Michigan Catholic dioceses cave in to employee benefits to include same-sex partners
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| English: Saint Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church, 530 Elizabeth Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan. The church is in the Register of Michigan State Historic Sites. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
In response
to the U.S. Supreme Court’s same-sex “marriage” ruling, Catholic organizations
in Michigan at every level will be extending their health plans to any adult
who co-habits with an employee, whether a sibling, uncle, mother, best friend
or same-sex partner.
Critics say
the move means sacrificing Church teachings to appease “radical progressive”
forces in American society.
David
Maluchnik, communications director of the Michigan Catholic Conference, the
umbrella organization negotiating health coverage for 8,400 employees of
Catholic churches, schools and agencies in the state, said the Obergefell v. Hodges ruling forced the
conference’s hand.
“We would be
open to litigation and we would have lost,” he said, because the existing plan
covered only employees, their children and their spouses, as defined in
Catholic teaching on marriage as the opposite-sex partner.
However,
James Bopp, counsel for National
Right to Life,
the James Madison Center for Free
Speech,
and Focus on the Family, said any Catholic
organization would have a strong “freedom of religion” defence under the U.S.
Constitution from any litigation, given that Catholic doctrine condemns
homosexual relations. “If a Catholic church couldn’t cite the First
Amendment in its defence, I don’t know who could.”
Maluchnik
told LifeSiteNews, “The concern is that how we define spouse in our health plan
according to the teachings of the Catholic Church is contrary to how the
federal government understands spouse.”
The conference
insists it is not extending benefits to same-sex partners per se. “It will be
based on residence, not relationship,” said Maluchnik. “We will have no way of
knowing what is the nature of the relationship” between the employee and the
other “legally domiciled adult.” “What we’re looking for is that the employee
and the legally domiciled adult have been living together at the same address
for six months and are financially interdependent and could swear on an
affidavit as such.”
However,
Father Alexander Webster, an Orthodox archpriest, pastor and moral theologian,
said there is no doubt that the Michigan bishops are “yielding to secular
progressive forces that are anti-Christian and anti-Jesus.”
Fr. Webster
said that his recent book, The
Price of Prophecy, described how the Russian Orthodox leadership largely
surrendered to the Boshevik regime after the Russian Revolution, claiming they
were doing so not to save their own skins but to “save the Church.”
“But when you
put saving bricks and mortar ahead of standing up for teachings, you are saving
a shell,” Fr. Webster added. “I was very disappointed when the Michigan
Catholic Conference caved.” All the churches, he said, as well as
Muslims and some Jewish communities in the U.S. are being subjected to the same
pressure from “secular progressives.” They are like the fabled frog in
the pot of water that is heated up to the boiling point so slowly it doesn’t
notice it is being cooked, Fr. Webster said. “It’s time to jump out of the pot
even it if means going bankrupt or to prison.”
The Madison
Center’s Bopp agrees. “What’s the point of being a religious organization if
you completely abandon your religious beliefs because of the pressure of
litigation?”
Maluchnik
said the MCC “consulted with Catholic ethicists across the country, including
the National Catholic Bioethics Center,” and determined that its approach was
“compatible with the teachings of the Catholic Church” and emerging federal
human rights law.
It rejected
two other options that would also have been compatible: getting rid of its
health plan entirely, or getting rid of benefits for spouses and other “legally
domiciled adults.” Maluchnik explained the reasoning: “The Catholic Church
believes in providing health coverage and believes in supporting families in
this way.”
The change in
coverage does not mean the Michigan Catholic Conference is changing its
definition of marriage, Maluchnik said. He noted that the MCC was “the
strongest supporter” of the State of Michigan’s constitutional amendment
reserving marriage for heterosexual unions, and supported the state government
in its ultimately unsuccessful defence of the amendment in the courts, “at
every step of the way.”
LGBT Catholic
activists applauded the Michigan bishops’ decision. “This is a good step
forward,” said Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways
Ministry, a group in Maryland advocating recognition of LGBT people in the
Catholic Church. But he told the Detroit Free Press that what LGBT Catholics wanted
was full recognition of same-sex “marriage” by the Church.
Catholic
organizations in other states are considering following Michigan’s lead, but
the Archdiocese of San Francisco was the first. It extended benefits to
cohabiting adults in 1996 to obey a new municipal bylaw. On the other hand,
four years later, Washington, D.C.’s Catholic Charities accommodated a new
bylaw in that city by dropping spousal benefits entirely, and at the same time
closing its adoption agency rather than place children with same-sex couples.
John Brehany
of the National Catholic Bioethics Center told LifeSiteNews, “There is nothing
unethical in principle about offering benefits to employees on a basis other
than marriage.”
More
importantly, he said, “It is essential that, in the provision of health or
other employment benefits, a Catholic institution not deny the teaching of the
Church on marriage, i.e., by formally recognizing as ‘marriage’ anything other
than a relationship between a man and a woman. This would be profoundly
wrong and unacceptable.”
As well, he
said, “A Catholic institution has the obligation to avoid scandal. That is, it
has the obligation to prevent or correct the impression that it is denying the
faith or endorsing what individuals do outside of the workplace.”
Brehany also
said a church organization could ethically offer no health plan at all (though
it ought to raise salaries commensurately) or one with no spousal benefits.
Brehany
concluded his comments to LifeSiteNews by saying, “It appears to me that the
MCC was aware of and employed these principles and distinctions in revising its
benefits policy to comply with federal law.”
However,
Michael Hichborn, president of the Lepanto Institute argued that the bishops’
“obscure act of compliance” takes “the coward’s way out.”
"What an
insult to the early Christian martyrs. Thousands of early Christians
suffered horrible tortures and death over a mere pinch of incense so as to
avoid offending God," Hichborn told LifeSiteNews, referring to the
offering Roman Christians were asked to burn before a pagan altar to escape
execution. "This, on the other hand, is the coward's way out.
It's an obscure act of compliance with an unjust law made specifically to
avoid the glorious suffering God offered to the bishops of Michigan."
