Life and liberty under attack

It’s rare to hear good religious liberty news coming out of New York, but we are pleased to report that a court order will provide a temporary respite for Catholic health workers suing the state over its new Medical Aid in Dying Act. The bill went into effect last week, but a federal judge has ordered that it will not be enforced while the lawsuit proceeds. Officially, the bill includes a conscience clause for religious practitioners who refuse to administer euthanasia. But under the state’s palliative care law, they are still compelled to inform terminally ill patients about all legal end-of-life options. Assisted suicide is now one of those options.

The plaintiffs include a network of five Catholic Long Island hospitals, along with multiple congregations of nuns who have served New York’s poor and elderly for generations. Not only would the new law force them to give these vulnerable patients unsolicited information about suicide, it would also force them to guide patients through the qualification process and approve transfers to a facility providing the lethal drugs. For the Missionary Sisters of St. Benedict, the situation has been even more dire. Because their assisted living facility isn’t officially classified under the law as a healthcare facility, they aren’t even allowed to opt out of directly facilitating a patient’s suicide.

Other Catholic congregations joining the suit include the Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne, and the Little Sisters of the Poor. Readers might recall that this is not the Little Sisters’ first religious liberty rodeo. As a non-profit hiring lay workers of all religions or none, they became a focus of national attention in the Obama years by refusing to include contraception and abortifacients in their healthcare package. Meanwhile, the Dominican Sisters of Hawthorne are also fighting a separate religious liberty battle over a 2023 law that would require their policies to comply with transgender ideology.

The Sisters of Hawthorne are proud of a legacy going back to their founding by Nathaniel Hawthorne’s daughter Rose, who particularly wanted the congregation to be a haven for terminally ill cancer patients. Sister Catherine Marie Kauth gave an interview to National Review’s Kathryn Jean Lopez, sharing about the congregation’s dedication to patients who can’t pay them back. The Sisters never take a dime from patients’ families, insurance, or government in any form. “Our care is given out of our love for Christ, our consecration to Christ.”

Sister Justyna Owsiejko, speaking for the Sisters of St. Benedict, looks back to their founding with defiant hope: “Our foundress overcame war and exile to serve those in need—we will overcome this law to do the same.” Today they face a different kind of war, even though these saintly women are, in their way, the opposite of culture warriors. They aren’t seeking political power, profit, or cultural influence. They are quietly living their lives and helping the poor, exactly as the left supposedly demands Christians should do. Yet the culture war simply will not leave them alone. And now it demands that they violate not just the Catholic ethic but their Hippocratic oath as agents of healing, not harm.

Cultural critic Mary Harrington might point to this as an example of “actually existing post-liberalism.” While much ink is spilled over the extent to which Christianity should be blended with public policy, with Christian post-liberal thinkers often in the crosshairs, it is conveniently ignored that our status quo is anything but a “liberal” utopia in which men and women like these sisters are allowed to live and work according to their consciences. One needn’t cosign all the particulars of a Christian post-liberal project to recognize that such “secular post-liberal” violations are inevitable in a civilization that has made autonomy its highest good.

It is interesting, however, that some of our secular statesmen still want to invoke vaguely Christian language for their anti-Christ purposes. Earlier this year, I reported on Gov. Kathy Hochul’s appeal to her own cradle Catholicism, as she unctuously recalled how she “was taught that God is merciful and compassionate, and so must we be.” Sadly, many Catholic institutions are Catholic in name only, replacing eternal truth with the comforting fictions of the day.

That capitulation makes clear voices like the sisters all the more admirable, as well as voices like Bishop John Barres, who presides over the Diocese of Rockville Centre. In a previous statement, he pointed to Christ as “the Divine Physician,” who “calls us to accompany the sick and the dying with compassion, not abandon them to death.” He now welcomes the temporary agreement that keeps the diocese’s ministries free—at least for now—“to serve every patient according to the Gospel.”

It will be a long wait before this good news is permanent and not merely temporary. The main legal and political fight is yet to come. But the message sent by the Sisters and their allies is clear: “Bring it on.”