Kansas Bishops Criticize Healthcare Reform over Abortion & Subsidiarity

Many of the proposals would diminish the protection of human life and shift our health care costs and delivery to a centralized government bureaucracy.

KANSAS CITY, Kansas (LifeSiteNews.com) - In addition to shunning abortion, euthanasia, and health care rationing, any national health care overhaul must align with another major aspect of Catholic social teaching: namely, the so-called "principle of subsidiarity" said the two bishops of Kansas City. The bishops made their remarks in a joint pastoral reflection published Tuesday.

The principle of subsidiary, which states that issues (such as healthcare) should be handled by the lowest and least centralized level of authority possible, is vital to maintaining "the transcendent dignity of the human person," said Kansas City, Kansas Archbishop Joseph F. Naumann and Kansas City-St. Joseph Bishop Robert W. Finn.

"Despite the many flaws with our current policies, change itself does not guarantee improvement," they said.

Referring to the health care legislation President Obama is preparing to ram through Congress next week, the bishops noted, "Many of the proposals which have been promoted would diminish the protection of human life and dignity and shift our health care costs and delivery to a centralized government bureaucracy.

"Centralization carries the risk of a loss of personal responsibility, reduction in personalized care for the sick and an expanded bureaucracy that in the end leads to higher costs."

The bishops said their goal in writing the pastoral reflection was to "identify and explain the most important principles for evaluating health care reform proposals." While claiming "no expertise in economics or the complexities of modern medical science," the bishops emphasized that "effective health care policies must be built on a foundation of proper moral principles."

The bishops highlighted first of all the principle of subsidiarity - whereby the government undertakes only the initiatives that independent individuals or private groups cannot - as a consistent value in Catholic social teaching. The principle of subsidiarity was first stressed in Pope Leo XIII's 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum - issued to combat the spread of communism - and repeated in Pius XI's Quadragesimo Anno, John Paul II's Centesimus Annus, and Pope Benedict XVI's Deus Caritas Est.

"The writings of recent Popes have warned that the neglect of subsidiarity can lead to an excessive centralization of human services, which in turn leads to excessive costs, and loss of personal responsibility and quality of care," note the Kansas bishops. "While subsidiarity is vital to the structure of justice, we can see from what the Popes say that it rests on a more fundamental principal, the unchanging dignity of the person."

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Naumann and Finn also called it "imperative" that any health care reform legislation "keep intact our current public polices protecting taxpayers from being coerced to fund abortions."

"It is inadequate to propose legislation that is silent on this morally crucial matter," they said. "Given the penchant of our courts over the past 35 years to claim unarticulated rights in our Constitution, the explicit exclusion of so-called 'abortion services' from coverage is essential."

The bishops said that putting conscientious health care providers at a disadvantage by not including proper conscience safeguards would be "a tremendous blow to the already strained health care system in our country." "A huge resource of professionals and institutions dedicated to care of the sick could find themselves excluded by legislation, after health care reform, if they failed to provide services which are destructive of human life, and which are radically counter to their conscience and institutional mission," they warned.

Mandated end-of-life counseling also ran the risk of pressuring vulnerable individuals to end their life, and "would send the message that they are no longer of value to society," they said.

The reflection outlines and clarifies several other individual rights recognized in Catholic social teaching that bear upon the health care debate. For example, while the individual has a certain right to be able to provide for himself and his family, they said, this should not be construed - as some have done - to mean that the Church recognizes "an obligation on the part of the government to provide it."

The bishops stressed that Americans ought to work to "provide a safety net for people in need" as part of promoting the common good. However, they said, this must be done "without diminishing personal responsibility or creating an inordinately bureaucratic structure which will be vulnerable to financial abuse, be crippling to our national economy, and remove the sense of humanity from the work of healing and helping the sick."

"There is important work to be done, but 'change' for change's sake; change which expands the reach of government beyond its competence would do more harm than good," the bishops concluded.

"Change which loses sight of man's transcendent dignity or the irreplaceable value of human life; change which could diminish the role of those in need as agents of their own care is not truly human progress at all."

The Kansas prelates ended by calling upon Catholics and all people of good will "to hold our elected officials accountable in these important deliberations and let them know clearly our support for those who, with prudence and wisdom, will protect the right to life, maintain freedom of conscience, and nurture the sense of solidarity that drives us to work hard, to pray, and to act charitably for the good of all."

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