The Greatest Theological Implication of the HHS Mandate

Graduates and undergraduates gathered inside Loyola Marymount University’s Theology Village to dialogue about “Reproductive Justice”. Student organized and student led the program attracted students and faculty inside and outside the theology program. The two hour event began with presentations by six panelists, three professors and three students. Issues in bioethics, feminism, and history; and perspectives from the Theology of the Body, non-Catholic Christianity, and third world poverty were presented. The wide scope of information was more than enough to ignite the second hour of questions and comments from the nearly hundred participants.

Although the discourse did not include much depth or detail about the HHS mandate itself, the prime organizer revealed during her presentation that her motivation stemmed from what she considered to be the USCCB’s unjust stand. It was her feeling as a Christian that no Catholic institution should be allowed to prevent/limit students/employees from access to affordable birth control. By contrast, the student who presented her thoughts inspired by Pope John Paul II divulged that it was her struggle with anorexia that prompted her conversion to Roman Catholicism. She professed that in no other Christian denomination did she find a spirituality that currently places an equal significance on the body as it does on the soul. She also added, that as stirring and relevant as this theology is she is gravely disappointed by the lack of discussion and support for it from leaders in the Catholic Church, be they lay or ordained. As an example, she cited her recent attendance at an Engaged Encounter weekend which offered an NFP video as so apologetically optional to the nuance of discouraging couples to view it.

These divisions within Catholicism and beyond point to an even greater theological implication that arises from the HHS mandate. As the history professor stated in her presentation, for the last five hundred years western society and The Church have been participating in a bifurcation between the secular and the sacred. I offer that this ideology climaxed with a whole country founded on the premise of religious liberty “safeguarded” by the separation of church and state. Despite the original premise seeking to prevent religious persecution, what we see at present is systemic and legal protection of any ideology so long as it is not affiliated with a religion. While disciplines like politics or sociology may find this tolerable or even advantageous, theology grounded in Natural Moral Law exposes this as an illusion impossible to sustain. The sacred/secular illusion has been challenged before in the public arena with legal matters involving prayer in school. This instance demonstrates that the state can neither advocate nor force individuals to do something against their beliefs. Yet with the HHS mandate, we find not one side but both sides of the debate claiming their beliefs are being violated. The extensive involvements from both sides suggest we are calling into question the very first principle that our country was founded on. In other words, from a theological point of view, the HHS mandate controversy is the impact of two perceived realities, the sacred and the secular, long separated in human consciousness finally reuniting in a dramatic infusion like two colliding atoms.

Sacred and secular are often associated with dichotomies such as good and evil or graced and non-graced. However what we categorize as sacred and secular can and do overlap therefore they cannot and should not be considered opposing or separate. The sacred can be defined as divine or set-apart from while secular can be defined as temporal or non-religious. Yet a closer examination of these demonstrates a more integrated reality. How do we reconcile that some non-religious people lead holier lifestyles than do some Catholics? How do we reconcile that divine life takes place within temporal reality?

For evidence to substantiate the separation of secular and sacred as illusion, let us look at two theological practices within the church. Firstly, sacramental theology is based on this separation but can be a victim of it. Some who baptize their children believe that a sacred ceremony works like magic. Teenagers are confirmed believing they are graduating. Engaged couples justifiably wonder why their journey toward sacrament is considered to begin six months prior to their ceremony, not on the day they met. These are not meant to diminish the importance or the power of the sacraments, on the contrary, they are meant to illustrate that the strict dichotomy on which the sacraments rest can actually distract people from the integrated lifestyle the sacraments were meant to promote. Secondly, theology in general does not exist in a vacuum; it must be grounded in the truths that exist in all facets of reality. For this reason, modern theology dialogues with other disciplines. The first time this occurred, Thomas Aquinas mixed Catholicism with philosophy and created a stronger form of Catholicism that engaged the Greek reasoning of the people in his time that has endured into the present. Perhaps it is no coincidence that in our time when the sacred/secular illusion is crumbling there has been an influx of theology systematically engaging with other fields of study such as science, history, and psychology, not to mention inter-faith dialogues. Someone like St. Catherine of Siena comes to mind as a great saint who in suffering from anorexia (and a dualistic spirituality that viewed her body as a secular or temporal evil) could have benefited body and soul from engaging with psychology were she alive today.

What is really at stake between sacred and secular in these two theological practices is God’s ability to act and where the truth exists. Sharp examination discovers  that God is not confined to acting within The Church and truth can be found beyond The Church. As such, theology seeks to incorporate what is pure and true from other inquisitive disciplines in an effort to create a stronger Catholicism that engages the reasoning of the people of our time.

My main point is not to suggest that Catholicism should act as a kind of Theocracy nor am I advocating we completely dismantle the separation of church and state. What I do assert is that those who fail to understand the logic or the passion behind the Roman Catholic opposition to the HHS mandate are hoping to keep Catholics and everyone else in a reality that simply does not exist. It is a reality where God’s law is not the ultimate supreme power of the universe to be respected and the polarities of sacred and secular are used to exclude from conversation and vision those who would speak and live this integrated truth before all.