That means tracking many perfectly legal–even constitutionally-protected–activities, looking for the man who checks out whacky Muslim theology from the library AND attends a mosque with a radical imam AND buys a copy of “The Anarchist’s Cookbook” from Borders AND frequents al Qaeda-related chat rooms.

At that point, someone had best start bugging chummy’s cell phone and infiltrating his friends. But if one persists in thinking that because an activity is perfectly legal law enforcement should never know about it, I don’t for the life of me see how you can expect anything but posthumous investigations.

About the tax-exempt status – it does prevent the government from using taxation to control churchs, but of course the main purpose is to allow charities to put more of their resources into whatever it is they do, and the ‘whatever’ is usually interepreted very liberally, possibly in the interests of fairness. I suspect that it’s interpreted even more liberally in Canada than in the US, but I’m not sure of that, and anyway that’s a side-issue.

The thing is, if churches were taxed, the charity they perform would necessarily be reduced, and the number of hospitals and the range of services provided in them by Roman Catholics and Jehovah’s Witnesses would necessarily be curtailed, which might not be such a good thing for the public. That is, if you reduce the work done by either changing the financial arrangements or by making regulations that the providers can’t or won’t follow, you end up in the same position overall.

I also really, really dislike the idea that ‘if you take our money, you do things our way’. It smacks of coercion to me. Of course, unlike a government, I don’t have to be particularly fair to all branches of society, and can choose which charity to give to. I suppose I could say ‘If you want my donation, you have to do X’, but that’s not me, and anyway given the size of my average donation, they’d probably laugh at me.

And I really, really, really try to avoid the ‘you can’t be a proper if you do/say/think that, but I have to laugh at the idea of any of the Kennedies being put forward as a model Roman Catholic. I mean, I remember JFK and his assassination, and admired him at the time, as much as someone fairly young and uninformed about politics could, and I remember that quote, and I know why he said it. But I don’t think it exemplifies the beliefs of a devout RC in public life.

Incidentally, that quote came up many years later when I was teaching similarities and differences of the UK, Canadian and US political systems to kids who probably weren’t born when Kennedy was shot. None of them could figure out what the big deal was about him being RC. About 98% of them were RC, but on the other hand, neither they nor I could have named the religious affiliation of most of our politicians. It was one of those minor cultural differences.

1. A decree, order
2. Imposed settlement
3. decree or settlement imposed without popular consent.

I admit I reacted to your last sentence,jem, and I take your point about complying with professional standards despite personal conscientious objection to some of the material libraries are required or ought to hold. But in meeting your professional standards, you are not required to be complicit in that to which you have a conscientious objection. If you find and deliver a chemistry book to a potential terrorist, you cannot be held morally or criminally responsible for any possible crimes he might commit using that book. Nor can the government reasonably justify forcing its draconian “security” measures on librarians to identify people who might have accessed certain books or other materials. You are at all stages a passive observer in that activity.

But Jane’s and my objection remains that to force or to coerce hospitals and/or individual doctors, nurses and pharmacists to perform medical procedures, or supply birth control means, to people against their consciences is different entirely. It requires them to actually perform actions that are morally abhorrent to them. Aside from any personal moral considerations, it amounts to civil conscription, and that is what I meant when I described it as totalitarian.

But what you seem to be saying, Jem, is that there is no place for conscientious objection to government dictat. That smacks of totalitarianism.

As the “old canard” I was repeating what I’d been told by my father, who–I believe–told me he’d checked with the hospital. But that was southern Indiana in 1952. Best theological practice is not always what’s done in out of the way places–certainly as true for Methodism as for Catholicism. I did not mean it as a criticism: you can make a decent moral case either way.
It is important to avoid compulsion and fraud. Given that, the morality of an action is something for the professional and the customer to work out between themselves. Which was my point.