Carson Holloway argues that enforcing the HHS mandate will make faithful Catholics second-class citizens and may divide the American Catholic Church

An Unrecognizable America

by Carson Holloway

If the HHS mandate is enforced, our government may provoke a schism in the American Catholic Church and will reduce faithful Catholics to second-class citizenship.

For more than a year, Americans have been lauding or protesting the HHS mandate that requires employers to cover contraceptives, including abortifacients, in their insurance policies. Since many employers don't object to such a policy, the debate has focused on Catholic employers, who have a moral objection to contraception, and therefore to any requirement that they directly subsidize it. These employers argue, quite plausibly, that the free exercise clause of the Constitution ("Congress shall make no law . . . prohibiting the free exercise [of religion]") entitles them to a religious exemption from the mandate.

This debate is welcome, because in a country that aspires to constitutional government, it's important to ask whether its policies conform to its fundamental law. But this is not the whole inquiry. For us, the Constitution provides the bare minimum: It establishes certain rules that we should not violate, but it does not instruct us comprehensively on what is decent, just, or humane public policy. Put differently, the American way is more than just our written Constitution. It is also the traditions and habits guiding the dynamic between our government and society.

Accordingly, our duty to preserve what is best in America, and to transmit it to the next generation, requires that we question not only the constitutionality of public policy, but also its consistency with the best of our political traditions. We can apply this method to the HHS mandate by considering its likely consequences for American society--not just for American Catholicism, but more broadly for the kind of society we aspire to be.

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