Franciscan University of Steubenville, a Catholic institution in Ohio, has decided to drop its entire student health insurance plan as of the fall semester 2012 because of the new federal rule requiring contraception coverage under most employee and student health policies.Will the university provide health insurance for their employees? Or are all the university employees celibate and not in need of coverage for contraceptives? I checked the website, and not all the faculty are Franciscans.
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The announcement is somewhat misleading. Under the new rule, Franciscan University would not have to pay for any student's contraception. The administration carved out an exemption for religious organizations, including Catholic schools, that would require the insurance company itself to pay for the insured's birth control coverage "directly and separately." Nonprofit schools that don't currently cover birth control can also qualify for a one-year transition period to comply with the new requirement.
You'd think the administration would be forced to hand out the contraceptives themselves, but there are so many degrees of separation between the powers of the institution and the actual dispensing of the contraceptives that they appear ridiculous. They strive for a kind of purity which is impossible to achieve and live in the world. This from a church that found it acceptable to have a policy of covering up child abuse for decades. It is a puzzlement.
Let's get this straight: That the students at Franciscan University will not have health insurance is not the doing of the president but rather of the authorities in the Roman Catholic Church.
Shocked! Shocked! That some people may actually USE CONTRACEPTION!
ReplyDeleteThe mendacity of it....
The mendacity of it....
ReplyDeleteYes. And the twisted reasoning that is required to make the case against both contraception and abortion is amazing.
The stupidity of it!
ReplyDeleteUnsurprisingly, except that for some reason I expected better of the Franciscans, it's clearly a very conservative institution.
ReplyDeleteYes, susan s., it's stupid.
ReplyDeleteLapin, what would St Francis say?
Wonder what they'd make of his getting nekkid in front of the bishop?
ReplyDeleteSerendipity. Chasing images of St Francis & the bishop (rare, since Giotto), I found the observation that "many relics have been recognised as fake, such as the arm of St Anthony of Padua, which turned out to be a stag's penis on examination".
ReplyDeleteSteubenville was practically home headquarters for the Catholic Charismatic movement uber conservativ, right wing etc
ReplyDeletenij
I believe the folks in Steubenville would frown on St Francis with no clothes.
ReplyDeleteMany relics are fakes! I am shocked.
Nij, didn't the charismatic movement in the RCC begin in Steubenville?
Yes, anyone who knows anything about FUS would be completely unsurprised by this [It's unofficially "EWTN U". Uber Popoid. Thinks Obama is the Anti-Christ (the last is only possibly hyperbole)]
ReplyDeleteI still want to know how their consciences allow them to offer health insurance to their employees.
ReplyDeleteThey were founded by Third Order Franciscans. People who don't live in community but join orders of the sort in conservative churches are generally extremely conservative. Yet, there has always been a persistent strain of anti-intellectualism in certain Franciscans that, I believe, is a complete misunderstanding of Francis' admonition against erudition, which was, in his time, a result of wealth, power and influence. Books were priceless possessions, and there had been monasteries whose libraries looked like - and were, in all accounts - fortifications. In a time in which education, and learning about God's creation are more easily accessible and a way of bringing a level of equality to rich and poor, I believe he would've encouraged learning.
ReplyDeleteQuite some time ago, I knew some folks who belonged to the Third Order, and they were very pious and obedient to all instructions from the authoritehs in the RCC. I didn't know them well, but they seemed like good, but simple people, though I can't see them running a university.
ReplyDeleteThere's this weird permutation among RC Franciscans. We know how Francis set it up: First Order, "Order of Friars Minor" (OFM), men. Second Order, "Poor Clares", cloistered females. Third Order, secular (lay) men and women.
ReplyDelete...but then, as things happen, after Francis died, the orders got weirder, and fractious. The OFM divided, leaving some as mendicants (out & about), and some in Assisi (the Sacra Convento) The latter became the "OFM, Conv." Later, some of the OFM wanted to be more cloistered, and they became the Capuchins "OFM, Cap."
But also, some of the Third Order folks wanted to be more formal, than just secular lay people being Franciscans. They wanted a rule. So they became Third-Order-with-a-Rule, or Third Order, Regular (TOR).
It's this last group [sort of contradiction, in my humble, Anglican mind---where our Third Order (I discerned in them for a while, many years ago) stayed secular (though composed of ordained and lay). Every Third Order Anglican Franciscan writes their own rule, unlike the TORs] that founded and runs FUS.
* Back in the 80s, I met (at a peace march) a RC Third Order nun (this was during my discernment). Based on my Anglican experience, I experienced cognitive dissonance: "a Third Order...nun???" Naturally, this RC sister couldn't understand my mental block, as TOR was totally normal for her. Anglican Franciscans do have their own quirks: for us, the "OFM" exists for both men and women (separately), as the Society of St Francis (SSF---I think the women may be called Community of St Francis, or CSF). These women are NOT "Poor Clares" (Second Order): I think we have some of those, too. But the CSF are active-in-the-world sisters, not cloistered.
This concludes JCF's Franciscan blathering. Anyone, feel free to correct my errors.
The people I knew were married. I don't quite understand Third Order Franciscans, except they must have taken a vow of obedience, because they never questioned the policies of Rome. If the Holy Father said it, that's how it had to be, and on down the line of authority.
ReplyDeleteIT wrote: "Shocked! Shocked! That some people may actually USE CONTRACEPTION!"
ReplyDelete[tch] . . . the burdens of heterosexuality!
I am/was? a SFO. Dpon't think they drumed me our of the Corp. MY chapter was attached to the Fran. Retreat House where I volunteered.Mostly elderly, well to do married couples. Old fashioed conservative, did mostly devotional stuff and fund raising for the HOUse. I don't understand how Anglicans can be SFOs as Francis himself was all for the Pope, no matter how unholy. Some SFOs more holy thaN THE pOPE. Those friars definately NOT conservative, bt many of them left.But Steubenville was a nightmare and probably still is. I didn't have to worry about poverty, I worked for a tight fisted parish.:>)
ReplyDeletenij
[tch] . . . the burdens of heterosexuality!
ReplyDeleteAlas, I completely missed the implication of IT's comment.
Nij, the former president and retired chancellor of the university, Michael Scanlan, is definitely a conservative, and the present president must be also. I expect there are Franciscans and Franciscans.
Ah yes, Mimi, you hit the nail precicely on the head. When I was going through the biggest upheaval of my life, we discovered that my son had Hodgekins 3rd stage (of 5/dead). Those Friars saved my sanity. God bless them, every one!My refuge was a huge old sink where I scrubbed the huge pots and pans of the Retrat kitchens, scrubbed and prayedand wept. But of course they were the only
ReplyDeleteTORs that I knew, and they were at the front of VII. But there was a small scandal and the whole team was replaced. Literally people stood everywhere and sobbed, It was terrible. Eventually I moved on and came to work for a Pastor that had been bitten by the Charismatic bug, bitten hard! There were a well to do couple in his parish that would go to Steubenville and tape stuff for him. He also had books and tapes mailed to him in plain brown wrappings from them. He somehow thought that his conversion to a Protestant sect would go unnoticed in a sweet, old fashioned French parish:>) Every Friday pm, we would have a "Holy Hour" which was mandatory for me (per orderr of the Pastor). And they would sing the sweet songs
and pray ..... It did have some good effect on me because I learned to meditate and to be moe contemplative. And I kept thinking of the Franciscans that I had known and loved and Steubenville was not it! And Michael Talbot OFM was their folk-singer hero. this sort of thing was going on all over, there was one RC church nearby that did the whole thing, the altar calls, the swooning, the hours of 'healings',,,,and I, fairly new to he RC church had arrived just in time to experience it's conversion to Protestantism!! And I am willing to bet that that is one of the major causes of the present Roman conservatism. Rome could not tolorate the freedom of people relying on the Spirit instead of the Magistrium! It was a wild time. One of the fiercest converts was a young man who taught a Middle school grade in our CCD program. An unusual guy who sported a big beard and sandals spent an hour a day in front of the blessed Sacrament. One evening he walked into his classroom, sat down on the floor in the middle of the room, lit his candle and with no explanation to the kids, shut his eyes and began to 'mediate'. As time went, the kids got frightened and uproar ensued! I don't know what I expected when I swam the Tiber, but whatever.... altar calls was not it! :>) Nij
P.S. you are correct about Scanlon.
PPS. The Friars save my sanity, Mass General saved my son, now 53!
Obedience is one of the vows made, yes, but it is supposed to be obedience to the rule and the superiors.
ReplyDeleteOverall, the Franciscans are the best of the religious orders, and their influence on the sluggish and aristocratic orders of their day is the reason for much of the good work done by other relgiious orders. Still, the creep of extremism is in every good thing - a permeative quality of evil where two or three are gathered together in the name of good intention. My experience of the Franciscans in TEC is that they are of the "work to bring the Kingdom" type, not overly concerned with dogmatism, socially involved. I had been a Third Order member, but couldn't hack it after Mom's death, which is why I emphasized the conservative aspect/effect of lay/non-communal religious orders - I never met any hardline dogmatists in TSSF, nor really any hippy-dippy types, either. Of course, in TEC, most of the hardliners split off into their own (miniscule) order.
Nij, I'm glad the friars were there when you needed them, and I'm so pleased that your son survived the disease. God bless the friars for saving your sanity.
ReplyDeleteMichael Talbot's hymns were not only for charismatics, for they entered the mainstream of Roman Catholic worship.
Mark, I know very little about the Franciscans in TEC. I know I do not do well at fitting in within a group. I'm too wayward, too headstrong. The Franciscans who work to bring about the Kingdom do a good thing, surely.