Clash of Rights
Posted by Rebecca Teti in News on Friday, March 05, 2010 2:00 PM
The DC City Council’s refusal to grant a conscience exemption to its new recognition of same-sex marriage has had immediate effects on the Archdiocese of Washington.
First Catholic Charities had to close its foster care program.
Now comes the news that in order not to violate Church teaching on marriage, the Archdiocese will no longer extend health care coverage to any spouses.
Spouses currently enrolled in the health care plan offered by the Archdiocese will be “grandfathered” in, but no new spouse may be enrolled.
The latter news strikes me as ironic in the context of our national debate about how to extend health care insurance coverage to more people rather than fewer.
It also highlights how completely same-sex marriage clashes with the right to free exercise of religion guaranteed by the First Amendment.
I don’t fault the Archdiocese of Washington for taking this step as the least bad option. It is doing what the state now compels it to do.
But what becomes of the Church’s teaching about just wage and support for family life as a result? It has just become very difficult for any married person to work for Catholic Charities—and difficult for Catholic institutions in the District to live out the fullness of the faith. In order to be faithful to the Church’s moral teaching, they can’t fully model its social justice teaching.
the idea that major changes in civil society can be implemented without profound clashes of principle is clearly false. Marriage is not an insular institution, even if, as here, it can be insulated to a degree from public policy. The Archdiocese of Washington has asked the Church’s adherents to bear the brunt of the new policy, but the coming clash was visible to city officials who chose conflict over compromise.
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