Medicaid & Just War Analysis

By Joe Tevington

03/04/2025 • View profile

Photo by Thomas Tucker on Unsplash

Metropolitan-Archbishop of Philadelphia of the Ukrainian Catholic Church

Head, Department of External Church Relations, Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church

President, Ukrainian Catholic University, Lviv

Chairman, USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development

Your Excellency:

Along with the Catholic Health Association and Catholic Charities, you just wrote to Congress to ask that they "protect and strengthen the Medicaid program." Opposition to abortion seems like an afterthought in your letter (https://www.usccb.org/resources/letter-119th-congress-regarding-medicaid-february-27-2025).

I see no acknowledgement in your 2/27.letter that money to Medicaid also forces us to be cooperators in the continued promotion by other providers of contraceptives (some of which are abortifacient) and anti traditional family philosophies (aka, God's program of choice for addressing poverty.).

You are quoted today by OSV News: "Ukraine needs unity of people — of every nation and every citizen — to establish a just peace, a peace Ukrainians long for more than anyone and for which they are making the ultimate sacrifice" (https://www.osvnews.com/unity-rooted-in-truth-can-stop-evil-says-gudziak-after-trump-zelenskyy-meeting/).

As you should know, the Church's Just War Theory does not allow for unwinnable, suicidal engagements! Your close connections to Ukraine appear to impede your judgement and recognition of the genocide against Catholics in Nigeria and elsewhere in Africa.

Please consider recusing yourself from the USCCB's Domestic Justice and Human Development.

Joseph Tevington

Morrisville, Pa

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About the Author

Joe Tevington

Joe Tevington is a proudly orthodox Catholic, a husband since 1986, a dad to two adult children, a grandpa to two, and a civil service retiree. He is a sign language fluent certified rehabilitation counselor with graduate degrees in deafness rehabilitation, religious studies/moral theology, & Christian counseling psychology, as well as a catechetical diploma and certificates in benefits planning and Catholic social ministry. He deeply appreciates Catholic teaching on the sanctity of human life and the sanctity of the transmission of human life, as well as how they are to inform us in our apostolates and ministries.

On much lighter notes, he fancies himself to be the foremost authority on his native Brooklyn, when it comes to architecture, cinema, geography, history, Italian food, stick ball, stoop ball, or wiffle ball.

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