On my Quick Takes this week, I had the following to say:

I heard about Franciscan University’s insurance plan for next year. (The gist of it: the terms of the mandate require them to cover contraception and other parts of the mandate would make it too expensive.) I think the best way to put this is “cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face”. There are a number of ways that Franciscan could work around the mandate that would not require them to cover contraception. Having a community covenant not to contracept comes to mind as an example. Just look at schools like Liberty University, Cedarville University, and other conservative Christian colleges which have certain standards to which students must abide in order to maintain enrollment. Having something in writing that the student will not contracept in order to stay enrolled wouldn’t be that hard. I also wonder why someone would be attending a school like Franciscan if one wasn’t willing to live according to the teachings of the Magisterium so I’m not even sure that you’d find many students that would contracept there.

There are two suggestions I’d make that could solve this.

Community Covenant
If you were to go onto the website of a school like Cedarville University in Ohio and could actually *find* their student handbook (it was pretty hard to find), you’d see a few interesting things.

01.) Required daily chapel for *everyone*. No exceptions.
02.) Dress code rules for classes and activities. (It has relaxed considerably in the last 11 years. Girls used to have to wear skirts or dresses to class.)
03.) Required Biblical Studies minor along with whatever major you have.
(All this is based on the testimony of the Cedarville students I roomed with at Urbana and the school website at that time.)

If you looked at a number of conservative Christian colleges around the country, you’d find similar things though the chapel requirements are less and there usually isn’t a dress code. Why am I bringing this up? Cedarville has a community covenant that the students have to agree to in order to attend and it includes things like church attendance on Sunday morning/evening and Wednesday evening, the dress code, certain conduct like not drinking, and other things that set the school apart from other schools in the area and in Ohio.

If Cedarville can do this, is there any reason Franciscan couldn’t do something similar and write provisions for the sanctity of life into theirs, with one of them being that students don’t contracept? It would make the HHS mandate moot because no student would be contracepting if they wanted to remain in good standing with the school. It wouldn’t matter if they were Catholic or not — it would be part of the community covenant that students agree to abide by in order to stay enrolled.

Churchwide Insurance Plan
The Catholic Church is the largest single Christian group in the U.S. A number of politicians across the board claim to be Catholic and the Church does have some sway on policy. In dealing with the HHS Mandate and the problems of conscience that arise, one issue is that the Church doesn’t qualify for an exemption because the scope of the mandate isn’t broad enough. The rest of us clergy and ministries can get exemptions because we’re covered under denominational insurance plans which are specific to our denomination.

One solution (which has a better chance of working than making the Obama administration change) is to create a churchwide insurance plan. There is already a Catholic fraternal organization which deals in life insurance/long-term care insurance/retirement — the Knights of Columbus — so why not use the knowledge of the KoC and create a churchwide healthcare plan that people could buy into?

The benefits:
01.) You’d have so many members that it would lower rates. The reason corporations like UPS can offer fantastic benefits is that they’ve got 80,000 employees. Ditto with a denomination like the ELCA which had *fabulous* benefits for clergy and their families that I miss terribly. If the Catholic Church had its own insurance plan (which could be administered by someone like Aetna or Blue Cross/Blue Shield), it would be the largest in the country and could offer better rates than *anyone* else.
02.) You’d be able to specify no contraception, no abortiofacients, etc. As the insurer of your religious organizations, you’d be able to specify what you could not cover for religious reasons. This would qualify for an exemption for religious purposes.
03.) As the largest insurer in the country, you’d have a pretty decent voice in healthcare policy. If you’re insuring millions of people and providing affordable/comprehensive care, insurance companies are going to be listening because, dude, they’ll want to do business with you. The insurance industry is not non-profit by any stretch of the imagination. (It’s partially why costs are so exorbitant but that’s another rant for another time.)

So is the Church going to start its own insurance program? Probably not. That’s for the USCCB to decide and this little Lutheran doesn’t have their ear. The community covenant at Franciscan is workable though.

Why yes, I know I’m not Catholic. However, I’ve rarely seen Catholic bloggers hold their tongues when it comes to things happening with Protestants; and instead of just criticizing Franciscan for their policy, I’m actually making a valid suggestion as to how to fix it.