Following are selected excerpts from an article titled Bishops Wrong: Healthcare Not a Right by Father Michael Orsi. Thank you Father Orsi for exposing this latest example of misrepresentation by the USCCB.

The USCCB needs to be either reformed or disbanded before they can cause any more harm. I vote for the latter.

Recently, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development released a statement made to the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate stating that “health care is not a privilege but a right and a requirement to protect the life and dignity of each person.” They couldn’t be more wrong.

Failure to differentiate between what is a fundamental human right and an opinion of what is deemed to be good by some — and the confusion over what is morally binding and what is not — has had deleterious effects on America’s Catholics and on the country as a whole. This failure in such statements distorts the truth. Furthermore, they divide the faithful and affect the political process.

Moral authority and suasion therefore cannot be squandered on social preference. This is especially true for the Catholic bishops, since they are called to proclaim God’s law and not to promote a political agenda. To confuse what is morally right with a perceived social good, no matter how meritorious their intentions, is to abuse their office causing grave intra-Church and societal consequences.

To promote health care as a right under the aegis of Catholic morality by the USCCB is not the truth. As a matter of fact, it is not even charity because, as the Pope says, “Without truth, charity degenerates into sentimentality. Love becomes an empty shell, to be filled in an arbitrary way.”

Such carelessness with the truth, whether intentional or unintentional, by the USCCB undermines both the Catholic Church and American society.