Since I’m not a Catholic, it’s not really my place to criticize buffet Catholicism. But this sort of thing really irks me:
Marquette University announced benefits to the same-sex spouses of faculty and staff, in the wake of controversy surrounding the aborted hiring of a lesbian dean.
The benefits will go into effect at the beginning of the 2012 calendar year at the Catholic school, although the full details will not be given to faculty and staff in October of this year. The policy requires the same-sex relationship to be a registered domestic partnership with the state of Wisconsin.
In the university announcement, University President Robert Wild states he had difficulty reconciling the Jesuit principle of Cura Personalis, “Care for the Whole Person,” with the refusal of benefits to domestic partners, ultimately leading him to expand benefits after consulting with the incoming president and board of trustees.
William Kurz, a professor of theology at the school, said that the policy change was contrary to Catholic doctrine. “In our promotion of diversity and inclusion, we can confuse where a Catholic school teaches and stands for,” he said.
I can understand the pressure President Wild must be under to cave in to the gay-rights crowd. But why use some “Jesuit principle” to provide cover for his action? Does he really think anyone is buying it? And how does he not have “difficulty reconciling” the policy with, as Kurz points out, Catholic doctrine?
(Via: The Corner)
April 1st, 2011 | 11:53 am
Not to feel bad, Joe. When the pope issued a document that basically stated that Catholic universities should be, well, Catholic, a good many complained that it was an infringement of their “academic freedom”. You are not alone in your being irked.
April 1st, 2011 | 12:58 pm
The heart of the problem is that too many in Catholic authority positions no longer believe in sin. There is no right or wrong, just differences in opinion; and those can always be accomodated.
April 1st, 2011 | 1:13 pm
And next Prof Kurz will be brought up on charges for his “hate speech”
April 1st, 2011 | 4:24 pm
It seems to me that sex between unmarried partners is the only moral difficulty for the Church. Why not permit all employees to name anyone sharing their household: children, elderly parents, roommates of a non-sexual sort, and the like as beneficiaries for health insurance, and other benefits? The university extends its principle to the fullest, and everyone is happy to keep sexual intercourse out of the story.
April 1st, 2011 | 5:04 pm
I really think a solution like Todd’s sounds eminently reasonable. However, I’m unaware of any place where it’s been put into practice. Does anybody know of any examples of institutions that have decided to simply stop taking sexual relationships in general into account when it comes to benefits? Or are there perhaps statutory barriers to such a move?
April 1st, 2011 | 5:14 pm
The college at which I teach used to have (but dropped it when it switched to a different provider) what they called “employee plus one” coverage. It wasn’t as costly as family coverage; it covered the employee and one other person. (Single parent with child, for example.)
April 1st, 2011 | 6:15 pm
What is the bishop doing about this?
April 1st, 2011 | 7:50 pm
To Joe Carter: As a Catholic, I say–by all means–you have every right to criticize. Your thinking is often more “Catholic” than that of university faculty supposedly within the Church. Thank you for calling a spade a spade.
April 1st, 2011 | 8:40 pm
I really think a solution like Todd’s sounds eminently reasonable. However, I’m unaware of any place where it’s been put into practice. Does anybody know of any examples of institutions that have decided to simply stop taking sexual relationships in general into account when it comes to benefits?
Benefits cost money.
The idea of just granting anyone and everyone benefits is expensive.
The only people who need benefits are people who are subdividing their labor to accommodate the raising of children together.
Gays should share the subsidies with their child’s other real parent. Parenthood – its responsibilities, its benefits, and its government subsidies – should be treated as something that can’t just be taken away from one person and given to someone else for frivolous reasons (i.e. status, political statement, convenience, personal whim).
April 2nd, 2011 | 7:43 am
“The only people who need benefits are people who are subdividing their labor to accommodate the raising of children together.”
Which means childless heterosexual couples regardless of their legal status as “married” should get no benefits.
And homosexual couples who have legally adopted children?
April 2nd, 2011 | 1:37 pm
“The only people who need benefits are people who are subdividing their labor to accommodate the raising of children together.”
Which means childless heterosexual couples regardless of their legal status as “married” should get no benefits.
Well, if women want equality, they should be prepared to give up the benefits.
Full time homemakers of either gender need to be treated as dependents. There’s not much reason to put someone through the farce of training for another career if everyone knows she (or he) is going to give it up to raise a family.
And it has been well documented that in two-earner families with children, one partner takes a sacrificial cut – and therefore needs to be treated as a dependent.
This remains true after the kids leave the house, because the act of becoming a caregiver is a huge sacrifice, career-wise.
But if two able-bodied people are both pursuing careers, then why should either one of them need to be treated as a dependent?
If you’re not a homemaker, then what’s the basis of your claim for expensive benefits? If you’re able bodied, you should be able to provide for yourself.
Gay marriage is about establishing a legal right to detach benefits from function – claiming the rights but cherry-picking the responsibilities. So the choice becomes: do we want to give up living in “families” and instead have Big Government be the daddy that protects and cares for us, or do we want to be more specific, more clear, about what function those benefits are expected to serve?
April 2nd, 2011 | 3:58 pm
“If you’re not a homemaker, then what’s the basis of your claim for expensive benefits? If you’re able bodied, you should be able to provide for yourself.”
The benefits are in lieu of cash that would otherwise have to be paid.
The employer pays less out pocket by paying benefits than paying cash to the employee because not all employees need or are eligible for benefits. Th employee benefits to some extent because the benefits are not treated as income.
Often the benefits pay 80% of what the insurance company in its discretion deems reasonable (often much lower than the healthcare professionals charge) after deductibles are met. If both spouses are entitled to benefits then the two carriers “coordinate benefits so that almost all of the healthcare expenses are actually paid.
I have yet to hear an employer offer to cancel benefits in return for a higher base salary.
April 2nd, 2011 | 4:05 pm
This is quite intriguing to read about, but more disturbing than anything. Being in St. Louis and not being Catholic is difficult enough. But I try to hold ground on behalf of Catholics who are verbally abused by soured evangelicals. This doesn’t help me at all. Good to see some folks are upset about it.
April 2nd, 2011 | 9:22 pm
“If you’re not a homemaker, then what’s the basis of your claim for expensive benefits? If you’re able bodied, you should be able to provide for yourself.”
The benefits are in lieu of cash that would otherwise have to be paid.
Why would people be “demanding” benefits?
April 2nd, 2011 | 9:23 pm
Excuse me, I meant to say, if the benefits are nothing but salary that would be received only granted in different form, why would people be “demanding” benefits?
As in, why would there be any need to change anything?
April 3rd, 2011 | 3:41 pm
I have found that any college with “Jesuit”, Loyola, Marquette, or other Jesuit designation in its name or its motto (eg, “in the Jesuit tradition”) is probably no longer a Catholic institution.
There’s not a damn thing we can do about it, but “left to their own devices” they will probably not flourish in the long run.
April 3rd, 2011 | 10:52 pm
“The idea of just granting anyone and everyone benefits is expensive.”
Perhaps. But that was not the argument forwarded here. I suggested people who live in the same dwelling unit could share a benefit package. Furthermore, I think such people should be able to file a joint US tax return.
Extra benefits for children: I can go for that.
“Gays should share the subsidies with their child’s other real parent.”
Real? Real? Ooo.
So much for adoption. Of any sort. Perhaps Blake would like to hunt down my real daughter’s birth parents and get the real, non-frivolous truth.
Leave it to a conservative to keep their brains inside the box.
April 4th, 2011 | 4:00 am
“The idea of just granting anyone and everyone benefits is expensive.”
Perhaps. But that was not the argument forwarded here. I suggested people who live in the same dwelling unit could share a benefit package.
And that’s what gay marriage is all about.
Replacing the concept of “family” with something arbitrary.
Why would anyone want to trade a stable, secure system based on the threefold ties of biology, law, and love, for something fickle and flimsy?
There are two possible answers.
The first is that some people think that they should be entitled to all the benefits that one gets from belonging to a stable social unit – but that it is “oppressive” to actually be expected to contribute the obligations that go with the benefits. They want to give without taking.
This is what “gay marriage” is all about: the argument that if someone wants to make a baby with Sue or John, but doesn’t want to treat Sue or John with honor and respect, they should have a “right” to treat Sue or John as disposable goods – to simply reassign the child’s parents, just the way polygamists do when the head polygamist patriarch is displeased with one of the lesser disposable creatures. (Something else gays and polygamists have in common is not giving a hang about how breaking up and rearranging the natural family for their own selfish whims impacts the child or children involved, because the child in both cases is an object, not a person with feelings and needs independent of the grown-up’s feelings and needs)
The second reason someone might prefer to replace traditional marriage with a legal right to declare any two people “family” without regard to actual kinship bond is that they want the family structure to collapse, because they want a centralized government – and there is a direct correlation: broken families and government power each feed the other.
April 4th, 2011 | 9:34 am
Joe DeVet is correct. And the solution to the problem is simple:
1) Ask the local bishop to publicly withdraw recognition of the school’s “Catholic” status
2) Stop treating or referring to the school as though it were Catholic
3) Do not donate any money to the school (If you are asked to do so, politely and simply explain to the — probably undergraduate — caller exactly why you don’t give. Don’t use the term “ex corde ecclesia” since the caller probably will have no idea what you’re talking about.)
4) Do not encourage your children or your friends’ children to attend.
More evidence that the surest way to make sue your children lose their faith is to send them to a “Catholic” college or university (admittedly there are a few faithful exceptions).
April 4th, 2011 | 9:34 am
Re Todd’s proposal: If I am not mistaken, a few bishops proposed something similar when we were still in the Civil Partnership phase of the discussion. It was always opposed, successfully. We’re past that now. “Gay marriage” is the demand.
April 4th, 2011 | 10:03 am
“And that’s what gay marriage is all about.”
Actually, Blake, you’re wrong on that point. Same sex unions are about legal privileges, too. Interestingly, few enough of them have any moral problem: visiting the sick, caring for the dying, rearing children, sharing material resources.
My suggestion goes beyond just “two” people. Suppose my wife and I decide to provide a home for my aging mother. Or suppose my wife or I get seriously ill and become homebound for several months or even permanently, and bringing a college student (or anybody, really)into our home to assist in caregiving. I don’t see the need to connect shared benefits with sexual relations in any way. And while the groupings I’ve mentioned are not the so-called traditional nuclear family, they involve a traditional and much more generous principle of the extended family.
And by the way, let’s all not be fooled by thinking people opposed to same-sex unions can, in any way, tell us what these unions are all about. You might as well ask radical Muslims to give you a primer on Christianity. Or the Democratic Party to tell us about the GOP. I’m sure there are many opinions floating in those groups. But can you trust them?
April 4th, 2011 | 11:46 am
Why is the term ‘spouses’ used? Wisconsin does not have same-sex marriage.
April 4th, 2011 | 12:00 pm
I’ve tried before to figure out exactly what Blake is trying to say on this issue but have failed. I’ll try again and see whether clarity emerges.
If I have you right, Blake, you would allow any straight couple to marry.
You would not allow gay couples to marry, but you would allow civil unions.
You would allow straight couples to adopt but not gay couples or single people.
You would not allow sperm or egg donors.
It’s not clear to me how you would handle remarriage. Can a woman with a child from a previous marriage later enter a civil union with another woman? Can her partner adopt that child?
April 4th, 2011 | 8:12 pm
Michael, is it really so difficult to comprehend the idea that baby human beings are people with rights all their own?
What I am saying is really astonishingly simple:
1. Any policy that treats the child’s interest as irrelevant (that reduces the child to a “thing” or a commodity) is unacceptable.
Gay marriage is necessarily in conflict with a child’s rights. In order to accommodate gay marriage (as well as gay notions of what ought to constitute a “family”), existing protections that guard a child’s well-being and interests need to be overturned/set aside.
(Courts have already begun ruling that a gay person’s right to pleasure, satisfaction, and status are more important than the “child’s best interest” standard. However, these rulings are based on legal loopholes that can and should be closed.)
Egg and sperm donation are in conflict with a child’s rights when the purpose of the donation is to create a fatherless or motherless child for the satisfaction of someone who wants a child, but does not want to honor the child’s other parent.
The question of whether genuinely childless people have a right to use egg and sperm donation is a separate issue, because it has been suggested that the right to have a child is or may be a basic human right, and if it is in fact a basic human right, then it might equal the child’s right. My personal belief is that the children currently being aborted should instead be given to these childless couples (using surrogates if necessary, if the Supreme Court feels that forcing a woman to carry a child is an undue burden), but it’s really quite irrelevant to the “gay marriage” debate either way – since gays are not infertile, and their motive for wanting to use technology to create a motherless or fatherless child is not because they have no other choice, but simply because they don’t want the inconvenience associated with the usual methods.
(The “inconvenience” in this case being the act of fostering and supporting a child’s relationship with the child’s mother or father – an “inconvenience” that is directly linked to the child’s well-being)
2. Policies that recognizes a child’s rights alongside every other person’s rights is necessary.
Kids are people.
Right now, they are being deprived basic rights – not just in cases involving gays but all over the place – simply because their interests are being dismissed instead of being considered alongside the other evidence.
This is a violation of “equality under the law”. It is age discrimination.
April 4th, 2011 | 9:45 pm
“This is a violation of “equality under the law”. It is age discrimination.”
I agree that the rights of children are subordinate to the rights of parents. But the denial of children’s rights happens as frequently in so-called traditional families.
I’m with Michael on this, Blake. You seem to be suggesting there is indeed a hierarchy of rights: opposite sex parents, then kids, then SSA people.
It seems that too many conservatives care little enough for children, except when someone they don’t like gets to adopt them. Or they preach traditional family except when they run through trophy wives on their way to presidential candidacy.
April 4th, 2011 | 11:31 pm
Blake,
I’m sorry, but I really do find your writing difficult to understand. I was hoping that short, simple questions would elicit short, clear answers that I could understand. So let me add what I can gather from your last response. I’ll phrase my summary as questions so that you can give me the short, clear answers that I am looking for. Once I know where you stand, perhaps I’ll understand your reasoning better.
Would you continue to let all straight couples marry?
Would you prevent gay couples from marrying but allow them to form civil unions?
Would you continue to allow straight couples to adopt?
Would you prevent gay couples from adopting?
Would you prevent single people from adopting?
Would you prevent sperm and egg donors?
This last question you answered in your last post. Tell me if I am representing your position accurately. You support donorship only if the couple “honors the child’s other parent,” which is to say the person who donated the egg or the sperm.
This position leads to three questions:
What does it mean to honor the donor? Is that like open adoption, or do you have in mind something else?
Can gay couples receive egg or sperm donation?
Can single people?
I have one other thought about what you posted.
“My personal belief is that the children currently being aborted should instead be given to these childless couples (using surrogates if necessary, if the Supreme Court feels that forcing a woman to carry a child is an undue burden)”
I’m fascinated by this idea that we would know who would otherwise be aborted and that a pregnant woman wanting an abortion could have her fetus transferred to a surrogate.
April 5th, 2011 | 5:33 am
“My personal belief is that the children currently being aborted should instead be given to these childless couples (using surrogates if necessary, if the Supreme Court feels that forcing a woman to carry a child is an undue burden)”
I’m fascinated by this idea that we would know who would otherwise be aborted and that a pregnant woman wanting an abortion could have her fetus transferred to a surrogate.
Well, there are a few changes that will have to happen first.
Fortunately those changes appear to be happening – too slowly for my taste, but happening nonetheless.
April 5th, 2011 | 5:35 am
This position leads to three questions:
Here is a professional ethicist who explains my concerns better than I do:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/medical_ethics/me0155.htm
http://www.law2.byu.edu/organizations/marriage_family/past_conferences/may2010/drafts/CHILDREN%20RIGHTS.pdf
April 5th, 2011 | 5:40 am
My suggestion goes beyond just “two” people. Suppose my wife and I decide to provide a home for my aging mother. Or suppose my wife or I get seriously ill and become homebound for several months or even permanently, and bringing a college student (or anybody, really)into our home to assist in caregiving. I don’t see the need to connect shared benefits with sexual relations in any way.
Hey, why not your entire extended family?
And your entire neighborhood?
Oh, and your friends, too?
Why not make your employer simply provide you with a list, and you can fill in the names of everyone you’d like them to support?
After all, it doesn’t matter – any sane employer would take one look at your new legislation and immediately relocate to an Asian nation, where people are not allowed to get away with being quite so blatant in their greed.
April 5th, 2011 | 9:26 am
Blake, now you’re just being silly. Once a person starts posting multiples in a row and making caricatures of arguments he or she can’t address, you know the discussion–at least on the other side–has dried up.
April 5th, 2011 | 11:42 am
Blake, now you’re just being silly. Once a person starts posting multiples in a row and making caricatures of arguments he or she can’t address, you know the discussion–at least on the other side–has dried up.
But I’m not being silly; it’s really just obvious why we don’t just extend open benefits to people who have no reason and no claim to them.
If you want to declare that this means you “won” the debate, then have at – pat yourself on the back and buy yourself a Slurpee, with my blessing.
April 5th, 2011 | 11:43 am
Blake,
Well, I tried now for a second time to understand what you’re trying to say, but you simply seem incapable of providing straight answers to straight questions. Perhaps you are just a scattered writer and thinker, or maybe you’re not sure of what your answers actually are. Or perhaps you think that you’re being set up, or maybe you just like putting your emotions out there without wanting to examine them too closely.
There are other possibilities that are not coming to mind right now, but whatever the case is your contributions just don’t reward any serious response. You seem willing to engage in a series of exchanges, but you actively prevent them from clarifying matters, which makes engaging you a waste of time and effort.
And so I’ll indulge myself by imagining the scenario you laid out: A woman discovers she’s pregnant and decides that she cannot carry the baby to term under one of the conditions the Supreme Court has decided warrants surrogacy. She then goes to a doctor who transfers the fetus from her womb to another woman’s body. Really? You can do that with a six-week old fetus? That’s got to be something!
April 5th, 2011 | 8:04 pm
I don’t know if anyone is still reading this, but if so, Cardinal Levada, currently Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, when serving as Archbishop of San Francisco in 1997, reached a compromise with the city about benefits for domestic partners along the lines that some have suggested here. He explained his position in an article in First Things, which can be found here:
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9708/opinion/levada.html
April 5th, 2011 | 11:26 pm
Well, I tried now for a second time to understand what you’re trying to say, but you simply seem incapable of providing straight answers to straight questions. Perhaps you are just a scattered writer and thinker, or maybe you’re not sure of what your answers actually are.
Or maybe I’m not the one who is the problem.
April 5th, 2011 | 11:27 pm
I don’t know if anyone is still reading this, but if so, Cardinal Levada, currently Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, when serving as Archbishop of San Francisco in 1997, reached a compromise with the city about benefits for domestic partners along the lines that some have suggested here.
So he accepts that gays have the right to found a family?
Has he written anything substantive about how that will impact the children of the union and/or the institution of the family?
What happens when the definition of “family” is changed from biological kinship to arbitrary “choice”?
April 6th, 2011 | 12:57 pm
Blake,
I did not attempt to summarize Levada’s explanation of why he arrived at the compromise he did. I provided the link so people could read for themselves what he had to say. He did not recommend his solution to the very specific situation in San Francisco as a model for everyone to follow.
April 7th, 2011 | 10:04 am
“Or maybe I’m not the one who is the problem.”
Maybe not. Maybe we’ll see a Royals-Pirates World Series, too. But when two or three people have tried to tell you you’re not making sense, it looks more like you’re the Orioles playing in the AL East.
“What happens when the definition of “family” is changed from biological kinship to arbitrary “choice”?”
Not changed, Blake. Expanded to include adoption, among other things. Husbands and wives, at least outside of medieval royalty, are not biologically akin, and need we remind you that the married couple is the foundation of the family?
You’re reaching on this, my friend. Time to retreat, rethink, reformulate.
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