PoliticsUSA: Moralistic Politics: 'Manhattan Declaration' a 'reactionary reflex' otherwise historically reasonable

Rewritten by Politicarp and Lawt, Nov25,2k9

 The Manhattan Declaration that was issued last week (but apparently long in the making) is an instance of moralistic politics in a morally-differentiated society, a working moralistic politics launched to crystallize an active resistance to the humanist-hegemonic exclusions that are prophetically perhaps anticipated by these notable prelates and preachers. 

A morally-differentiated society needs mechanisms that satisfy the communities that form and come to visiblity in the public square,  perhaps in two opposing moral doctrines / systems, perhaps facing-off as presently around the Stupak Proviso in the healthcare reform bill sent up to the Senate by the US House of Representatives, will the Stupak Doctrine also become embedded in the Senate's Healthcare Reform bill about to be debated?  It's certainly an American problem, but so is it also a problem in many national societies around the globe. 

The solution suggested by rW has centered on the co-op idea, thus different from the public option (as called for by Pres. Obama) but different as well from the present scalding greediness of the leading medical-insurance megacorporations.

There's some possibility that in the final legislation there is no distinction between mutual insurance companies (forprofit, perhaps; but at least owned by the policyholders, not stockholders -- of which there are none, apparently) -- as we were saying, no distinction between mutuals and the stockholder-owned/publically-traded "greed corporations" we mentioned critically elsewhere [following Ungar]). I wonder if the proposed text of the forthcoming law sufficiently was mindful of different forms of corporations, companies, ownership structures -- wherein profits and nonprofits, curtailed greed corporations and mutuals, etc., will all be encouraged to enter the competition sawt in the govt reconstellation of the market -- to make only one point here, by not disincentivizing the mutuals, the nonprofts, the differentiated-moral-community stances among hospitals, doctors, nurses, pharmacists and healthcare insurers. It's the competitive mix of all the firms in the healthcare insurance industry that has the best chance of undercutting the industry ethos at present -- the immoral ethos of driving prices skyh+ repetitively to the hurt of the customer / consumer / patient.

Somewhere in, at least, the detritus of the present bill,  there is apparently somewhere a conscientious-objector provision for two nonprofit co-ops, one for those policyholders / premium-payers who choose not to pay any premiums any portion of which is deployed to cover any medical insurer's actuarial cost-increases due to financing abortion procedures; that's the first of the two.

And, second, another nonprofit co-op for those who choose to pay (presumably larger) premiums to cover abortions that may occur in the family and the society, along with their general medical needs (which conceivably may otherwise be identical to those insuring medically thru the other national co-op, the one for abortion-support refuseniks. It coud be that the bulk of abortion-providing  medical insurance policies in which premiums cover abortions are held by employers in co-operation with employees under union labor-contracts: a workers spouse in the female instances presumably coud have an abortion on the breadwinner's policy at work under, say, the United Auto Workers or corporation-specific affiliate thereof, say, the Chrysler UAW.   The buried govt 2 co-ops approach is anticipated to attract only a small percentage of insurance policyholders, many of them buried in unions which a while ago adopted abortion-coverage demands of the union in negotiations.

Where perhaps the dual nonprofit co-op approach is conceded in the present draft of the bill, one hopefully is not exceptionally jaundiced because one entertains the notion that the legislative drafters assume the overwhelming number of people will stay put where they are, holding onto their traditional policies of healthcare insurance, rather than risk one of these new-fangled morally-differentiated nonprofit co-ops for medical insurance. I suspect they expect that the dual nonprofit co-op system based on morally-differentiated communities woud remain utterly marginal in the great scheme of insurance medical under the new Healthcare Reform law.

It seems that the new coalition of the Manhatten Declaration feels the necessity of prioritizing three issues at their basics, forming them into a moral-doctrinal list as relevant to the public square. In contrast, ours is a public justice approach that takes seriously the strong moral differences (differences of moral behaviors and moral systems).  In it's way, rW's proposal is moderate.  Presumably it is unacceptable to the R+twings of both Democrats and Republicans.

But anything from the American r+t is in turn largely suspect by the media and intellectual elites, especially when the "anything" is delivered by clerics -- a dozen or so Catholic prelates, several Evangelical Protestant big-timers with Chuck Colson  starring (you know him: Watergate, prison, did his time, started Prison Fellowship to bring parishioners into the prisons to initiate and maintain supportive contact with the incarcerated).  Along his way, Colson found a mentor in Francis Schaeffer's writings and linked up with a leading neo-schaefferian Nancy Pearcey, a student of Albert Wolters, professor recently retiring from Redeemer University College, Ancaster, Ontario).

And notably participating in the number of Declaration signatories, 125 or so at the start, were also some Orthodox prelates.

They collectively tried to create space for future dissidents who refuse to facilitate taking policyholder or government monies to pay the costs of abortions, and thus refuse to help pay salaries to abortuary doctors.  In the meantime, the signers baffled pro-abortion people who coudn't/can't comprehend how the hamfist of the law is likely to come down on such future Christian refuseniks, who may have to face negative professional consequences  and even future suffering as a result of what woud amount to blacklisting.

As sociologically inevitable as it seems upon examination of American demographics, still, the Manhattan Declaration is a 'reactionary reflex' -- again, altho otherwise historically-sociologically reasonable.  Anyone who appreciates the seething surface of largely unorganized moral communities in America, realizes that fault-lines can sometimes turn out to be entities with blendable borders, pastels blurring slowly into one another and out the other,  rather than only hard-edged lines and sharply contrasting continuous spaces.  The sociology of these tensions and blends means we must find  a public legal justice for all.

The Manhattan Declarers are telling us that they have enuff moxy to join an anti-abortion stance with an anti-GayAgenda stance (no recognition of same-sex/gender intimate unions with cohabitancy).  To me that's a big leap.  I oppose same-sex marriage, as well as does any Archbishop or Preacher Man, but it's ridiculous to deny all USA states room to recognize other than marriages.  Reserve marriage to its traditional 1woman1man definition, but allow room to the states to decide more regionally the recognition or nonrecognition of intimate unions between either 2women or 2men.

Anti-abortion + anti-homo + religiousFreedom

I'm afraid this combined Defense of the Alamo and Custer's Last Stand was belatedly finalized and issued by this coalition to define and crystallize organizationally an alignment to fite against new forces bent on forcing members of these moral communities to become complicit in abortion-support and destruction of the family's once-distinctive legal status. Also, there's the importance of marriage generally to the reproduction of the species and the civilization (Stafleu), and the production of a new human being, making a baby with both parents ready to cradle and educate till the kids grow up join the workforce or finish college.

The debate, however, has gone too far in its polarizing rhetoric and selective logics.  In the meantime, we have to make peace in the society, whether some women are having an abortion or not.  The state shoud not finance abortions, but shoud not outlaw women from having the abortion she intends and (with allied men) establishing connections with healthcare insurers and medical facilities ready to co-operate within the pro-abortion ethos.  The state shoud provide the public-legal framework to achieve justice for both morally-differentiated communities, and the precise healthcare insurance as variously appropriate to each.

There is much more to think about in the Declaration.  It green-lited the start of a nonviolent civil disobedience movement invoking Martin Luther King, Jr.  one of us will get back to that in a later blog-entry.

At the same time, the Declaration was/is, powerfully, both prophetic and martyrological, a centuries-distant experience in the Church/es, a tradition that has been renewed again and again but never so drastically  in the USA as now.  These prelates and preachers will be joined by many more over the next months, but that move will be pondered, in that it woud require a signer to preach the calling to people whose moral witness is presently being compromised by the demands of unions and employers to insinuate and implicate their financial complicity thru their tie-in with the abortion medical infrastructure. 

-- Politicarp

Further Research:

"No compromise," Worldevnglcl mag, by Joel Belz.

The Manhattan Declaration, by Timothy George, guest writer, WaPo.

Under God: Catholic, Evangelical leaders team up to fite abortion, same-sex marriage, by Michelle Boorstein.

Religious leaders warn of civil disobedience by Tark Tarkas at Forums >SomethingAwful

Signers of the Declaration pledge to "...not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act,” nor will signers “bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships” or “treat them as marriages.” The list of backers reads like a who’s who of the pro-life movement, and the document essentially argues that supporters of the movement deserve conscience rights.

What does noncompliance look like? Nonviolent civil disobedience. "Dr. King was very clear about nonviolence and we are committed to nonviolence,” said Robert George, drafting committee member and jurisprudence professor at Princeton University. He listed some examples of what religious civil disobedience might look like, such as a pharmacist quitting before providing abortion drugs or a physician changing jobs before performing an abortion or taking part in an assisted suicide. “There are limits to what can be asked of people,” said George, who was flanked by 15 religious leaders, including the Archdioceses of Washington and Philadelphia and evangelical leaders like Chuck Colson and Tony Perkins.Addressed not only to Christians, but to President Obama, Congress, and civil authorities, the treatise will be available online for individuals to sign as well. When asked whether nonpayment of taxes would be an acceptable form of protest, George, who is also a lawyer, said he was currently representing a West Virginia taxpayer who is refusing to pay the small percentage of her bill that might go toward state-funded abortions (“Litigation is still pending,” said George). Institutions were also called on to participate in the civil disobedience if, for example, if a Catholic hospital is under pressure to provide services that go against Catholic beliefs. Although conscience protections do exist for many institutions already, there are areas, cited on Friday, such as when the Catholic Charities of Boston halted adoption services, rather than comply with state law and allow children to be adopted by homosexual couples.

According to the Declaration, “We must be willing to defend, even at risk and cost to ourselves and our institutions, the lives of our brothers and sisters at every stage of development and in every condition.” Yet similar documents, such as last year’s Evangelical Manifesto, have been unveiled with great fanfare but little consequence. Civil disobedience, especially giving up a job, is a lot to ask in the current economy and is a hard notion, even for some signers of the Declaration.

-- Politicarp,
with rewrite assistance and research by Lawt