Another Catholic Voice in the Public Square - November edition

In today’s bulletin, the latest from our parish pro-life committee came out. I missed the election issue, if there was one, which saved them an earful. Strangely, even though all of Washington is talking about tax reform, there was nary a mention, so I mentioned it in my response, which will be emailed to them presently.

In a budget funded by over one trillion dollars income taxation, $600 million is rounding. A portion is likely for Medicaid abortions for rape, incest or the life of the mother. Those are the recognized exceptions to the Hyde Amendment and they are not going anywhere. 80% of abortions are paid with cash and no insurance. The remaining 20% are paid for by insurance policies funded either with an Affordable Care Act subsidy or the Health Insurance Exclusion for private employers. This is very indirect funding, as is abortions paid for by government contract employee insurance. Regardless, the link between any of our taxes and any or all of the abortions performed is not enough to claim a violation of religious liberty or to merit the non-payment of income taxes, at least according to the text used in Special Ethics at Catholic Universities and minor seminaries, as any priest or lawyer will tell you if they kept their book.

The troubling portion of funded abortions are for trafficked immigrant women. If you assume that a woman who has been trafficked is ipso facto a rape victim, then Hyde would not stop these abortions. The way to prevent such abortions is to rescue these women sooner as part of prostitution enforcement, which is too often corrupted at the police level. More troubling is offering such abortions to avoid the birth of an American citizen as an anchor baby. The best of Catholic teaching on sexual matters is not when it tries to enter our marriage beds, but when it speaks out for the mentally infirm (both in the womb and as parents) and immigrants, defending their right to procreate or survive.

Catholic Social Teaching refers primarily to Encyclicals by Pope Leo XIII (Rerum Novarum), Pope Pius XI (Quadregismo Anno, esp 71 and Casti Connubii, esp. 120-121), Pope Paul VI, St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (Caritas in Veritate, esp. 25). The passages referenced have to do with living wage requirement and social welfare systems, which have been attacked under the guise of austerity and which require that if the employer cannot arrange for a living wage (congratulations to MoCo Council for its $15 minimum wage law), then public support is required to fill the gap. While the proposed Tax Bill increases the Child Tax Credit by $600, it does so simply to offset the ending of the child exemption. The reality is that according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, each additional child requires $1000 per month. We currently pay, both before and after reform, only $133.

If you want us to contact our members of Congress and the Senate on life matters, the lack of a living wage support in the bill, which should be funded with pay, not with end of the year refunds, should be at the top of the list. Indeed, the Pro-Life Activities Committee seems to be the one the needs the reminder here. This should be what they lead with in discussions on the tax debate, right after they condemn efforts to end Mandates in the Affordable Care Act (although at least these will collapse the system and lead to single-payer insurance) and the excessive cuts in the proposed bill favoring inherited wealth and the financial sectors. Any intimation that these funds will help small business (in terms of revenue) are simply untrue.

This is an area where Catholic leadership must be loud and clear against the excesses of this bill, as they will both encourage wage stagnation and abortion by giving the Executive Class an incentive to deprive the worker of the full measure of their productivity by keeping wages low, which is one of the four sins which cries to Heaven for Vengeance, in order to be paid a bonus. Higher tax rates discourage such rent seeking because the bonuses for doing so would go to the government.

This is not violation of subsidiarity, since only tax provisions have effectively prevented excessive executive salaries at the expense of the workers. Likewise, the Affordable Care Act provisions which demanded a certain benefit package in all insurance policies stopped the marketing of what amounted garbage health insurance. It was designed to make lower wage workers believe they had protection, and often did provide a small drug benefit, but was useless for any kind of hospitalization or more than one Emergency Room visit in a year. The market would not prune this garbage so subsidiarity required government to do so. Likewise, because the market will not provide $1000 per month per child in income below the professional level without fathers or mothers being fired for having additional children, the taxing power of the government must pick up the slack. This is why the Bishops now defend the Affordable Care Act and the Holy Sisters in the Catholic Health Association always favored it. To speak negatively of it in a parish newsletter displays a degree of partisanship that discredits all that is said, especially about abortion, where the pro-life movement is often dubbed the Republican Party at prayer.

Given their own self-governance, most Catholic Charities Adoption Agencies had little or no problem adopting children out to gay couples. It is only when certain bishops with a social agenda noticed that this became an issue. Studies show that they are safe and loving parents. There is a line between being a witness for truth and throwing a temper tantrum for not getting your way. Some bishops crossed that line long ago. Oddly, the whole movement for gay marriage came about because Catholic Hospitals were denying those who were euphemistically called long-time companions the dignity of a spouse in favor of often-estranged families of origin who blamed the spouse for their own bad behavior. These are cases where the couple had left their parents and become one flesh and our hospitals did not respect that. CHA finally decided to respect these relationships, even before the law changed. Would that the rest of the Church showed such wisdom.

Stem cell research is not abortion. Officially, abortion can only occur after pregnancy started with implantation. Such research is not meant to cure disease so much as to clone body parts. The research method is what is being practiced. The cells are useless precisely because they have not gone through gastrulation, which is natures filter to stop bad blastocysts from becoming embryos.

Whether civil rights precede written constitutions or have organized them, there is a difference between negative and positive rights. A negative right limits state power. A positive right uses state power to grant a privilege in society. Prior to Roe v. Wade, abortion law did not recognize the unborn as human beings so abortion was considered bad medical practice punishable with a fine (like shooting your neighbor’s dog) and notification of the Medical Society, which drove most abortion underground rather than stopping it. Roe noted the lack of congressional recognition of the unborn and drew the line at viability. Currently, the unborn have a right to life vis-a-vis the government, which cannot force an abortion on anyone and won’t execute a pregnant woman. It will not, however, include the unborn in the positive right to not be murdered by their mother (all murder statutes imply a positive right for the victim to having their crime solved and avenged). States cannot change who is a person under law. Only Congress can. There is now a Republican House, Senate and President, all purportedly pro-life. The enforcement clause of the 14th Amendment awaits! Put up or shut up, but make sure there is some compromise with the other party so that it does not simply undo what is enacted in 2019 (after impeachment).

For a more complete discourse on rights and abortion, see http://xianleft.blogspot.com/2017/11/how-is-life-right-letter-to-pro-lifers.html