Peace & Justice

WASHINGTON

A new U.S. bishops’ document aimed at improving long-troubled labor relations in Catholic health care “is an enormous breakthrough,” said Manhattan College religious studies professor Joseph J. Fahey, chairman of Catholic Scholars for Worker Justice.

“This is a milestone event,” said union leader Gerald M. Shea, assistant for government affairs to AFL-CIO president John Sweeney.

“It’s just stunning,” said John Carr, secretary for justice, peace and human development at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “I mean, you have the highest levels of the labor movement and the Catholic Church reaching an agreement when nobody else can, and it’s a wonderful process.”

The 16-page document, released June 22 by the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, is titled “Respecting the Just Rights of Workers: Guidance and Options for Catholic Health Care and Unions.” It is available on the Web.

WASHINGTON -- As they work with lawmakers this summer to help craft health care reform legislation, Catholic health ministry leaders say they will push for measures that will sustain principles of human dignity and justice, and extend coverage to the nation’s poor and vulnerable.

“It’s going to be a work in progress,” said Charity Sr. Carol Keehan, president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association. The organization is not supporting a particular legislative model, but will evaluate each alternative in terms of its potential to deliver cost-effective, quality care to everyone who needs it.

NEW ORLEANS
Health care reform legislation now being drafted on Capitol Hill will likely include broad, sweeping measures with significant implications for providers, Catholic Health Association experts told health ministry leaders gathered Monday for a panel session at the annual Catholic Health Assembly in New Orleans. But it will take some time before the bill’s many “building blocks” and “moving pieces” settle into place.

With an early draft expected to be released next week, public plan options to expand health coverage, an individual mandate that would impose an insurance requirement on all Americans and the challenge of financing coverage will spark intense debate in the coming weeks, said Michael Rodgers, CHA senior vice president of public policy and advocacy. A bill could reach President Obama’s desk by October.

“This is ambitious but doable,” Rodgers said. “Today, certainly, in the White House, we have a president who is going to make this a top priority.”

WASHINGTON -- Last July, Cynthia Nordone and Helen Schietinger took a number at the District of Columbia Department of Health, waited in line and walked away with a document that bound them to one another as domestic partners. But there were no gifts or greeting cards to mark the occasion -- just the seal of a government institution and a few legal benefits.

“It’s very statistical,” said Nordone, as she and Schietinger prepared dinner at home on a recent evening. “It’s not any kind of communal recognition of the commitment that we’re making to the one and only.”

What the couple are looking for -- beyond the meaning and implications of terms like domestic partnership, civil union and civil marriage -- is a sense that their relationship is real to the greater community, outside the walls of the Northwest D.C. home they have shared for nearly 10 years.

“What I think is important is the public witness to the relationship,” said Nordone, 49, a lawyer and lifetime Catholic. “It happens every time I say, ‘This is my partner, Helen’ -- I’m giving witness to what’s important to me.”