Column: Jeremy Corey-Gruenes, Paths to Peace

When I was in graduate school in the late ’90s, I worked for three summers as a stone mason’s assistant. The fellow I worked for was an old teacher of mine, who in addition to being a master teacher was also a master builder and craftsman. He was working on the second historic structure he had saved from the wrecking ball, disassembled, moved and rebuilt from the ground up.

Tom and I did a lot of talking while we worked. He’s one of the more thoughtful and ethical people I’ve met. A child of the 1960s, Tom joked that he would have fit better in the 1860s because of his Victorian sensibilities. So I shouldn’t have been surprised at the order he gave while paying me just before a trip I took to Las Vegas.

“You cannot spend any of this money in Sin City. I forbid it,” he said with a smirk.

I laughed and reminded him he was only the boss of me on the job site. Once I left I could spend the compensation he paid for my labor however I pleased. He was free to express his disapproval of gambling, but I was free to play at the craps tables. Once he paid me, the moral responsibility for where that money went transferred to me.

“Sleep easy,” I said. “It’s on me now.”

“Suit yourself,” he responded, “but I’m cursing this money. You won’t win anything with it.”

My behavior wasn’t altered in the least by Tom’s position, but every time I lost in Vegas that week, I thought of him.

I was reminded of Tom’s dictum recently while following the controversy surrounding the Catholic Church’s opposition to President Obama’s policy requiring employer health plans to cover contraception — even for Catholic-affiliated universities and hospitals. The conflict brings up some weighty questions. How far does one’s moral responsibility go? Do the dollars we spend carry moral strings?

The church takes a noble position in suggesting that we do have a moral responsibility regarding how we spend our money. We should consider what industries and practices we support by the business we do.

I agree. I want to know if the shirt I’m wearing was produced in a factory that exploits child workers because I don’t want my dollars supporting that practice.

Likewise the church doesn’t want the benefits it provides its employees to support practices it finds immoral, such as the use of contraception.

One danger with the church’s stance is that it appears willing to sabotage good health care reform for the sake of making a moral statement, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of health care professionals view contraception as preventative medicine that should be covered by insurance, ignoring the fact that the vast majority of sexually active Catholic women of child bearing age (98 percent, according to a 2011 Guttmacher Institute study) have used a form of contraception the church disallows.

The church also ignores the obvious positive effect contraception has on preventing unwanted pregnancies that could have resulted in a woman contemplating abortion — a much different and more difficult decision for most people than using the pill or a condom.

While church leaders may appear stubborn or even obtuse by ignoring these realities, they certainly understand the power of protest and the political impact of their message.

What they apparently fail to understand is how ironic this opposition is. Church leaders and conservative voices in Washington claim government tyranny over religion here, when in fact the church’s position is one of religious tyranny over workers who are free to live however they choose inside or outside the boundaries of church policy as long as they remain within the boundaries of our nation’s laws. It’s not an issue of religious freedom being squashed by big government but rather individual freedom being squashed by big religion.

What’s scary is the church wants to take it even further, suggesting that any employer who opposes contraception on religious grounds be able to deny contraceptive coverage to their employees too, which would mean that an individual could impose his religious values on his employees.

Let’s be clear. In our society health care benefits have become a part of an employee’s overall compensation for labor. How we use our health care is up to us individually, just as how we spend our wages is up to us individually.

No one is forcing anyone to wear a condom or take a birth control pill. If you find these practices immoral, exercise your freedom not to utilize them. But don’t try to make that decision for someone else.

Just as Tom could not realistically expect to restrict my freedom to engage in legal gambling, the Catholic Church should not attempt to restrict health care coverage of legal methods of contraception. Church leaders, your message has been heard loud and clear, but moral responsibility in this matter rests in the individual. It’s time to get back to reality and let people make their own decisions.

 

Jeremy Corey-Gruenes teaches at Albert Lea High School and lives in Albert Lea with his wife and two young daughters. He can be reached at jcorey2@gmail.com.