Must 'Good Catholics support government-run health care'?
Via InstaPundit I ran across this piece on NRO, wherein some Catholics in Detroit are arguing that government-run healthcare in general, and the SCHP expansion in particular, are social justice/right to life issues which good Catholics must support, and that to do otherwise, like the politicians the group has targeted, is not consistent with the Church’s “right to life” doctrine.
I like to think of myself as a ‘good Catholic’, to the extent an adherent to a religion which emphasizes man’s imperfection and his need to seek redemption from God can be ‘good’. At the same time, I strongly oppose the expansion of government healthcare, even when it’s to help the wealthy white kids with their medical bills.
As far as I know, support for socialized medicine is not a requirement of Canon Law, and if it were, it would likely be lumped with opposition to the death penalty, which is an ‘authentic’ teaching against which believers can legitimately reason, unlike opposition to abortion, which is a definitive church teaching carrying the pain of excommunication for disobedience. To liken opposition to abortion with the expansion of a government entitlement which will include middle-class and wealthy children and some adults, funded by American smokers, is the kind of intellectual dishonesty I’ve sadly come to expect from my rank-and-file coreligionists.