Rocco notes a recent NCRegister interview with Francis Cardinal George on health care reform. The good cardinal does an excellent job of summing up Catholic teaching on this tumultuous issue.
The money quote: "Everybody should be taken care of, and nobody should be deliberately killed."
Please note. . .
"Everybody should be taken care of" does not necessarily mean a right to government-run health care.
But "nobody should be deliberately killed" does necessarily mean the right to legal protection from government-run killing.
Unfortunately, "everyone should be taken care of" gets translated as "everyone MUST be taken care of".... even by those in the Church.
ReplyDeleteI cry for our Church and our people. When Church leaders advocate the enslavement of some people by others in the guise of "everyone should be taken care of", all is lost. On top of that, they advocate that giving a little on the abortion issue will achieve the greater good of making sure "everyone will be taken care of."
Yes, you need to explain:
ReplyDelete"Everybody should be taken care of" does not necessarily mean a right to government-run health care.
But "nobody should be deliberately killed" does necessarily mean the right to legal protection from government-run killing.
Faith, there are any number of ways for communities to provide health care for everyone...ways that do not involve the gov't at all. The Church has excelled at this through the centuries.
ReplyDeleteHowever, there is no way to guarantee the right to life w/o gov't intervention.
The Constitution is basically a series of rules that restrict gov't activity with only a few highly selective enumerated duties being assigned to the federal division.
Providing health care for everyone is not one of those enumerated duties. Protecting our lives is.