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1668 Words
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Friday, February 24, 2012
Wise and thoughtful words from a friend regarding why the Catholic Church and others are so insistent on religious freedom when it comes to the ObamaCare mandates and edicts. I share what I receive. Enjoy!
Why is the Catholic Church fighting the federal government over contraceptives?
The fight is larger than the Catholic Church or contraceptives.
Ok, who’s in the fight?
The Catholic Church with 70 million members in the United States (the nation’s largest faith), the Southern Baptist Convention with 16 million members (the nation’s largest Protestant denomination), the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod with 2.3 million, the Greek Orthodox Church with 1.5 million members, Orthodox Jews, who number 1.5 million. There are many other religious groups that have formally protested as well. There are also protesting groups without religious ties.
What’s the fight about?
A requirement by the Department of Health and Human Services that dictates every employer provide contraceptives (Including morning-after prescriptions) and sterilization procedures to all employees. (This does not include abortion coverage, but seasoned observers believe that if this dictate succeeds, abortion will be added later. The President personally supports post-birth abortion and all other abortion procedures.)
What’s wrong with the requirement as written?
Technically, it’s not yet written. It’s been floated at a news conference on a Friday afternoon, that’s all. As shown by the numbers above, a majority of Christian churches (by membership) and a number of other religious bodies believe and teach that one, some or all of these features as outlined by HHS is morally wrong. They want to be excluded from that requirement.
That’s news to me. The Administration suggests that only “marginal” groups oppose the recent revision of the original policy, which the White House says was an accommodation to the religious groups.
The leaders of all the religious bodies originally opposing the dictate continue to oppose it in its new “payment” form. The only groups declaring satisfaction were a group of traditionally leftist believers whom the Obama Administration succeeded in assuaging with the new wording about financing; in effect, it gave its religious allies on the left a way out of an embarrassing controversy.
Are you saying that the Catholic Healthcare Association, the Jesuit Association of Colleges and Universities and Catholics for a Free Choice are marginal groups within the Catholic Church?
No, that’s not my word. “Marginalization” is a term and principle from Saul Alinksy’s theory of community organizing, to which Barack Obama subscribed early in his career and apparently still practices. Simply put, it teaches that you dismiss as “marginal” any group that disagrees with you, in effect placing them over to the side, out of the argument.
But what about these supporting groups?
All of the newly supportive groups in the HHS issue are significant but only up to a point.
Catholics for a Free Choice is a shell operation financed by the abortion industry, Playboy, the sex industry, and a number of anti-Catholic organizations to oppose any Catholic teaching challenging abortion.
The Jesuit statement was the opinion of its inside-the-beltway executive, a charming and heterodox priestl; he did not take a vote of the 28 institutions that make up his membership.
The healthcare group includes many hospitals but whether they can be called Catholic or their association can be called Catholic is up to the bishops, who have the power to decide who or what is Catholic.
It is the bishops that oppose the administration's policy without question. and it is the bishops who wield ultimate power over matters of teaching and belief.
Why should the Catholic Church get a break? Isn’t this national policy?
Exclusions (or waivers) have been granted in thousands of cases since the Obamacare legislation was passed—to entire states as part of the legislative deal leading to passage and to corporations for political reasons, none of which is mentioned in the Constitution the way religious freedom is outlined in the First Amendment.
A woman has the right to contraceptives. This displays a lack of respect for women and their needs.
The opposition to HHS is gender-neutral, to employ a term popular with government these days. The prescriptions and procedures in the controversy involve men and women in one way or another: birth control prescriptions for women, vasectomies for men—to name two.
Suppose a woman has a separate medical problem that requires treatment by birth control pills. Why should she have to pay for them? It’s not fair.
These employers make it clear up front what they do and do not provide in their insurance coverage. Most of them also provide supplementary accounts in which employees can put aside money to pay for items not covered by their plans—for example, the premiums withheld from their paychecks. You can use the “Flexible Spending Account” to pay for those and not pay payroll taxes. It is also entirely possible that the main policy of the employer would provide prescriptions on a physician’s diagnosis of uterine or other problems.
What’s the objection to morning-after pills?
Abortifacient is the Latin term for them, and what the Latin words means is interesting: “abortion-maker.” They have the same effect on the new fetus as a vacuum cleaner has on a fetus of three or four months. The Catholic Church opposes them because they are used to cause abortions, which are really painful, vile and nasty acts.
What’s the objection to birth-control pills and other contraceptives?
The Catholic Church regards contraception as an unnatural interference with and wrongful prevention of life, an interruption of God’s plan for every human being. Catholic scholars have written extensively on the harmful side effects of contraception to individuals as well.
But how many Catholics in America really believe that?
You might say better ask how many Catholics in America follow that teaching. There is great division on that issue, and there has been for 50 years, since Pope Paul VI had a committee of international scholars study it and he wrote an encyclical on it.
But this is not about how many Catholics live up to the teaching of the Church. It is about the Church’s right to teach what it believes, to follow what it teaches and to withhold its support from those things which it believes are wrong. Paying for these things is abhorrent to Catholic belief and, in one way or another, to the preponderance of religious belief in various bodies (by numbers) in this country.
What do you mean, “by numbers”?
The religious bodies as seen in terms of their number of members, not by count of the religious bodies themselves. The latter would be impossible, because there are, by some counts, 35,000 or even 80,000 religious bodies in the United States, some with a handful of members. You couldn’t begin to find most how all these groups feel, much less what their numbers practice. The groups opposing this dictate by the federal government have combined memberships that add up to more people than the number of believers in groups that favor it or are silent on it.
Why is that important?
It’s a fact but not a central one. Even if only a few believers felt this way, the Constitution protects them. It gives religious belief special protection against government with the First Amendment.
Where does the Catholic Church get off making moral pronouncements after all those priests raped those little boys?
The egregious behavior of predator priests is indefensible, and so is the behavior of the several dozen bishops (among a total of 180 bishops in the United States who head dioceses). Catholics remain enraged at this behavior and the lack of follow-up that occurred. We expect our bishops to have more guts than that. Unfortunately, the church is in the business of forgiveness, and those creep-priests were repeatedly given another chance when they no longer deserved one, for reasons not always related to forgiveness.
Having said that, I would like to point out that parts of your statement run awry of the facts.
Like what?
The phrase “all those priests,” for example. The total is shown to be 4 to 6 percent. That is less than similar offenders in the following groups: Protestant ministers, rabbis, public school teachers, and healthcare workers. Astonishing but true. We can also add “father of families” to the list.
Anything else?
Another term that is incorrect: “little boys.” Ninety percent or more of the unfortunate victims were teenagers or young men. (For that reason, these predators were technically “ephebophiles,” not “pedophiles.”) . But the fact is these men used the power of their office to make the offense happen, and that in itself is a kind of assault. Indefensible, as I said.
The Catholic Church is just against women. There were no women on that group appearing before Congress.
Well, remember, that group wasn’t just Catholic. There were Orthodox Christians, Lutherans, and Jews there. (By the way, you aren’t suggesting men can’t speak for morality, are you?) Anyway, it was a perceptions gaffe, at the very least. I would have had women represented.
Women have always been put down in the Catholic Church.
By making Mary a person of universal veneration and the highest example of human virtue? No other entity in history has elevated a woman to such a position.
By naming women “doctors of the Church,” a title held by only a handful of people in history, like Augustine and Thomas Aquinas?
By heeding the words of a woman, Catherine, in the medieval period when the Papacy had abandoned Rome for France, and she said in effect “go back to Rome and get back to work”? (They did.)
Would a Church fearful of women really have produced, nurtured and fostered the most morally powerful and beloved woman of her time, Teresa of Calcutta?
No, sorry, the position of women in the Catholic Church is a long and complicated story. Shelves of books have been written about that subject and women have converted in part because of it. Of course, a number of women have bailed because of it too.
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