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Standing to protect consciencePosted: 03.27.09 Last week, Cardinal Francis George – the Archbishop of Chicago and the current president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops – met with President Barack Obama at the White House. While the meeting was “private” and, according to protocol, such meetings are described as “cordial,” there is no doubt that the cardinal forthrightly discussed with the president the grave concerns that he and his brother bishops have expressed with the direction of the Obama administration in the 50-plus days since the inauguration. The day before his meeting with the president, Cardinal George issued a statement outlining the concerns of the U.S. Bishops. The message was delivered via video. The cardinal reminds us that both religious liberty and the freedom of personal conscience are at the heart of our American experiment in democracy. The concerns of Cardinal George are not out of place. The president has reversed the Mexico City policy – which held that family planning programs that are part of U.S. foreign aid could not promote or subsidize abortions. He has removed the restrictions on government funding for embryonic stem-cell research which involves the destruction of living human beings (embryos) in research that, to date, has not delivered any substantive medical advances despite its hype, as opposed to the morally unproblematic research with adult stem cells which has. Now, President Obama had also declared his intention to remove a conscience protection rule for the Department of Heath and Human Services. This rule is one part of the range of legal protections for health care workers – for doctors, nurses and others – who have objected to being involved in abortion and other procedures that violate their conscience or religious faith. Were the Obama administration to prevail in removing “conscience protection,” such an action on the government’s part “would be the first step in moving our country from democracy to despotism.” As the cardinal says, “Respect for personal conscience and freedom of religion as such ensures our basic freedom from government oppression. No government should come between an individual person and God – that’s what America is supposed to be about. This is the true common ground for us as Americans. We therefore need legal protection for freedom of conscience and of religion – including freedom for religious health care institutions to be true to themselves.” Our nation has historically accommodated conscientious objection. Though as citizens we hold that it is a positive good to defend our nation, we do allow for those who conscientiously object to war not to fight. Shouldn’t our government and legal system permit conscientious objection to participating in something that we would hold to be a morally wrong action, i.e., the destruction of babies in their mothers’ wombs. It is bad enough when tax dollars are directed to areas that many taxpayers find morally objectionable. But this is an even greater challenge, for once the government attempts to oblige a citizen to act against his or her conscience or religious belief we are no longer a free people. As Cardinal George said, “We need to stand for the protection of conscience, especially now for those who provide the health care services so necessary for a good society.”
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