Did The Pope Really Say Health Is A “Right”?

A quotation:

And Jesus passing by, saw a man, who was blind from his birth: And his disciples asked him: Rabbi, who hath sinned, this man, or his parents, that he should be born blind? Jesus answered: Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents; but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

A second (from a letter from St Paul):

And lest the greatness of the revelations should exalt me, there was given me a sting of my flesh, an angel of Satan, to buffet me. For which thing thrice I besought the Lord, that it might depart from me. And he said to me: My grace is sufficient for thee; for power is made perfect in infirmity. Gladly therefore will I glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

One more:

Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to his disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took along Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to feel sorrow and distress. Then he said to them, “My soul is sorrowful even to death. Remain here and keep watch with me.” He advanced a little and fell prostrate in prayer, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will.”

That God himself became a man and let himself be tortured to death is enough for us to prove that God does not see health as a “right”. The first passages, which could be multiplied with ease, agree that it goes for people, too.

I also bring you this memento mori: you, my dear reader, yes, even you: you will some day sicken and die.

Of course, if you are not Christian, you don’t have to accept any of this, except the memento. You don’t even have to accept that, either, but lots of luck avoiding it.

A right implies a duty. If you have the right to health, it becomes somebody’s or some person’s duty to give you that health. Whose? Who decides?

Even curiouser are these questions: what if these people or person cannot fulfill that duty? I mean, what do we do with the man whose duty it is to heal you but fails in his task? Punish him? He has not done his duty. Has he also failed in this duty if he allows you to sicken in the first place? Why did he let those piles pile up?

If we decide to punish this unscrupulous man for failing to cure you, or for even allowing you to become ill, the punishment cannot of course be corporal, let alone capital, both of which bring lack of health. Incarceration will also damage his health, and expose him to “risks” associated with dropped soap. Financial penalties and any oral admonition could squeeze his “mental health.” If all have a “right” to health, so does the man with the duty to give it.

Don’t we call mothers killing their children “health care”? The same with “gender affirming” care. Line the kiddies up.

That’s the hard side of this question, inspired by the Holy Father who showed up at one of those Pontifical Academy (endless) meetings on health and “said a few words.” He seems to be in favor of the “right” to health. Our friend Maureen Mullarkey paints the dark side of the Pope’s speech, writing

To casual ears, Leo’s address sounds simply like a conventional appeal to the common good, a basic principle of Catholic social teaching. But it is not. Leo’s insistence on what public health sages term “health equity” is code for the Marxist ideal of a classless society. The passé jargon of class struggle resurrects in the language of public policy striving for equal outcomes in health for all peoples everywhere.

Now she might be right: I am not arguing she is wrong. But at least a portion of the Pope’s speech sounds to my ear like the kind of polite airy encouraging fluff one hears at these kinds of meetings.

Maureen also says this:

What, precisely, is health? WHO’s open-ended definition interprets it as “a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.”

That, of course, is pure fuzz. It can mean anything a bureaucrat wants it to mean. To an academic, it means, as it has to mean, “free” everything. How else do your produce complete physical, mental, and social well-being? But it also means nobody can tasked to produce this everything, because only requiring some to work, as say the majority of whites and Asians do now to pay the welfare for others, would be unfair, and damaging to their “complete physical, mental, and social well-being”. The government’s solution is to print more money, and allow banks to do the same, but that creates inflation, for which cure is always more “free” stuff.

The Holy Father invented “One Health”, a vague concept which sounds impossible, but maybe he wanted it to be impossible. Gives the Vatican academy bureaucrats something to do with their time without causing too much grief for the rest of us. For instance, the Pope said:

Understood in terms of public action, One health calls for the integration of health considerations into all policies (transportation, housing, agriculture, employment, education, and so on), since questions of health touch upon every aspect of life. Thus, we need to strengthen our understanding and promotion of the common good, so that it is not violated under the pressure of specific individual or national interests.

That can be read as everything and as nothing, which is precisely the goal of most of these kinds of speeches. Let’s pray it’s the latter here.

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