Oct
29
Health care reform: necessities versus rights
October 29, 2009 | 1 Comment
Health care is not a “right”, it is a necessity like clean water, food, clothing and shelter. Rights include such things as the right to be paid for one’s work, yet there are those who presume to be Catholic, such as the late Senator Ted Kennedy, that believe health care should be given freely as it is a “right of the people”. It does not appear meaningful to these persons that medical care is a product of human labor and skill, not unlike agriculture and industrial manufacturing, that people must be paid, equipment bought and supplies and medications purchased. Only the most juvenile minds would presume to think that health care can be a free thing provided at no cost to all people and that the government ought to provide it. Since when does government have medicine as its area of competence?
Perhaps then it should follow that food is a right and farmers should also work for free and yield their produce at no cost so as to give everyone something to eat as a “right to low cost food”. It then follows that automobiles and transportation should be a right therefore the autoworkers and those who operate trains and airplanes should give us all free transportion in the name of these same human rights. Then it should be evident to all that since shelter is a right, as these well meaning Catholics often claim, then they should perhaps share their dwellings with those who haven’t any home, perhaps build a separate home for them on their own property, out of respect for their right to privacy, and of course give it freely since these same human persons have a “right” to such things, and so forth. There is no end to the claims persons will make to enjoy the fruits of the hard work and labor of others in the name of “human rights”. It is also evident that the use of “rights” has become a means of exploiting working people who have the capacity to pay for things that other people want but do not wish to work for yet expect as an entitlement just for being able to cast a shadow and stand on two legs – like abortion and birth control for unwed, yet sexually active and unemployed females: Heaven forbid we should deprive these women the “right” to sexual pleasure without the unwanted consequence of having babies and then having to feed and clothe them for the following 2 decades of life. But hey, there are government programs for that too – but I digress.
In fact the following New Testament verse is often used to support such claims to “health care rights” by our fellow theology of social justice Catholic types:
(James 2:14-17), “My brothers and sisters, what good is it to profess faith without practicing it? Such faith has no power to save one, has it? If a brother or sister has nothing to wear and no food for the day, and you say to them, ‘Good-bye and good luck! Keep warm and well fed,’ but do not meet their bodily needs, what good is that? So it is with the faith that does nothing in practice. It is thoroughly lifeless.”
How often we hear that scripture, but fail to hear the corollary:
2 Thessalonians 3:7-10
“For you yourselves know how you ought to follow our example. We were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone’s food without paying for it. On the contrary, we worked night and day, laboring and toiling so that we would not be a burden to any of you. We did this, not because we do not have the right to such help, but in order to make ourselves a model for you to follow. For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: “If a man will not work, he shall not eat.”
The Apostle clearly states in his passage that he has a RIGHT to such assistance however, he gives us a model for obtaining he benefits of his right – through work. Thus a human right and obligation to work and to pay for one’s needs is mandated in the scriptures, and this is the means by which the mandates of St. James are to be implemented; by providing succor as a means to sustainable effort and productivity.
Unfortunately there is the belief among novus ordo Catholics that somehow benefiting from the produce of one’s hard work is in some way sinful and that we must strive for a utopian world in which everyone has free things, given in the name of Charity and Justice: this is just a revision, an updated version of the pre-Vatican II scrupulosity that resulted in the excessive emphasis on externals like chapel veils and abstaining from meat on Fridays, rather than emphasizing the underlying virtues of practicing modesty and penance. Likewise we are brow beaten by the Post-Modern-Jansenists of the Novus Ordo, ordained and religious who, possessed by the “Spirit of Vatican II”, proclaim with bitter zeal that thrift and industriousness are mere greed and covetousness; that we ought to give everything to the various projects funded by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (which doled out parishioners charitable contributions to ACORN as you recall) and similarly diabolically disorientated and nominally Catholic “good works” or we are all indeed sinners and pharisees, guilty of keeping poor old Lazarus at the door with the dogs licking his wounds.
Indeed, social activism in the Church has become unmoored from the underlying requisite of personal holiness, “social justice” has become an end in itself, a mantra deprived of any sanctified meaning, one muttered endlessly by the lips of activists who seek to emulate the totalitarian solutions of repressive regimes in order to impose the world view of university academicians from a dominator culture on peoples of color and diversity, this is cultural imperialism at its worst. When a government “Czar” sees common cause between Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Chairman Mao and equates them in a public speech, calling them her major philosophical influences, it is self evident that the holy message of a Catholic Saint has got lost in the currently popular Bolshevik-appearing presentation of Catholic Social teaching. Evidently there are some who think that Mother Teresa and Chairman Mao were of like mind – this is the effect of the Catholic self presentation over the past decade: the loss of Catholic identity, the encroachment of “Liberation theology”, Youth Teen Masses and other brands of religious indifference, indeed the scrapping of Catholic discipline in favor of social activism in the name of peace and justice for its own sake has resulted in a widely perceived chaos, perhaps this is the “diabolical disorientation” spoken of at Fatima.. Has the Catholic Church become just another NGO? An arm of the United Nations or a subsidiary of the United Way? So now politicians think that Catholic Saints and Communist ideologues eat from a common pot? Is Christianity just an early form of communism in the eyes of these people?
It is time to re-brand Catholic Social teaching and actually make it “Catholic”, instead of appearing as Maoism with a Crucifix.
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[...] Health care is not a “right”, it is a necessity like clean water, food, clothing and shelter. Rights include such things as the right to be paid for one’s work, yet there are those who presume to be Catholic, such as the late Senator Ted Kennedy, that believe health care should be given freely as [...] Read more… [...]