbers they would be
materially cooperating with the robbery. Formal cooperation with sin is by
definition never morally permissible, while material cooperation may or may not
be wrong, depending on the circumstances. Many people think that the action of
an employer who complies with the mandate is an implicit formal
cooperation. But the United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) says that “Implicit formal
cooperation is attributed when, even though the cooperator denies intending the
wrongdoer's object, no other explanation can distinguish the cooperator's
object from the wrongdoer's object.'' In this case, though, there is an
explanation for the motive of the cooperator: the employer may simply want to
provide his employee's insurance, or he may want to avoid the heavy fines for
disobeying which could run him out of business. An employer who complies with
the mandate is not necessarily cooperating formally. For the cooperation to be
formal, the employer would have to be in support of the government and
cooperate of his own free will.
However,
even though such an employer is not necessarily cooperating formally, he still
may be committing a sin. He would, at any rate, be materially cooperating with
sin, and material cooperation is permissible in some cases but not in others.
Whether the cooperation is mediate or immediate can determine the
morality of an action. Mediate cooperation
occurs when a person cooperates in a way that is not essential for the
principal agent to commit the sin. If a person were involved in a situation in
which their cooperation was not necessary for the sin to be committed, the
cooperation might be permissible, depending both on how proximate the sin is,
and how grave it is compared to the good of the cooperator's action. Immediate
cooperation occurs when a person cooperates in a way that is essential for
the principal agent to commit the sin. If a person was the only one who knew
the combination to the safe door and opened it at gunpoint, he would be an
immediate cooperator. The morality of this kind of cooperation also depends on
the gravity of the sin. In the case of the HHS mandate, the employer alone is
given the task of providing the workers with the coverage, so he really is
essential for the worker to commit the sin.
Some will
argue that the employer can cooperate with the mandate because fines for
disobeying the mandate would ruin his business. But this cooperation cannot be
morally permissible because the sin with which he cooperates is grave matter.
The Church forbids cooperation with anything intrinsically immoral.
Therefore, if an employer complies with the mandate, he will be jeopardizing
the state of his own soul, he may be providing abortion-inducing drugs, which
destroy human lives, and he will be enabling his
workers to commit grave sins. The well-being of his business does not have more
value than his soul, the souls of others, and lives of children.
Therefore,
complying with the HHS mandate constitutes immediate material cooperation with
a grave sin, and cannot be morally permissible.
Answer to Objection 1: First, the figure that was
used on the White House blog is not at all accurate. For one thing, Cecilia
Munoz said that 98% of Catholic women have used contraception, but the study
was not referring to 98% of all Catholic women. The study itself
was referring to a narrower age group, and had merely subtracted the 2% of
Catholic women using NFP from the 100% to conclude that the rest used contraception.
But even if
98% of all Catholic women had used contraception, that would bear no relevance
to the question. The Church is not a democracy, ruled by majority vote. The
Church is ruled by God, and her laws are true. Many people have the impression
that, if enough people disobey one of the Church's laws, then they are invalid
or have been changed. But the doctrines of the Church will never change, and
Catholics will be held accountable according to the Church's laws.
Answer to Objection 2: Since the “accommodation” has
been put into place, many Catholics believe that the cooperation is no longer
immediate. But the so called “accommodation” does not really lift the
responsibility from the employer's shoulders. It states that religious
employers who object to providing those services to workers can have the
insurance company provide it “free of charge.” But this rephrasing of the
wording does not change the employer's role in the process: the employer still
buys the insurance coverage from a certain company for the employee, which will
include contraception, abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization. So, in
either scenario, the employer is a key part in the process, and is engaging in
immediate material cooperation.
Answer to Objection 3: The full quote is “Render therefore to Caesar
the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's.” The
cooperation with taxes to which the third objector referred is a different
moral situation from the cooperation with the HHS mandate. Someone who pays
taxes to the government and is against Planned Parenthood does not cooperate
formally with giving funds to it, and the material cooperation is mediate,
because, even if the person were to refuse to pay his taxes, the government
would still give about the same funds to Planned Parenthood. Mediate
cooperation can be justified according to the remoteness of the sin and the
proportionate good accomplished by the cooperator's action. A taxpayer's money
goes to the government, which then decides how to spend the funds on different
areas for the good of the community. In our country, at this time, the
government gives some of these funds to Planned Parenthood. So taxpayers'
participation is remote mediate material cooperation. As good members of a
community, Catholics are morally obliged to pay taxes for the good of the
country. The taxes could be given to Planned Parenthood, or they could be used
for highways, libraries, or post offices.
The
cooperation of an employer with the HHS mandate, on the other hand, is not
mediate material cooperation, but immediate: while the government can
still fund Planned Parenthood even if one person does not pay his taxes, the
employer is essential for the worker to receive the insurance coverage. As
explained before, immediate cooperation with a grave sin makes the cooperator
participate in the sin.
Therefore, it is not morally permissible to cooperate with
the HHS mandate.