The Affordable Healthcare Act requires employees of non-religious institutions to have free access to birth control in contraception and the 'morning after' pill. While churches and religiously specific programs are excluded, Catholic universities and hospitals employ many non-Catholics who ought to be free of dogmatic intrusion into their personal consciences and choices. The Catholic Bishops have long abused the principle of freedom of religion to lobby for laws and to insist on the right not to provide their employees with anything that conflicts with church teachings. We have not been able to have taxpayer money used for abortions because of this aggressive politics of conscience abuse. Now they are screaming about Obama's administration insisting that they respect the civil democracy and the conscience of their employeers instead of being their usual partriarchic selves. Despite their threats to oppose Obama on this point, the alternative GOP candidates violate all their teachings on war and economic justice. To make contraception more important than basic issues of social justice is bad theology; but to allow this one issue to be seen by Catholic voters as more important than the rest of the story is abysmal leadership.
When will the Catholic Bishops learn to keep their dogma out of civil life and to get off their theocratic high horse?
Comments
Perhaps it's because like most religions, they have areas where they become condemnation centers rather than dispensers of free-flowing grace.
The letter of the [religious] law becomes more important than its intent. That's bad theology no matter which religion practices it just as its bad law no matter which Supreme Court Justice practices it.
One uses Scripture...one uses the U.S. Constitution. The intent of both is sometimes ignored. with consequences in opposition to the intent..
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"
I know, but I miss the nuance of the Paulist Fathers and the anti-war, social justice Catholics I once knew as fellow Christians and Americans.
The battle between progressives/conservatives takes place within the church just as it does outside of it. Cannon Law tilts the balance in favor of conservatives..
The greatest saints (Christian heroes) tended to be rebels.. St. Francis comes to mind as the most well-known.
Personally, I adhere to "Liberation Theology". Many who have agreed with me have been butchered. The Bishop of El Salvador was murdered in his own cathedral by a U.S. backed para military group. The murder of priests/nuns in Central America was fairly common not too long ago....again, backed by U.S. financial/business interests in those countries..
Seeking social justice ...feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless, tending to the sick, etc., tends to stir up powerful enemies in right wing nations where caterling to the wealthy and corporate elite (foreign or domestic) is state policy.Doing such things points a spotlight on governments that are morally bankrupt. They and their backers don't like it It's perceived as a threat.
The safer course for the church is to follow the conservative wing rather than the wing of the gospel. I think that's the reasoning behind much of it. In doing that, it loses its purpose, doesn't it?
Retired Monk - "Ideology is a disease"..
I understand, appreciate and share friends with you in the Catholic Church. Much of my anger about the Bishops and the Vatican is about the lost voice and image of these faithful Christians. When I hear that Catholic Americans are the Reagan Democrats and that they will be alienated from Obama by the contraception provisions of the Affordable Care Act, I pray for the return of Jesus to kick their lousy asses.
Of course the conservative course is always the safer course. Jesus could have lived to a ripe old age had he not gone to Jerusalem.
One day a religion in America may come to believe and teach that it is wrong to kill people.
Will we allow that religious group to refuse to withhold (or remit to the IRS) Federal Income Tax from its employees because it is public knowledge that those funds go to purchase the equipment and personnel that kill people?
Although it is too late to prevent yet another Preemptory Capitulation by Obama, we should recognize the potential for degradation of the military industrial complex if we allow so-called religious conviction to interfere with the fundamentals that have gotten us where we are today.
Harold Pinter shares some of what Poly wrote of, it's not taught in school, it's not important enough.
A million lives here a hundred thousand there, not important. Now, MIA's middle finger during the superbowl halftime, that's important.