Man Confesses to Killing His Wife…

…because they could no longer afford her medication.

Whenever you point out that the Church says health care is a right, the instant response you always get back from a libertarian heretic at war with the Church is some variation of this:

“If the Government mandates or dictates rights (whatever they are) then I am forced to act in the way they specify. These actions then fall out of the charity space and lose much of the virtue associated with the act.”

It is a gospel of narcissism to make helping the poor and sick all about the pious person’s own satisfied feeling of virtue and not about seeing that the poor and sick get what they need. Real love does not care about who gets the credit. It is a bizarre parody of the gospel that claims to care about “hands on charity vs the impersonal state” but is really about nothing other than one’s own tyrannous demand for getting all the credit–with no regard for whether the supposed object of charity actually benefits in the way they need.

Bottom line: If you quibble over a couple of bucks coming out of your paycheck to support a social safety net that lightens the burden for all, why should anybody ever believe you are so filled with generous charity for the sick that you will shoulder the whole burden when some family comes to you with a child sick with leukemia requiring hundreds of thousands of dollars in treatment?

What you are really saying, in the end, is that the family with the sick daughter (or the old man with the sick wife) should continue to be forced to busk on the internet and face bankruptcy and the death of their child (or wife) so that you can feel good about yourself for putting ten bucks in their GoFundMe. You would rather subject the sick to this than live in a backward barbarism like Australia or the UK where people do not live in terror of destitution if a serious illness or injury occurs. And you seriously want to tell me that is Christian generosity.

Not buying it.

Here’s reality: What is owed in justice is not given in charity. It is not an act of charity to not murder a person in cold blood. The person is due their life in justice. You aren’t doing them a favor by not murdering them. Likewise, the sick person has a claim on justice. They are due health care, not as a favor, but because they are human beings. And it is the rightful and legitimate task of the state to see to it, if possible, that human don’t die either by murder or neglect. Since protecting human life is a work of justice, not charity, and the state is tasked with justice, it therefore follows that it is legitimate for the state to see to it that sufficient provision is made for the health of citizens that they do not–for instance–BE PLACED IN CIRCUMSTANCES WHERE A DESPERATE HUSBAND FACES THE HORRIBLE PROSPECT OF FEELING HE HAS TO KILL HIS WIFE IN ORDER TO SPARE HER THE AGONIES SHE WILL FACE WITHOUT MEDICATION! Every libertarian denial of that fundamental moral principle is a damnable lie from the pit of hell.

The Libertarian answer to this is “Tough shit. My right to my money is more important.” The Catholic response is “That is an obscenity. Health care is a right and we have the means to see that nobody has to face this monstrous dilemma.”