Vol. 76/No. 23      June 11, 2012

Among those joining the lawsuits are Notre Dame University, Catholic University in Washington, D.C., and the Archdioceses of New York, Washington, and St. Louis, which own and run local parochial school systems and hospitals.

Numerous prominent dioceses and other Catholic businesses did not sign on, including the Boston and Baltimore archdioceses.

Fifty-eight percent of Catholics believe that religiously affiliated hospitals and schools should have to provide contraception, 82 percent support birth control, and 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women have used birth control, according to a recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute.

The administration’s guidelines exempt churches and other religious institutions if “their purpose is to spread their religious beliefs” and if they “primarily employ and serve people with the same religious values,” Reuters reported. Businesses run by religious institutions, however, such as hospitals and schools, are not exempt. This is the focus of the suits.

“The lawsuit is about an unprecedented attack by the federal government on one of America’s most cherished freedoms: the freedom to practice one’s religion without government interference,” Bishop Thomas Paprocki from Springfield, Ill., said in a statement by the diocese there, which is among those joining the lawsuits.

“The lawsuits make it seem like taking a job is the same as joining a church,” Jennifer Dalven, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney, told Reuters. “But organizations that participate in the public sphere are supposed to abide by public rules.”

The public character of parochial schools is accentuated by the fact that more than 95 percent of teachers in these schools today are lay teachers.

The communist movement from its inception has championed the inviolable right of individuals to worship as they choose free from any interference from the government. The question is key to forging working-class unity across religions against a common exploiter. Those who argue the Catholic Church hierarchy should be able to impose its beliefs on its employees in the name of “freedom of religion” turn the entire question on its head.

Freedom of worship was won as a result of revolutionary struggles against feudal absolutism. It’s bedrock was and remains the separation of religious institutions from the government. Workers’ health care, including contraception, should not be up to the ideological whims of a boss, whether it is Ford Motor Co. or Notre Dame University.
 
 
Related articles:
Communists defend freedom of worship, not ‘freedom’ of hierarchy and their businesses to attack workers and our rights  
 
 
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