On The Foundry, Sarah Torre writes about the many faith based challenges that remain to the Obamacare law. There are many organizations that are religious in nature, but are not themselves churches. To comply with the new health laws, they will be compelled to provide conscience violating services. Towards the end of the post, Torres quotes the president of Geneva College, Dr. Ken Smith:
The issue that we have with the entire law is that the Obama Administration has tried to define religion as being that which what churches do. We believe that religion takes us into the marketplace. There is both an internal community of faith responsibility of religion, but there is also an external service to community. That is religion.
A lot has been written about how this issue will impact hospitals. Donald P. Condit noted in an Acton Commentary piece that one in six patients in the United States will receive care in a Catholic Hospital. Yet, the Obama administration’s threat to religious liberty is not limited to just the case of religious groups directly providing services. The HHS mandates (more from Acton here) threaten the conscience of all people engaged in business. And if the threat extends to health care, where will it end?
As pointed out in The Foundry, religion takes us into the marketplace. Christianity is a motivating force for people throughout the market. Yet, the Obama administration seems to think that our religious life should separated from our everyday life. How can we expect people to somehow check their faith at the door when they do business? Rev. Robert Sirico outlines in “The Entrepreneurial Vocation” how our faith relates to entrepreneurship. The idea that our religious life is or should be separate from our commercial life is absurd, yet this is precisely what compliance with anti-conscience provisions of the Obamacare law would force us to do. Donald P. Condit got it right: this is an unconscionable threat to conscience.
H/T to Kathryn Jean Lopez at NRO’s The Corner.
