Baltimore, Md., Nov 16, 2009 / 14:36 pm
In his opening address on Monday to the full assembly of the U.S. bishops, Cardinal Francis George, the president of the bishops' conference, insisted on the Church's right to speak on issues in the public debate, particularly health care reform. Remarking on the recent attempts to silence the bishops, he noted, “issues that are moral questions before they become political remain moral questions when they become political.”
Cardinal George said that it is not the place of the bishops to speak to particular means of delivering health care, but that it is their responsibility “to insist as a moral voice concerned with human solidarity that everyone should be cared for and that no one should be deliberately killed.”
Demonstrating that the U.S. Bishops have long discussed this issue, Cardinal George quoted his predecessor Cardinal Bernadin, who stated in 1994 that concern for health care “requires us to stand up for both the unserved and the unborn, to insist on the inclusion of real universal coverage and the exclusion of abortion coverage, to support efforts to restrain rising health costs and to oppose the denial of needed care to the poor and vulnerable.”
Cardinal George went on to say that Americans are still participating in the same debate 15 years later, and that we are “most grateful for those in either political party who share these common moral concerns and govern our country in accordance with them.”