In Defense of Sr. Keehan
There’s a meme travelling around the Catholic ‘sphere accusing Sr. Carol Keehan of stating or implying that opponents of the current healthcare reform legislation are not pro-life (video below). She did nothing of the sort. Sister Carol Keehan did not say that if you don’t support “Obamacare” you’re not pro-life. What she said is that not giving mothers care, not giving pediatric care, and not giving children care is not prolife. In other words, being pro-life means giving mothers care, giving pediatric care, and giving children care. This is true. Furthermore, Sr. Keehan was careful in her wording when expressing her support for the current legislation: she asked if they were good first steps and met certain conditions, and she said that, to her (“to me,” she said), they were. Now whether Sr. Keehan is right or wrong in her assessment of what the current legislation does, specifically whether it funds abortions, she’s clear that her assessment is just her assessment, not some standard by which she can deny the pro-life credentials of those who disagree with her assessment. She’s certainly not rewriting the catechism or pretending to be pope, as one blogger accuses her. As far as I can tell, she’s exercising her prudential judgment by applying Catholic moral principles to the matter of healthcare reform and judging that the current legislation is in keeping with those principles. She may be right or wrong in her application and judgment, but an error at these levels doesn’t mean an error at the level of the principles themselves.
Comments are closed.
Kyle,
You are right, but I think we must understand a big part of the problem is that prudence, to some people, means “agree with my conclusions.” They conflate the two — principles and conclusions — into one, so that if one disagrees with conclusions, it means you must not agree in principle. This is why they are saying she is attacking people, because they are reading her into their own meta-narrative.
Kyle is absolutely right of course, but the tone of this post is a bit too defensive for my liking. After all, this allegation emanates from a narrow but noisy poisonous corner of the “Catholic ‘sphere”, the corner that is eagerly trying to jettison all Catholic teaching that does not conform to their ultra-liberal ideology.
When one sees the tea-party brigade hold up banners saying Obama is a nazi, is the correct response to lay out a reasoned argument why Obama does not adhere to the different principles of national socialism? No! The correct response is to call out these kooks and not be sucked into their game, which is always about deflecting attention from the real issues.
And in healthcare too, this narrow Catholic wing opposes healthcare on liberal grounds – the individual mandate, and the idea of the health subsidizing the sick by subsidies and by regulating the behavior of insurance companies. As I’ve tried to shwo over and over again, they are using the unborn as a political tool in this fight. Let’s not let them away with that.
I do not think it constitutes “using the unborn as a political tool” to reject any legislation that will encourage abortion. The Senate bill (unlike the House bill) funds abortions. It says so. Read it online. I cannot think of a better way to encourage something than to pay for it.
Sr. Keehan’s argument, as CEO of the Catholic Health Association, is a bit self-serving, don’t you think? Just as loans and grants allow universities to charge whatever they like, government subsidized or provided healthcare will allow hospitals to charge whatever they like. The simple fact is that if, in 40 years of Medicaid/Medicare, Congress has continually deferred its statutory obligation to reduce pay-outs for doctors serving Medicaid/Medicare patients in order to balance Medicaid/Medicare’s books, there is no reason to believe they will undertake the measures they are promising to control costs on an expanded program.
The simple fact is that, not only has America got no money in reserve, but we – nationally and individually – are up to our ears in debt. The federal debt burden is OVER $100,000 PER TAXPAYER.
WE HAVE NO MONEY.
Anything we’d like to do with the money we don’t have is a fantasy. This is not liberal or conservative, it is not ideology. It is fact.
I’m not a conservative. I do not oppose helping the poor. In fact, I tithe 10% of my gross income, off the top, straight away on pay day, to the Church and to the poor. More follows during the month. And I live in a very well-to-do area (Montgomery County, Maryland, right next to DC) on a salary below the national average for a single man my age. I save money rather than borrow because I myself have learned about debt the hard way.
How much more can I be taxed (remember when Obama was saying this was going to be budget neutral?) to pay higher-than-comparable-private-sector-worker government salaries before I’m just broken?
Well, one thing I can think of, as I get angrier and angrier at our economically unproductive, non-taxpaying ecclesiasts who keep supporting this tax-and-borrow-and-spend ideology, is to stop putting money in their pockets. Maybe that’s how I’ll keep afloat.
And if you think that “fees” to big banks aren’t going to “trickle down” into service fees, or that subsidies aren’t going to be paid for with payroll taxes, then you’re not living in the real world. Yes, more and more, I think that Sr. Keehan seems to be doing just fine. So do the bishops. They don’t need the money that they are telling me to let the government take from me. That’s how I’ll pay my share of this economic disaster – I’ll rob Peter to pay Caesar.
Someone’s gonna have to do it, and it sure ain’t gonna be Sr. Keehan.
I see books by McBrien and Sobrino, as well as Liberation Theology: A Documentary History, behind her. She may not be trustworthy. ;)
I regularly check Catholic blogs, and I didn’t notice a groundswell of protest against Sr. Keehan. I think Kyle is overstating his case.
I’m sure that the bloggers that Kyle linked to are overstating their case. The sister is making a judgement that I don’t agree with, but she’s not pretending to be pope. She’s right that this is a tough issue for fiscally responsible pro-lifers. Her comments don’t offend me.
The internet multiplier effect is at work here. She gets mischaracterized; Kyle overstates the reaction to it; someone else unfairly summarizes Kyle’s article. Five more iterations and someone flies a plane into the IRS.
How am I overstaing my case, Pinky? And how in the world do you arrive at someone flying a plane into the IRS?
Henry,
The same confusion exists in the faulty comparison between non-negotiable issues and prudential judgments, which are two different kinds of things: issues and judgments.
Uh oh, Michael. I think I just changed my mind about her!
Take heart, Kyle. She might just be standing in the office of some USCCB staffer just because the light is better.
MM,
To each his own tone, as they say. ;-) I thought a reasoned defense was appropriate to the particular charges.
Hmm, Michael. I may just have to hate all of them just to keep things simple.
MM,
So how’s this whole “call them out” plan been working out for your so far? I’ve followed a number of your comment threads, and I have yet to see a response along the lines of, “My gosh, you’re right! We’ve all been duped by the right-wing RTL groups’ propaganda for their ultra-liberal groundswell. The Senate bill really doesn’t fund abortion! Tim Noah is right, and Bart Stupak and the USCCB are wrong!”
If the goal is to actually persuade people, I humbly suggest that Kyle’s “reasoned defense” is more likely to be successful than fighting fire with fire.
On a smaller scale, and to Pinky’s point, I think the reaction to this is a mirror image of the reaction to the Boulder school decision on the children with the lesbian parents.
Both made prudential judgments. Both were called out by some for over-stepping their bounds. Both were lauded by supporters as the Last True Defenders of the Faith.
I’m not sure if either is right or wrong.
But I would like to see more light and less heat.
Sister Carol Keehan did not say that if you don’t support “Obamacare” you’re not pro-life. What she said is that not giving mothers care, not giving pediatric care, and not giving children care is not prolife.
Well, then she did come pretty close to saying if you don’t support “Obamacare” you are not pro-life. :)
At this stage we have two realistic choices: 1) “Obamacare” — i.e., some amalgamation of the House and Senate bills and maybe some other minor changes, or 2) the Republican plan, which will do one of two things: A) leave 50 million Americans without health insurance, or B) through the magic of tax cuts, deregulation, tort reform, and purchasing insurance across state lines, make private, commerical insurance affordable to tens of millions, resulting in more Americans having insurance provided abortion benefits then any version of “Obamacare.”
As I said, Kyle, I haven’t seen this meme travelling around the Catholic blogosphere.
Well, it hasn’t spread like wildfire, but it’s made an appearance here and there, enough that I noticed its reoccurance.
Seeing as Sr. Keehan’s compensation and actions are much more in line with the head of a trade association than that of a charity, we should analyze her comments in that light.
Her concerns are more that of the bottom line of her well paid executive members (whose pay I do not begrudge, but they are the members she represents) and not that of the poor or the Church.
http://catholickey.blogspot.com/2009/08/sr-carol-keehan-catholic-healths-856093.html
Oh, and before someone chimes in with “she doesn’t keep her compensation!” Yes this is true and good. It goes to her order. It is just that her compensation and the actions of her agency are more in keeping with a trade association than that of a charity, and should be analyzed as such.