Schizophrenic Health Care Policy

Schizophrenic Health Care Policy
Is the right hand of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops working at cross purposes from the left hand?

By Stephanie Block

On the one hand, there is the very welcome bulletin insert disseminated by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in October that reads, in part, “Tell Congress: Remove Abortion Funding & Mandates from Needed Health Care Reform: Congress is preparing to debate health care reform legislation on the House and Senate floors. Genuine health care reform should protect the life and dignity of all people from the moment of conception until natural death. The U.S. bishops’ conference has concluded that all committee-approved bills are seriously deficient on the issues of abortion and conscience, and do not provide adequate access to health care for immigrants and the poor. The bills will have to change or the bishops have pledged to oppose them.” [10-23-09]

The bulletin insert goes on to refer to a U.S. bishops’ letter of October 8, 2009. It’s a great letter and states – again, in part: “No one should be required to pay for or participate in abortion. It is essential that the legislation clearly apply to this new program longstanding and widely supported federal restrictions on abortion funding and mandates, and protections for rights of conscience. No current bill meets this test…. If acceptable language in these areas cannot be found, we will have to oppose the health care bill vigorously.”

It then encourages Catholics to support the “Stupak Amendment” incorporating “longstanding policies against abortion funding and in favor of conscience rights” by writing their legislators and concluding that, “If these serious concerns are not addressed, the final bill should be opposed.”

On the other hand, until the USCCB website was recently scrubbed, it openly praised PICO as helping to lead the struggle for universal health care reform – a struggle that intimately effects Catholics who are in PICO affiliate community organizations, Catholics who give money to the annual Catholic collection, the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), and Catholics who participate in various Catholic education programs to teach social justice activism – which are usually highly secularized and supportive of participation in Alinskyian community organizing like PICO.

Given this level of support for organizations like PICO, it’s hard to understand why the USCCB website would be scrubbed – or almost scrubbed. Though it no longer features PICO as the model for universal health care reform activism, one can still read on the USCCB website that PICO’s founder and executive director, Father John Baumann, SJ, received a CCHD award this year in part for PICO’s success at obtaining “regional, then state funding for health care for poor families” along with “raising awareness and leveraging federal funding for health care.”

Another spot on the USCCB website, an action alert from June 2, 2009 titled “Help Health Care Reform,” tells Catholics to “Partner with a local group funded by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development that is working on health care reform. Some PICO-affiliated groups and others will be organizing ‘Faith and Health Care Sundays’ throughout June 2009.”

Of course, there’s no mention that PICO’s work for health care reform comes with a price tag in the form of innocent blood, shed. PICO has been notoriously unconcerned that the health care reform it has promoted over the past decade includes abortion and abortifacient family planning components. Further, PICO networks with pro-abortion entities to push health care reform sans life-protective amendments. But, if the USCCB is going to recommend Catholic parishes join PICO anyway and if the CCHD is going to continue to fund PICO affiliates, why suddenly clean up websites references to PICO’s work with the USCCB?

Here’s another curious bit: one Catholic “PICO” parish published an October 2, 2009 statement, allegedly prepared by PICO’s national office, concerning its work with the USCCB. “During 2008-09 the PICO network has worked closely with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and with dioceses and parishes across the nation to make health care more affordable for American families, with a special focus on the poor,” the statement reads. “PICO and USCCB collaborated to define a position that would address access for all; and the USCCB and PICO have worked together to press Congress to protect the poor in health reform, including issuing a joint statement with other religious denominations on this issue on July 6, 2009…. The USCCB has invited PICO staff and clergy to brief Bishops on our health care efforts and has encouraged dioceses and parishes to work with PICO affiliates to hold educational sessions on health care.” [Parish bulletin, Church of the Most Holy Trinity,” October 18, 2009; Church of the Most Holy Trinity RC is a member of PICO’s San Diego Organizing Project.]

Now mind you, this “joint statement” between the USCCB and other denominations isn’t readily accessible from the Internet nor are there other documents describing it. However, the Most Holy Trinity bulletin is obviously quoting extensively from something.

I don’t fault the USCCB with distancing itself from PICO – quite the contrary – if that’s really what it’s doing but one does want the distance to be sufficient. End the funding. Stop educating people in the Machiavellian political ideas of Alinskyian organizing. Pull Catholic parishes from fellowship with pro-abortion congregations in “ecumenical” activism. Embrace authentic social teachings. Now, that would be a sufficient distance.

Stephanie Block is the New Mexico-based editor of the Los Pequenos newspaper and a founder of the Catholic Media Coalition.