Fr. Albacete: Obamacare
ignores subsidiarity
Posted by Tom McFeely
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Msgr. Lorenzo Albacete, who directs the Church movement Communion and Liberation in the United States, argues that President Barack Obama’s health-care reform plan fails to respect the principle of subsidiarity.
Subsidiarity, a principle that lies at the heart of Catholic social teaching, holds that decisions about social issues should be made at the most local level of society possible.
So how does Obama’s plan conflict with this?
By seeking to intrude the federal government into intensely personal health-care decisions regarding matters like abortion and euthanasia, according to Msgr. Albacete.
Writing at ilsussidiario.net, Msgr. Albacete insists this concern is what’s behind the resistance of many Americans to Obama’s plan, not a lack of understanding, as the president suggested in a recent interview with
Time magazine.
Comments Msgr. Albacete:
I think the problem is that the American people almost instinctively feel a threat to one of the most important, defining values of American nationhood, namely the value of subsidiarity.
I think it is the President whose background lack of experience of the value of subsidiarity makes it difficult for him to understand the dangers almost instinctively experienced by the majority of the people.
The fact is that the American people pay more to get less health care security than any other industrialized nation in the world. I think most Americans understand this. Most Americans understand that there is need for reform of their present system. The question the ask is: at what cost?
The problem is that the question about cost is being described purely in economic terms by Obama and his advisors. And indeed, the question about economic cost is an important one.
The people are afraid that the way of dealing with this concern proposed by the President is simply too risky and it may even worsen the economic health of the country. I think though that the economic risk is however not the one that most concern the majority of Americans.
Perhaps one example will clarify the issue. Part of the proposed cost-cutting measures in the proposals that the President will accept proposes that the Federal government will pay for a doctor-patient discussion about the possibility of what is, frankly, assisted suicide.
The Administration insists that the final choice about refusing treatment will always be that of the patient and that the Federal government will respect the patient’s choice.
Still, consideration of the possibility of choosing assisted suicide will be paid for by the government as a cost-cutting possibility, and this simply scares those for whom the pro-life issue is crucial. Others see it as opening the door to the Federal government’s intrusion in to what should remain a private, intensively personal issue.
Msgr. Albacete suggests this situation could provide an opportunity for the Catholics who have Obama’s ear to educate the president, to the benefit of all Americans:
A member of the new generation of conservatives recently told us that this is a moment of opportunity for Obama’s Catholic advisers. He himself had been converted from agnosticism to Catholicism by discovering the correspondence of the social doctrine of the Church with his conservative views, particularly the Church’s teaching about subsidiarity.
But will the President’s many Catholic members of his Administration and his advisors recognize this moment of opportunity to witness to how the Catholic social doctrine can show the way for a reform of the health care system that will avoid this governmental intrusion into such a personally defining issue? [No, they won't. They're all too busy pandering inexplicably - as in licking ass, pardon the crude term - to the most powerful man in the world, to think about Catholic principles, many of which, particularly the respect for life at every stage, they have already discarded anyway.]
In order to do this, these Catholics should witness to the consistence in the Church’s effort to demonstrate that the pro-life position is in fact the very basis for the recognition of health-care assistance as a natural human right. This is the key issue in this discussion, but so far it has not been raised.
Add to those for whom we must light candles and pray to the Holy Spirit - Obama Catholics, bigoted Jews and of course, Obama himself and his army of swooning robots!