Last week, Notre Dame’s president, Fr. John Jenkins, CSC, sent a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius imploring her to enact more robust conscience protections in the forthcoming HHS regulations for preventive services coverage under the new health care law. It’s important that conscience protections be much broader than even what Fr. Jenkins calls for, but it is good that he spoke up on the issue.
Still, several aspects of Fr. Jenkins’ letter come off as decidedly bizarre.
First, it’s somewhat odd that Fr. Jenkins chose to associate the concerns and interests of Secretary Sebelius with the university’s mission: “Of course, Madam Secretary,” he wrote, “as the daughter of a distinguished Notre Dame alumnus and faculty member, you are no stranger to our mission.” That Sebelius is a longtime darling of the abortion industry is news to no one.
The point being, if Fr. Jenkins expects his notion of a Catholic university to find purchase with Kathleen Sebelius, he’s likely to be disappointed. If he thinks her staunch abortion advocacy jibes with her supposed familiarity with Notre Dame’s mission, there is cause for concern, especially given Notre Dame’s history of abetting politicians who find it convenient to exclude certain human beings from the law’s protection.
Which brings us to the second reason Fr. Jenkins’ letter is strange: he repeatedly cites President Obama’s 2009 endorsement of a “sensible conscience clause,” but now laments that HHS’s proposed conscience protections are “not the kind of ‘sensible’ approach the president had in mind.” Aren’t they though?
Despite the clear and unambiguous objections of his local bishop (and of many others), Fr. Jenkins lavished honors upon President Obama in the name of dialogue and exchange. And what was exchanged? William McGurn (himself a Notre Dame alum) wrote this at the time:
[This] was precisely the message President Obama wanted to send: How bad can he be on abortion if Notre Dame is willing to honor him?
We cannot blame the president for this one. During his campaign for president, Mr. Obama spoke honestly about the aggressive pro-choice agenda he intended to pursue—as he assured Planned Parenthood, he was “about playing offense,” not defense—and his actions have been consistent with that pledge. If only our nation’s premier Catholic university were as forthright in advancing its principles as Mr. Obama has been for his.
In a letter to Notre Dame’s Class of 2009, the university's president, the Rev. John Jenkins, stated that the honors for Mr. Obama do not indicate any “ambiguity” about Notre Dame’s commitment to Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life. The reality is that it was this ambiguity that the White House was counting on; this ambiguity that was furthered by the adoring reaction to Mr. Obama’s visit . . .
President Obama used Notre Dame for political cover, donning the blue-and-gold mantle like so much Catholic arm candy. In return, Notre Dame received the acclaim of the media and the “prestige” it craved.
The credulous Fr. Jenkins refuses to admit the cynical nature of the transaction, but it’s left him in an awkward position. The One who so convincingly professed undying admiration (or in this case, “a sensible conscience clause”)—the One whose advances seemed so sincere and were so eagerly accepted—is now more distant and unresponsive. The One, it turns out, has prior commitments.
Also curious is Fr. Jenkins assessment of the situation that HHS’s proposed regulations would foist upon Notre Dame. Here’s the relevant sentence:
“[These regulations] would compel Notre Dame to either pay for contraception and sterilization in violation of the church’s moral teaching, or to discontinue our employee and student health care plans in violation of the church's social teaching. It is an impossible position.”
Michael Sean Winters of the National Catholic Reporter finds value in Fr. Jenkins’ insight. He writes:
Father Jenkins makes a point that had not previously occurred to me - or to anyone else whose writings on this topic I have seen. It is just as morally objectionable to stop providing health care coverage as it is to provide coverage for procedures we find morally objectionable.
Politically, of course, Father Jenkins’ letter carries great weight. He took plenty of (metaphorical) bullets for his decision to invite President Obama to give the commencement address at Notre Dame. He is not in any way, shape or form an “opponent” of the administration….To be clear, it is Planned Parenthood and their ilk who are trying to change the rules of the road here, not us.
It’s admirable for Fr. Jenkins to point out that the proposed HHS regulations are grossly deficient, and for Mr. Winters to point out that “Planned Parenthood and their ilk” are to blame. They are right to point out that it would be a moral tragedy if Notre Dame was forced—by unjust, even tyrannical government actions—to stop offering health insurance. Yet Fr. Jenkins’ claim—that paying for contraception and sterilization would be, as Mr. Winters’ puts it, “just as morally objectionable” as dropping employee health insurance—is nonsense.
Apart from failing basic principles of moral reasoning—e.g. there is a difference between committing a positive evil and being forcibly prevented from doing some positive good—Jenkins’ claim also presumes that the only morally acceptable relationship between employer and employee includes employer provided health insurance. While the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church affirms clearly that there is a human right to “basic health care,” there’s no mention whatsoever of “health insurance,” a point one is not sure registers with Winters or Jenkins.
Much more serious is the placing of blame on Notre Dame for an injustice perpetrated by those—“Planned Parenthood and their ilk”—who support the problematic HHS regulations. Tellingly, neither Winters nor Jenkins seems capable of explaining any meaningful difference between “President Obama and Secretary Sebelius,” on the one hand, and Planned Parenthood’s “ilk” on the other, though they seem very much one and the same. Thus Mr. Winters can write, “[Fr. Jenkins] is not in any way, shape or form an ‘opponent’ of the administration,” and mean it as exculpatory while others find that same fact disturbing.
Notre Dame may have erred in honoring President Obama in 2009, but it does not follow that Fr. Jenkins should refrain from criticizing Obama or his administration now. Nor is there intrinsic value in the constant refighting of intramural disputes. But the public moral witness of our nation’s most prominent Catholic institution has been sadly and unnecessarily diminished. Fr. Jenkins’ letter is a reminder of that. That is a lesson neither Notre Dame, nor anyone else in the Church, can afford not to have learned.
Stephen P. White is a fellow in the Catholic Studies Program at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C. and the coordinator of the Tertio Millennio Seminar on the Free Society. The views expressed here are his own.
RESOURCES
Letter from Fr. Jenkins to Kathleen Sebelius
William McGurn, Obama Scored Big at Notre Dame
President Obama’s Notre Dame Speech
Michael Sean Winters, Kudos to Father Jenkins
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Comments:
I objected to Fr. Jenkins honoring Barack Obama. I later sent him a lengthy letter urging him to drop the charges against the so-called "ND 88"; I shared this letter with Joseph Bottum when he was editor of First Things. I considered awarding Obama an honorary degree as a horrible mistake and a scandal.
Fr. Jenkins now has sent Kathleen Sebelius a thoughtful and principled letter objecting to the infringement on Catholic teaching of the Satanic fiat of Obamacare. Your article does not dispute this. Instead, you criticize the direct (Sebelius) and indirect (Obama) recipients of Fr. Jenkins' letter. Your indictment of Fr. Jenkins is wholly misplaced.
Your assessment of Kathleen Sebelius is accurate. As governor of Kansas, she defended and honored George Tiller, the notorious practitioner of partial birth abortion. In short, she gave safe haven to a murderer. I assume Fr. Jenkins is aware of Sebelius' history of embracing the slaughter of innocents. You seem to suggest, because of Sebelius' embrace of the culture of death, that Fr. Jenkins ought not to have done anything in response to Obamacare's assault on human life and Catholic institutions because it would fall on deaf ears. I too believe Fr. Jenkins' letter will have little impact on Sebelius. I expressed this cynicism to to a friend at Notre Dame after I received Fr. Jenkins' letter. My friend, however, correctly pointed out that we are called to be faithful, not to be successful. In this regard, Fr. Jenkins was entirely faithful to our duty as Catholics.
Your second point is equally disingenuous. You suggest Obama lied to Fr. Jenkins by failing to include a "sensible conscience clause". Obama is an unabashed Leninist-Stalinist communist; he lies without consequence and will pander to religion only when it suits his purpose. Perhaps Fr. Jenkins naively believed Obama when the latter spoke at Notre Dame. In all events, that hardly seems to justify your criticism of Fr. Jenkins in this case. Again, should Fr. Jenkins have done nothing? I prefer to believe that Fr. Jenkins belatedly has recognized that Obama is an enemy of the Church and is not to be believed. In this regard, the best thing Fr. Jenkins could do was to expose Obama as an enemy of life and publicly to shift to burden to Obama to explain his failure to fulfill his promise to provide a "sensible conscience clause". While this may not be the approach you or I would take, it is not demonstrably unreasonable, even if Obama ignores Fr. Jenkins' letter.
Your attack on Fr. Jenkins for sending the letter to Sebelius is similar to the current Wall Street protests--what exactly do you want and what should Fr. Jenkins have done?
Ed
I agree with your friend that we are called to be faithful, not to be successful, which is why I begin by applauding Fr. Jenkins’ speaking out on the matter, and conclude by insisting that past mistakes don’t diminish the rightness of Fr. Jenkins’ future actions. But past mistakes can and do diminish future moral witness. I think that this is precisely just such a case. I see no evidence whatsoever – indeed, much to the contrary – that suggests Fr. Jenkins sees President Obama as an” enemy to the faith.”
As for President Obama, I do not think he lied about “sensible conscience protections.” It’s just that this is a man who finds partial-birth abortion “sensible.” Given that, why would anyone assume that he would find compulsory contraception and sterilization coverage any less so? Thus my point, as I enunciate in the ultimate paragraph, is not that Jenkins should not have written the letter to Sec. Sebelius, but that 1) the effectiveness of such a letter has been diminished by the events of 2009, and 2) the contents of the letter indicate that he still can’t (or won’t) understand why. Naivete can be just as dangerous as cynicism.
The more serious issue you raise is that Fr. Jenkins' letter lacks the effectiveness it might otherwise possess because Fr. Jenkins' honoring of Obama in 2009. To be sure, Fr. Jenkins sacrificed valuable moral authority when he honored a man who is not only the enemy of the Roman Church, but of humanity. We are in agreement on this point. I suggest, however, that Fr. Jenkins will not regain the authority he squandered by remaining silent. Paul and Augustine both lacked any moral authority at various times in their lives. Happily, they did not remain silent. I wish Fr. Jenkins would have done more and said much more. I suspect you concur. For now, I accept what he has done, because it is much better than what he did in 2009. We all stumble, and, as Chesterton pointed out "[i]t is always simple to fall; there are an infinity of angles at which one falls, only one at which one stands. * * * But . . . in my vision the heavenly chariot flies thundering through the ages, the dull heresies sprawling and prostrate, the wild truth reeling but erect." Orthodoxy, at 108.
Best,
Ed
now we, who opposed this great traversty, are supposed to be surprised by the actions of the Obama administration a la Ms Sebilius? Father Jenkins is not the brightest bulb nor the sharpest knife . You lie down with dogs, you get fleas! An old Sicilian adage he should have learned somewhere along the way toward his high post in the world of academe. Every humble pisan knows what he has apparently forgotten. We will be paying for this "Humpty Dumpty" decision the President of Notre Dame made in 2009 against all better advice and wisdom.
I do agree that the social principle concerns availability of health care rather than health insurance. Conflating the two has seriously warped the discussion.
So this imbecile at Notre Dame appealing to Klan Parenthood attorney Sebelius is not going to get jack from her. At some point, you have to be willing to say that someone's conscience is so ossified that they have no shot at changing their path.
†
First, there is no one so far gone into evil that she cannot repent. I believe that there may be people who are sufficiently unlikely to repent that the resources of Christianity might be more effectively directed elsewhere, as I assume you meant, but that is a different question.
Secondly, the term Klan Parenthood seems somewhat inappropriate. The number of people killed by the KKK is not well known, but is probably in the single digit thousands with 6000 as a high guess. Abortion has killed more than 1.5 billion people. It seems somehow wrong to condemn a group by associating it with another group that was, numerically, only 0.004% as bad. (Yes, I know that the KKK had a much higher impact-to-deaths ratio, and that Planned Parenthood is not responsible for all abortions, but still...) The fact that such a term would, in most circles, make Planned Parenthood seem worse merely illustrates just how bad things have gotten.
On a more general note, I suspect that if the law gets in (without a sensible conscience clause), it will generate a few protests and then be accepted as inevitable. In Canada, taxpayers have been paying for abortion since 1968, and there are no protests about this, nor have I (a Canadian) ever heard it mentioned or even though of it before reading this article.
Does this imply that every taxpayer in every country with a national health care program and public abortion funding is an accessory to murder? If so, does this does not imply a moral obligation to not pay your taxes? Although moral concerns are, or course, prior to economic concerns, that does seem a dangerous idea.
Forcing the Church to stop providing medical insurance to it's employees is just one of the ways to achieve that goal.
Father Jenkins, although he mentions that this will force the University to have to make a decision between that which is a violation of a moral teaching and that which is a violation of a social teaching while failing to recognize both teachings are moral/social teachings, does not necessarily equate the two but rather makes it clear that he will have to compromise a moral/social teaching of The Church and thus compromise the Catholic mission of the University.
Knowing Father Jenkins, I believe that he thought it was possible to change President Obama's hardened heart, and having chosen Maryann Glendon to also speak, the hearts of many as well.