Walk a Hutterite Mile in Their Shoes

[Valin]

Townhall:

Kathryn Lopez

4/6/13

 

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On a secular campus in a major city -- George Washington University in Washington, D.C. -- a Catholic priest at the campus ministry outpost has come under fire for voicing Church teaching on abortion and marriage from the pulpit and on a website, and for perhaps the greatest of sins: Counseling students against what the Church teaches to be sinful activity. The controversy isn't about homosexuality; it isn't about sex; it isn't even about Catholicism. It's about freedom. Are we free to believe, preach and openly practice certain things, which may be counter to the beliefs and practices of others?

 

A 500-year-old Protestant community in Montana helps bring this issue into focus, believe it or not. The Big Sky Colony of Hutterites is a self-sustaining farming collective with roots in the Protestant Reformation. Members take a vow of poverty, share communal property and support one another. The state government is insisting that workers' compensation insurance be provided to the members. This, says Luke Goodrich, their lawyer at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, is a "a direct violation of Hutterite vows to renounce private property, to receive no compensation for their work and to resolve all their disputes without asserting legal claims."

 

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Labor interests in the state complained that the Hutterites' exemption from paying workers' compensation gives them a "competitive advantage." Montana's new law moves away from an allowance they've received for 100 years. They just want to continue with tradition.

 

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As we discuss these issues and process the aftermath of whatever the Supreme Court rules regarding same-sex marriage, we ought to consider what's reasonable when it comes to government power and people with different views and expectations for life. We are stewards of a remarkable gift of religious liberty in the law and cultural tradition. Law needs to make distinctions and protect freedom. How can we do these things? How can we do these things while respecting the rights of the priest, the cardinal and the Hutterites, too?