The Quiet Conservative November 22, 2009
The Catholic Bishops and Health Care
Today in the local Catholic church bulletin was a nationwide bulletin insert from the United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops. The announcement of the bulletin was made by the priest at the end
of mass with the encouragement that while the Church supports, and has been, a long time supporter of
health care reform, there are dangerous shortfalls in the Senate health care bill. Mainly, the Senate
version allows the federal funding of abortion and does not protect protesters of conscience. This is
what the bulletin leads off with under the header:
"As long-time advocates of health care reform, the U.S. Catholic bishops continue to make the moral
case for genuine health care reform that will protect the life, dignity, consciences and health of all,
especially the poor and vulnerable."
That is all I will print of the insert. Basically, the bulletin is asking you to contact Congress to insert
basic protections into the Senate bill that were forced on the House with the Stupak Amendment. To
read more about the position of the Catholic bishops visit www.usccb.org/healthcare.
Now to oppose abortion and the federal funding of abortion is a good and moral effort. To try and
secure protections for health care workers, "conscientious objectors" to abortion or euthanasia, is a
good and moral effort. In this the Catholic Church is morally correct and valiant in their efforts.
However, the Conference of Catholic Bishop's position is fatally flawed and unsalvageable even
considering their pro life efforts. To put it bluntly, you cannot help rob a man at gun point and
then object as to how the stolen money is used.
Since the concept of "health care reform" is a lie to begin with, you cannot say that opposing the more
odious elements of the proposal is moral. This reform touted by the Marxists is not about health care,
it is about enslaving the nation. The "reform" they talk about is over a thousand pages in the House
and two thousand in the Senate. The reason the bill is so massive, is the purpose of the bloated and
convoluted language is to allow those in power to have the bill mean whatever they say it means. The
bill is designed to crush private insurance, implement the social mores of the left by force on the nation,
and criminalize opposition.
Don't believe me? Then just try and not have insurance and face up to five years in prison and fines up
to $250,000. Abortion on demand? Paid for by the taxpayer? As long as the Secretary of Health and
Human Services wants it. Death Panels? Already there. The latest "research" on mammograms and
pap smears show what I warned about in the article The Fraternity of the Waiting Room. They won't
kill you, they will simply deny treatment. This study is the first step.
If anyone was even remotely interested in improving health insurance, then they would institute tort
reform, allow insurance to be purchased across state lines like car insurance, and give tax breaks to
those who invest in health savings accounts. How many pages would that take? Ten? That is how long
it takes to write about freedom. It takes something like three thousand pages total to forge slave chains.
The good bishops should know, what the state gives, the state owns. Render unto Caesar and all that.
When the good bishops cede the authority of individual conscience to the state, how can they object to
what the state decides? The argument for the reform goes that the reform will provide for the poor,
the elderly, those in need, etc Horse pucky! America is not, nor will it ever be as long as it remembers
its purpose, an entitlement nation of socialists. Americans are free people and as such we are not
required to provide for others. You may not come to me and take what I have earned and give it to
others. You do not have the authority. You do not have the right. That is theft. Or, now that health
care comes at the end of a gun and a jail sentence, armed robbery.
America is generous. By choice. We give more than the rest of the world of our goodness. When
you see the leftists saying we are greedy you can bank on that being a lie. When the tsunamis ravaged
the lands of the Indian Ocean in 2004, we were the ones to actually act. The other nations talked, but
we did.
We have freed more nations than anyone else in history. We have given more, fed more, taught more,
and protected more. We have been the font of freedom and prosperity for the rest of the world. We
rid Europe of Fascist socialism, Communist socialism, and rebuilt the whole darn thing after World War
Two. For over forty years we were the shield of Western Europe from the barbed wire of Russian
slavery to socialism.
People here in America do not lack health care. That is a bald faced lie. What we have is a system
straining under unfunded liabilities. When illegals get health care they do not pay, the system picks up
the tab. You don't have stories of people dying from lack of access to health care. No, wait, yes you
do! They come from countries that have socialist health care such as the Marxists wish to institute here.
If "Health Care Reform" is truly wanted, fix the fundamentals. Get the government out of funding all
together. That would gut the corruption and waste they prat about. Privatize Medicare/Medicaid as
well as Social Security while you are at it. Coupled with market based insurance and tort reform you
would see a boom in health care and a drop in costs. Fail to do this and fail in reform.
But as previously stated, health care reform has nothing to do with health care and all about power.
This is nothing short of a naked grab for power. With the exception of the abortion angle, it is a grab
the Conference of Catholic Bishops are accomplices to.
Here is the chain of logic:
Formal Cooperation with evil is never justified. Health care is the forced nationalization of personal
health care with the penalty of jail and ruinous fines if opposed. It mandates submission regardless of
lip service given to the sanctity of life. That lip service, by the way, is from people without integrity,
honesty, or anything other than the thin veneer that they say they will support the sanctity of life.
For example, when Kathleen Sebelius actively promoted abortion by vetoing measures to safeguard and
reduce abortions, she used the lie that her goal was to "reduce" abortions by making them more
available. Her mouth said one thing, her actions another. No one, from child in Catholic grade school
through bishop, should believe for one minute she is not still actively promoting abortion as "choice."
This is the type of person who the bishops wish to align themselves. It won't fly. By being "...long
time advocates of health care reform..." the bishops find themselves in formal cooperation with evil.
You can't assist in taking away people's freedom by reasoning they will be cared for.
The people pushing through these monstrous bills- that will say whatever a bureaucrat wants them to
say- with the penalty of death through non treatment, non access to care, and financial ruin if opposed,
are not moral nor just people. No platitudes of doing this for the poor or elderly justifies the crime
about to be committed, nor excuses the bishops from being their accomplice.
The Catholic bishops are trying to tell the thieves how to spend the money they themselves advocate
robbing at the point of a gun. Somehow I missed that mealy mouthed evasion of moral responsibility
in the Gospels. Far better for the Catholic bishops to come out and oppose all nationalized health care
and government involvement. Then, with the improved market place and improved cost of health care
true reform can be achieved, without selling of our souls and our freedom.
I was greatly disappointed at this fundamental flaw in the Conference. There is no justification, no
excuse, or mitigating effort. When "Health Care Reform" passes people will die who should not have
died. What will the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops say then?