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Washington D.C., Mar 23, 2016 / 02:29 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The Little Sisters of the Poor and other religious charities should be free to carry out their ministries without having to violate their religious beliefs, plaintiffs argued at the Supreme Court on Wednesday. 

“This morning we heard the justices of the Supreme Court comment on the fact that members of many minority religions across the country have stood with the Little Sisters of the Poor, asking the government to do the very simple and right thing here, which is just if the government wants to provide these [contraceptive] services, the government is free to provide them,” stated Mark Rienzi, lead attorney for the Little Sisters of the Poor, at a press conference outside the Court after the oral arguments in Zubik v. Burwell.  

The government has other ways to provide contraceptive coverage for employees than forcing religious non-profits to do so, he stressed.

“And in every other court case where the government has come before this court and talked about its [health] exchanges, it has told the Court that they are wonderful, they are cheap, they are easy to use, they are affordable, they are great. And all the Little Sisters are asking today is that the government uses all its other programs to provide the services it wants.”

The case Zubik v. Burwell is a combination of seven cases before the court against the “accommodation” offered to religious non-profits by the Obama administration regarding its federal contraception mandate. Plaintiffs include the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Archdiocese of Washington, Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh, and several Christian colleges. 

Employers have to include contraception coverage in their employee health plans, according to the mandate. Only churches and their auxiliaries are exempt, thus forcing many religious charities and non-profits like the Little Sisters to provide the coverage they believe to be morally objectionable. 

The administration’s “accommodation” is a process by which objecting parties send a form to the government notifying them of their objection. The government then instructs the party’s insurance company – or third-party authority for self-insured entities – to provide the coverage separately. This separates the charities from the objectionable process of providing contraception coverage, the government contends.

Paul D. Clement, arguing for the Little Sisters and their fellow petitioners before the court on Wednesday, said this process still demands more than a simple opt-out. It forces the Little Sisters and other religious charities to fill out a form they know will ultimately facilitate access to birth control against their religious beliefs, he said.

The government also enforces this measure with “massive penalties,” he added. The Little Sisters could pay up to $70 million a year in fines if the mandate goes into effect and they do not comply with accommodation. 

However, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued during the hearing, “the insurer or the TPA is then not dealing with the employer at all.” The employer “could say, ‘I fill out the form. I do not authorize. I do not permit. It won't make any difference’.”

“It makes all the difference, Justice Ginsburg,” Clement countered. “If we don’t provide the form, then the coverage doesn’t flow.” 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor responded that tension between laws and the religious beliefs of persons is inevitable, and that if all requests for religious exemption from laws were honored, government actions could not be enforceable. 

“Because every believer that's ever come before us, including the people in the military, are saying that ‘my soul will be damned in some way’,” she said of requests for religious exemptions from laws and actions like a military draft. If that burden will “always” be “substantial,” she added, and all religious exemptions are honored, “how will we ever have a government that functions?”

Aside from a cloistered monk or hermit, Justice Stephen Breyer noted, a “religious person” living in society may “have to accept all kinds of things that are just terrible for him.” Quakers must pay taxes for a war they conscientiously object to, he said. Religious people against blasphemy might not like First Amendment protections of it. 

Noel Francisco, also arguing for the plaintiffs, said that religious non-profits should get the same protections as churches, which are exempt from the mandate. 

Justice Elena Kagan pressed him on expanding religious exemptions to charities and non-profits. 

“I thought there was a very strong tradition in this country, which is that when it comes to religious exercises, churches are special,” she said. If these religious protections are expanded to include “all religious people,” she argued, “then the effect of that is that Congress just decides not to give an exemption at all.”

Francisco also argued that because the health care law exempts many entities like small businesses from having to provide health insurance, and exempts the plans of large corporations from the mandate by “grandfathering” them in to the health care law’s regulations, the government may not be able to establish a “compelling interest” for contraception coverage since so many health plans don’t provide it. 

Even if it does establish this interest, he continued, it has other means of facilitating access to contraception including through plans on the public exchanges that offer contraception coverage or through Title X family planning funding. 

Another point of contention was the fact that, according to the IRS tax code, churches and their auxiliaries are exempt from the HHS mandate but religious non-profits, who must fill out a 990 form, are not. 

The plaintiffs argued that there is no essential difference between these groups and both should receive exemptions because of their religious status. “The line they’ve drawn here is absurd,” Clement said of the administration exempting churches and their integrated auxiliaries but not religious non-profits. 

There is no substantial difference between these groups, he added; the only difference is that one group, non-profits, fills out a 990 form.

Solicitor General Donald Verrilli, arguing for the administration, said the government has a compelling interest to require employer-based contraception coverage, and every alternative that has been proposed defeats Congress’ purpose of ensuring low-cost birth control access for all women without the hassle of co-pays or obtaining separate health plans for contraception. 

Furthermore, he cited an Institute of Medicine report claiming that widespread contraception access was in the public good, lowering the number of unintended pregnancies and abortions. 

Chief Justice John Roberts discussed whether the mandate posed a substantial burden on the plaintiffs by “hijacking” their own health plans. Clement had argued that the government was indeed hijacking the insurance plans, saying that “it’s a little rich for the government to say ‘this isn’t your plan, don’t worry about this’.”

“In other words, the Petitioner has used the phrase ‘hijacking,’ and it seems to me that that's an accurate description of what the government wants to do,” Roberts said. “They want to use the [insurance] mechanism that the Little Sisters and the other Petitioners have set up to provide services because they want the [contraception] coverage to be seamless.”

The Little Sisters “do not object to the fact that the people who work for them will have these services provided,” he added. “They object to having them provided through the mechanism that they have set up because they think, you know, whether you or I or anybody else thinks, they think that that complicity is sinful.”

“Can you explain why you don't see this as a hijacking?” Justice Sotomayor asked Verrilli. 

Verrilli argued that the government is “ensuring” that employees “get what the law entitles them to,” while “ensuring” that employers do “not have any legal obligation to pay for the coverage, to provide the coverage in any way.”

The funding for the contraception coverage is done separately from the employer, he argued. The insurer is listing the coverage cost separately from the other employer-provided coverage. 

However, Justice Alito noted, the sisters’ third-party insurance issuer would also not comply with the mandate if it is enforced. 

And many religious groups, including some Muslims, Mormons, and Orthodox Jews and American Indians, have supported the Little Sisters saying the mandate and its so-called accommodation present an “unprecedented threat to religious liberty in this country.”

“Ladies and gentleman, the fate of the Little Sisters is the fate of every American,” Kristina Arriaga, executive director of the Becket Fund, stated outside the court after Wednesday’s arguments.

“They [the Little Sisters] serve the poor, they feed the hungry. We at Becket join millions of Americans who are asking the Court to let them serve,” she added.

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Washington D.C., Mar 23, 2016 / 04:56 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Hundreds of people – many of them women – joined religious sisters outside of the Supreme Court on Wednesday chanting “Let them Serve! Let them Serve!” 

The protesters came to support the Little Sisters of the Poor and other plaintiffs arguing that they should not be forced to choose between bankruptcy-inducing fines and violating their religious beliefs, through the demands of the federal contraception mandate.  

Sister Loraine Marie Maguire, mother provincial for the Little Sisters of the Poor, told the crowd that caring for “the most vulnerable members of our society” is a “privilege” and a “joy.” 

“All we ask, is that we can continue to do this work,” she said.

The March 23 rally outside the Supreme Court gathered as the justices inside heard arguments in Zubik v. Burwell, challenging the “accommodation” offered to religious non-profits by the administration regarding its 2012 contraception mandate. The case is a combination of seven cases brought before the court, and plaintiffs include the Little Sisters of the Poor, the Archdiocese of Washington, Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh, and several Christian colleges.

Under the mandate, employers must offer contraception coverage and related products in their employee health plans. Churches and auxiliaries were given an exemption from the mandate, but religious charities and other non-profit ministries, such as religious universities and orders like the Little Sisters of the Poor, must still provide coverage they believe to be morally unconscionable. 

After a protracted legal battle since the mandate’s 2012 introduction, the Obama administration has offered an “accommodation” to the mandate, in which groups that object to the coverage can send a form to the government notifying them of their objection. This starts a process by which the government then instructs the insurance company to offer the coverage.

The government argues that this separates religious non-profits from the objectionable process of providing contraception coverage. Religious non-profits contend, though, that they are still involved in the process of providing coverage they find morally offensive. 

Sister Maguire told the crowd of protestors that she and her religious sisters “don’t understand why the government is doing this when there is an easy solution that doesn’t involve us – it can provide these services on the exchanges.”

“It’s also hard to understand why the government is doing this when one-third of all Americans aren’t even covered by this mandate, and large corporations like Exxon, Visa, and Pepsi are fully exempt, yet the government threatens us with fines of 70 million dollars per year if we don’t comply.”

Providing the contraceptive services, she said, would “violate some of our deepest held religious beliefs.”

Jeanne F. Mancini, president of the March for Life Education and Defense Fund, told the crowd gathered before the Supreme Court that the Little Sisters’ case highlighted an issue “just as egregious as the mandate itself” – the government’s attempts to define what religious groups qualify for a religious exemption. 

“The government does not have the right to declare that serving the elderly poor, or educating students from a religious mission, is supposedly not religious enough to count for exemptions granted to other church groups,” Mancini said. “In the words of one Christian leader, ‘even Jesus himself would not be religious enough to receive this exemption,’” she emphasized.

Meg McDonnell, executive director of Women Speak for Themselves, a diverse coalition of thousands of women from around the country who have challenged the contraceptive mandate, told CNA that the government’s position miscalculates women’s role in religion and the good religious organizations provide their communities. 

“When the government handed down this mandate, they miscalculated how strongly women in particular feel about the right to live according to their beliefs,” she said. “What we saw today were representatives of several different religious institutions talking about how religious organizations provide for communities,” both as providers and as those who have been helped by religious organizations. 

What unifies the speakers and members of Women Speak for Themselves, McDonnell said, is their request that the “government allow organizations to continue to serve the ‘least of these’.”

Celia Harris, a college senior at Geneva College, one of the plaintiff in the case, told CNA that she sees hopes other young people see the mandate as a challenge to their constitutional rights. “This is not about birth control, it’s about our freedoms being threatened.” 

Harris also asserted that her college’s defense of religious convictions is a natural outgrowth of its progressive history. Geneva College was one of the first colleges to advocate the abolition of slavery, supporting the Underground Railroad and was also one of the first colleges to admit women, Harris said.

“We’re very progressive in our time, we don’t see this as a setback, we don’t see this as old-fashioned, we see it as an expression of the rights that the founders built our country on.” 

Gloria Purvis, chairperson of Black Catholics for Life and radio host for the EWTN radio show, Morning Glory, also spoke at the rally. She told CNA that she was “appalled” by the government’s framing of the issue as a health issue when the government has other avenues for reaching its goal of contraceptive access. 

“Really what this is about is forcing those who don’t believe as the government believes to either be bankrupt or to comply – to violate our conscience.” 

In her opinion, Purvis said, groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor should not have to choose between their consciences and their ministries.  

“Let them serve, let them follow their faith, and the government has no role in defining faith for its citizens.”
 

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Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mar 23, 2016 / 05:01 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A Congolese Catholic priest who documented human rights abuses in his home country was killed by armed gunmen early Monday morning.

Father Vincent Machozi Karunzu was murdered March 21 by armed militants in the North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo, the procurator general of the Augustinians of the Assumption said in a message.

The 51-year-old priest was visiting his family in the village of Katolu and worked in peace-building activities.

The priest documented human rights abuses and atrocities in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the Boston University website BU Today said March 23. Shortly before armed gunmen killed him, he had posted an article online denouncing Congolese and Rwandan presidents’ alleged involvement in massacres of innocent civilians.

The human rights website Beni Lubero, which the priest had founded, said that 10 uniformed soldiers of the DRC’s armed forces stormed a social center where Nande tribal chiefs were holding a meeting about peace efforts. The gunmen demanded to be taken to the priest and to Mwami Abdu Kalemire III, the leader of the Basho community.

They found the priest in a courtyard working on a laptop and opened fire. While their other target escaped unharmed, Father Machozi’s last words were “Why are you killing?”

Boston University science professor Timothy Longman remembered his former colleague. “He was trying to show the world who was killed and who was responsible,” Longman told BU Today. “He wasn’t on any particular side.”

Longman said Fr. Machozi had survived at least seven earlier attempts on his life.

Dana Robert, a professor of world Christianity, praised the priest’s work. “Every time there has been a genocide, there has been a Catholic priest that has reported on it.”

She said priests play a large role in “giving voice to the voiceless.”

“That’s why the loss of Vincent is so horrible,” she said, comparing him to slain Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero or Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“When you do that, you become a target, and he did that knowing what the danger was,” Robert said.

The Assumptionists’ North American province published an interview with the priest on its website.

He was one of thirteen children, some of whom died at birth. Due to these deaths, her mother called him Machozi, “son of tears.” He became a candidate for the Assumptionists at the age of 17. Before taking final vows, he taught religion, chemistry and mathematics.

During his time in Massachusetts, he worked with the Haitian community as a French-speaking priest.

He earned a master’s degree in theology at the Institut Catholique in Lille, France. He moved to the U.S. in 2003 and later began doctoral studies at Boston University’s Department of Theology in conflict management and peace processes in Africa.

Photo credit: www.shutterstock.com.

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Vatican City, Mar 23, 2016 / 05:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The war of interpretations has begun over Pope Francis’ yet-to-be-published post-synodal exhortation. And this war is taking place in the press.

Three articles published in the past week in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano and in two prominent Italian newspapers presented differing views of the document. The papal document will summarize the Synod on the Family, held in October 2015 amid controversies and rumor.

If the latest claims are true, Pope Francis signed the post-synodal exhortation March 19. However, the text will be released only when all the translations are completed. It is not expected before Easter.
 
The text’s first draft was examined and amended by the Theologian of the Pontifical Household, Fr. Wojcieh Giertych, O.P., and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
 
According to a source close to the congregation, it sent the text back with remarks 30 to 40 pages in length.
 
At the moment, no one knows if the Pope has taken these remarks into consideration, as the exhortation has not left Pope Francis’ inner circle.

However, there is certainly agitation among those who supported a break in Church doctrine on marriage, in particular the possibility for the divorced-and-remarried to receive Holy Communion.

Some report that the document is 200 pages long. It is hard to think that all of these pages will be dedicated to pastoral care for the divorced-and-remarried.
 
“Focusing on the issue means that they really want to drive forward and misinterpret the document,” a churchman and a source close to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith told CNA.
 
This agitation might indicate that the post-synodal exhortation will not contain any doctrinal novelties or breaches. Rather, the text will focus on pastoral recommendations for the integration of the divorced-and-remarried.
 
This agitation was evident in the three articles published during the last week.
 
One article is by Enzo Bianchi, a layman who in 1965 established the Ecumenical Monastic Community of Bose in Italy. Brother Bianchi wrote a March 14 commentary in L’Osservatore Romano about the gospel account of the woman caught in adultery.
 
In general the commentary gave an ordinary interpretation of the text. But at its very end, Brother Bianchi stressed that “Jesus did not condemn her, because God does not condemn, but he gave her the possibility to change with his act of mercy.”
 
Brother Bianchi added that the Gospel “does not say that she changed her life, that she converted or that she became a disciple of Jesus. We just know that God forgave her through Jesus and delivered her to freedom, so that she could return to life.”
 
Vatican internal observers have interpreted this phrasing as an open door to the reception of Communion by Catholics who have divorced-and-remarried. A source told CNA March 22, “Brother Bianchi emphasizes God’s forgiveness, no matter what she will actually do,” as if “Communion might be given, no matter what you had done.”
 
Another article appeared the in Italian newspaper La Repubblica on March 19, the very day Pope Francis was supposed to have signed the post-synodal exhortation.

The article was co-authored by Alberto Melloni and Claudio Tito. Tito is a journalist who sometimes covers church issues, but Melloni has particular weight in the global ecclesiastical debate. He is the leader of the Bologna School, which promotes the notion that the Second Vatican Council broke with Church tradition.

Their article appears intended to anticipate some of the contents of the post-Synodal exhortation.
 
According to Melloni, the aim of the document is clear: “to avoid break ups and to disarm the antagonists.” Melloni characterized the synod as a fight between “rigorists” and “progressives.” He said that the fight was “very tough.” He believes Pope Francis wants to open up the path to the sacraments for those who live in irregular marital situations. Melloni claimed that “in the end, just one third of the synod fathers voted against the Pope.”

The article also reports that the Pope was impressed by Cardinal Robert Sarah’s rigorous approach.

Melloni underscored that “for what concerns communion for the divorced and remarried, no news is expected. The issue is to legitimate a practice, and to give it theological roots.”

If Alberto Melloni is the director of the Bologna School, Brother Enzo Bianchi is widely considered one of its more prominent representatives.

Some more detail about the exhortation was provided March 20 by Luigi Accattoli, former Vatican journalist and sometime columnist at the prominent Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera.
 
According to Accattoli, the exhortation will include indications of the role that the divorced-and-remarried can have in the community and under which conditions they can receive the sacraments.
 
He also stressed that “there are many options” for those who live in irregular situations, acknowledge this, and want to be active in parish life. He said that they can be catechists, lectors, godparents and sponsors in baptisms and confirmations, and witness at marriages. All of these activities are “mostly forbidden, or discouraged,” Accatolli said.
 
But regarding their admission to the sacraments, Melloni excluded the possibility that the Pope will provide “a general rule” for those who live in irregular situations.
 
Rather, he predicts that the Pope will “give indications on how to discern case by case, according to the penitential path completed, once the possibility of correcting the situation generated with a new partner cannot be corrected.” Such an example would be the case of a couple in an irregular situation who has children.

In the end, Accattoli said that no change in doctrine will be made, though local bishops will receive more power to discern situations. In fact, this is exactly what happens nowadays. Local bishops are always called upon by their parish priests to help them decide whether to let a couple access the sacraments.
 
In the end, no substantial changes will be made to doctrine. However, CNA’s source close to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Church said “if there will not be in the document any explicit sentence that states that divorced and remarried cannot access communion – and there will not be – a narrative will be built around the possible papal breaks with doctrine.”
 
In a wider picture, we can assess that Brother Bianchi provided the theological framework which would allow Communion to the divorced-and-remarried. Melloni tackled the issue and said that reforms are not over, and that no doctrinal reform might be expected now. Finally, Accattoli provided details of the new norms, though he acknowledged that there is not much new in entrusting bishops with powers of discernment.
 
The three articles can be in the end read as part of the same piece. But the facts suggest they are aware that nothing that they had predicted will happen in the exhortation.

In the exhortation, there will be no Communion for the divorced-and-remarried, no canonical recognition for homosexual couples, but also a refusal to exclude the divorced-and-remarried from the life of the Church.

But the Bologna School cannot miss the chance to drive the discussion and reiterate its interpretation of the Second Vatican Council. In the end, Melloni tried to drive the discussion on one particular side, but he neglected to account for all the other views.

CNA’s source close to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said the exhortation is “not a full victory for the supporters of the traditional teaching on marriage, but it is not a defeat.”

“Melloni and his fellows know it. And they have just started to prepare the media ground for when the Pope will finally release the exhortation.”

Father Federico Lombardi, director of the Holy See Press Office, set the possible date of publication within the second week of April.

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