cooperation with evil

by: los anjalis

Fri Dec 25, 2009 at 21:36:29 PM PST

The New York Times has a piece out today -- Christmas Day -- that sheds some light on cooperation with evil in the context of the abortion debate and the health insurance reform bill that just passed the Senate yesterday.

The Senate bill, approved Thursday morning, allows any state to bar the use of federal subsidies for insurance plans that cover abortion and requires insurers in other states to divide subsidy money into separate accounts so that only dollars from private premiums would be used to pay for abortions.

Just days before the bill passed, the Catholic Health Association, which represents hundreds of Catholic hospitals across the country, said in a statement that it was "encouraged" and "increasingly confident" that such a compromise "can achieve the objective of no federal funding for abortion." An umbrella group for nuns followed its lead.

The same day, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops called the proposed compromise "morally unacceptable."

(more after the jump...)

Professor Cathleen Kaveny of the Notre Dame University Law School said the CHA's decision could (as paraphrased and quoted in the NYTimes):

permit support for "imperfect legislation," as long as one's intent was not to "further abortion," one made every effort to "minimize the harm," and one achieved "an extremely important good that can't be achieved any other way."

Leave it to a set of morally (and financially) obliged corporations to figure that one out.

On the other hand, Roman Catholic bishops have taken a hardline stance, that ANY compromise on federal funding of abortion = Kill the bill completely.

"The Catholic Health Association does not represent the teaching of the Catholic Church on the non-negotiable defense of innocent life," the conservative Catholic activist Deal Hudson said in a statement, calling the association's move "utterly offensive."

So to review the logic here: Roman Catholic bishops, bigtime religious leaders, wildly respected by many in the world, are politically involved in completely opposing a bill that may improve the greater good of Americans.  In other words, their "non-negotiable defense of innocent life" starts with conception of a fetus and ends when a baby is born?  How does the principle of cooperation with evil apply and the principle of non-negotiable defense of innocent life apply here?  I'm confused.

I have nothing against Catholics being strongly against abortion or against a women's right to choose. But I'm just not able to wrap my head around a desire to by all means defend innocent life, while threatening to stop progrss in its tracks because it even FURTHER regresses current standards of abortion coverage in the US (see Hyde Amendment).

Oh yes, 'tis the spirit. Merry Christmas everyone. Don't forget -- on this holy day -- to defend innocent life and not cooperate with evil. Interpret that how the hell you want. And to hell with separation of church and state while we're at it.

PS - is this legislative/moral back and forth really a huge ploy to stop us from dreaming big about improving health and wellness and creating big beautiful radical transformative changes in the world?  Win some, lose more, two steps forward two steps back...