Who Defines the Religious Mission of the Church?
By now, undoubtedly you’ve heard much about the controversial HHS mandate requiring contraception, sterilization and abortifacient drug coverage in employer insurance plans. The conscience exceptions for “religious employers” are so narrowly defined in the mandate that they will not extend to Catholic schools, hospitals, colleges, homeless shelters and other religious institutions. Let’s be clear: Contraception is the hot-button word in the debate, but religious liberty is the real issue.
What is at stake is the ability of the Catholic Church—or any religion—to define its own mission. With the HHS mandate, the government seeks to redefine the religious mission of the Church. How this conflict plays out will have far-reaching consequences with regard to any activity the government may choose to regulate or mandate in the future.
Recent attempts by the Administration to side-step the controversy through “accommodation” have ignored this fundamental issue.
Since its beginnings, the religious mission of the Church, along with preaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments, has always included caring for the sick, the poor and the hungry. That mandate comes directly from Jesus. It is not only priests in Roman collars preaching on Sunday mornings who are engaged in the work asked of us by Jesus, but also on a daily basis that work is done by professed religious brothers and sisters and thousands of lay people in the Church and its associated organizations such as hospitals, Catholic Charities and schools.
It’s ironic that at the same time the controversy over what constitutes the mission of the Church is under fire, an exhibit clearly illustrating that mission—through photos, letters and artifacts—is now at the California Museum in Sacramento through June 3, its ninth and final stop on a nation-wide tour.
The exhibit, “Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America,” follows the history of service to God and humankind by women religious in the United States for nearly 300 years. Beginning with the arrival of Ursuline Sisters in New Orleans in 1727, their history is intertwined with the history of our nation. Sisters built orphanages, taught in schools and nursed the sick. In the 1850’s—the roaring Gold Rush days of California—Sisters of Mercy opened a San Francisco “safe house” for former prostitutes and destitute women. The first U.S. Navy hospital ship was staffed by Sisters of the Holy Cross during the Civil War. In 2005, one of every six hospital patients in the U.S. was treated at a Catholic hospital. Over 100 American colleges and universities have been founded by Catholic religious communities.
Clearly, the religious mission of these courageous and enterprising women and their colleagues has always extended to people of every race, people of faith and no faith. To deny that Catholic schools, hospitals and homeless shelters operated by the Church are not part of its religious function is quite simply absurd, and the HHS mandate is a blatant violation of religious liberty rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.
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