Abstract
Catholic healthcare institutions face serious challenges to the exercise of their religious freedom with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. The challenges require participation by way of cooperation in actions—elective abortion and contraception—deemed immoral in the Catholic tradition which holds these practices to be damaging to individuals, to the institution of marriage, and to the polity. An understanding of the principles that guide cooperation in complex human acts where the cooperation can be seen as cooperation in evil and an application of these principles to the issues of elective abortion and contraception identifies the possible harms. The assessment of this paper is that that cooperation in these acts by Catholic institutions forces them to lie down in a Procrustean bed wherein acquiescence to these objectionable government-mandated services in the name of toleration in a pluralistic polity forces a damaging or perhaps even fatal encounter with the contemporaneous Procrustes.
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Notes
- 1.
The application of the legal term “person” to the human being throughout the trajectory of its existence is a contended issue in the contemporary culture. The Catholic tradition holds that every human being is a person whose appropriate legal rights, including the right to life , ought to be guaranteed in law.
- 2.
The principle of totality seeks to protect the integrity of an organism and regulates the use of the part in service of the whole. It distinguishes between a physical organism such as the human body which has a unity subsisting in itself and a moral organism such as a community which has a unity on the level of action. The distinction between organisms serves to limit destruction of the part of a physical whole or restriction of action in a moral whole.
- 3.
These effects on young people attending college and universities are evident to faculty and student affairs personnel. A recent study at the University of Virginia (Rhoads 2012) reports harm to young men as well as young women. The effects in the wider culture have been widely reported and documented in studies from institutions that range from the Family Research Council to Harvard University.
- 4.
Aquinas describes the essential conditions of law as (1) a dictate of right reason, (2) from whomever has care of the community, (3) for the good of the community, and (4) promulgated (ST I-II, q. 90, a. 4).
- 5.
Theologians, including Augustine (2007, De ordine, bk. II, ch. 4) and Aquinas (ST II-II, q. 10, a. 11), considered the toleration of prostitution as a possible remedy for lust.
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Hogan, M.M. (2017). Catholic Institutions within a Democratic Polity: A Potential Procrustean Bed. In: Eberl, J. (eds) Contemporary Controversies in Catholic Bioethics. Philosophy and Medicine(), vol 127. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55766-3_36
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