By Matthew Gambino • Posted July 3, 2025

On my vacation to England recently, the parish priest at a Catholic church we visited implored his parishioners to oppose a bill in the U.K.’s House of Commons that would legalize assisted suicide.

Defying the common good and Catholic social teaching, the bill passed and now sits in consideration in the upper chamber. That passage came despite the voice of Catholic bishops and faithful in opposition.

A similar situation is shaping up in the U.S. Congress. The House of Representatives passed the landmark “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” May 22, and on Tuesday, July 1, the Senate followed suit by passing its version. The bill now awaits reconciliation of the two versions by both houses, with a vote expected on or around July 4.

Not without opposition, however. Last week a group of U.S. Catholic bishops outlined their view of the bill in a three-page letter along with a detailed six-page critique citing the “moral considerations” of 40 provisions in nine major categories.

Of the nine, only three got a thumbs-up from the bishops. They praised the bill’s support for ending taxpayer-supported abortion, for parental choice in education through scholarship tax credits like those in Pennsylvania in all states, and for tax-deduction incentives for charitable giving.

The bishops – including Ukrainian Archbishop Borys Gudziak of Philadelphia, and Bishops Daniel Thomas, Robert Barron, David O’Connell, Kevin Rhoades, and Mark Seitz — opposed provisions in the following six areas:

• Care for the poor: The bill calls for raising taxes on the working poor ($1,600 more per year for the bottom 10% of wage-earners) while cutting taxes on the wealthy ($12,000 less per year for the top 10%) – and growing more inequitable over time.

At the same time the bill cuts Medicaid’s health care benefits for the poor, elderly, and disabled. According to one estimate, these changes along with proposed cuts to tax credits for the Affordable Healthcare Act’s premiums, mean that 16 million Americans will live without health insurance.

If having to live with an injury or illness without treatment or having to choose between paying for medicine and food weren’t bad enough, the bill would cut funding for SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) and impose new work requirements to receive food aid that will “cause millions of people to go hungry,” wrote the bishops. “These provisions are unconscionable and unacceptable.”

• Family formation and strengthening: A small expansion of the child tax credit, new “Trump accounts” for babies, and an incentive for employer-based child care will provide a modest benefit but only for middle-class-and-above incomes, not low-income children.
• Adequate revenue for the sake of the common good: Even with cuts to social programs that serve the poor, the proposed tax cuts is projected to cause the federal budget deficit to rise to nearly $3 trillion over the next 10 years, from the current $1.36 trillion.
• Progressivity of the tax code: Some tax cuts will come about as a result of the proposed elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was designed to limit wealthy households’ use of tax credits and loopholes, along with raising the estate-tax threshold to $15 million. That’s the limit that a wealthy person can pass property to descendants, tax-free.

“Nearly all, if not all, of the cuts to Medicaid and SNAP could be eliminated by simply allowing the AMT and the estate tax to return to 2017 levels,” the bishops wrote. The estate tax threshold was just under $5.5 million that year.

• Inclusion of immigrant and mixed-status families: Some $170 billion earmarked for immigration enforcement and detention “would disproportionately impact” immigrant families “with strong ties to American communities,” the bishops wrote.

Provisions that aim to prevent children from unifying with their family “undermine the integrity of our legal immigration system,” they wrote, underscoring a statement earlier this year by Archbishop Nelson J. Pérez about immigration reform.

• Energy and environment: Proposed cuts of almost $500 billion in clean energy incentives and repeal of environmental programs mean that effects of climate change now and in the future will fall mostly on the poor and those of middle incomes – in America and around the world.

Joining the bishops in recent days in raising significant concerns about the Reconciliation Bill was Catholic Charities USA.

They do so not in support or opposition to partisan interests but to advance the common good. Political actions have a moral dimension because policies affect the well being of human persons. Elected lawmakers have a responsibility to enact policies that advance the common good.

As Pope Leo XIV said on June 21 with reference to his predecessor Pope Leo XIII in 1891, legislators should work “to overcome the unacceptable disproportion between the immense wealth concentrated in the hands of the few and the world’s poor.”

Failing to address this “imbalance” and listen to the cry of the poor “generates situations of persistent injustice,” Pope Leo XIV said, leads to violence and “sooner or later, to the tragedy of war.”

His is a warning, and a plea, for the political process to promote “equitable distribution of resources” to offer “an effective service to harmony and peace” in our country and abroad.

It’s not too late to contact your Congressional representative and echo the bishops’ and the pope’s call for wise and compassionate public policy.

Whether the Reconciliation Bill ends up remembered as “beautiful” or the National Assisted Suicide Act remains to be seen. Today we have a political duty to do all we can to influence policy choices that advance the common good and protect the most vulnerable among us.