Catholics caught between bishops, Obama’s birth control mandate

[cleanhippie]

Mommy and daddy are fighting, and the anguished children don’t know where to turn.

This is the state of the Roman Catholic Church in the United States today. A small group of very conservative bishops has hijacked the church, or at least the public voice of the church. The bishops are playing the role of the authoritarian father. In case after case, their message to the faithful is “Do it because I say so.”

Last week, in an orchestrated political maneuver, 43 Catholic entities — including the Archdiocese of Washington — filed a dozen lawsuits against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, saying that any mandate requiring religious organizations to provide contraceptive coverage to employees was a violation of religious liberty.

--snip--

A much larger group of more moderate bishops has stayed mostly silent, fearful that to take a stand against the brethren would be to lay bare intramural fissures. They play the role of the silent and frustrated mother.

--snip--

Only one brave bishop has so far explained his refusal to sign on with the authoritarian minority. Like a parent who prefers to work on marital disagreements in private, rather than expose the kids to disharmony and force them to choose sides, Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, Calif., told America magazine Tuesday that he wanted the bishops to do more consensus building. If religious liberty is indeed the goal, then high-impact lawsuits with news releases aren’t the best way to achieve it.

--snip--

But this dynamic is untenable, as any good family therapist will tell you. The real solution is, as Blaire suggests, for mommy and daddy to talk to each other and work it out. Or the kids will find a happier home someplace else.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/catholics-caught-between-bishops-obamas-birth-control-mandate/2012/05/24/gJQAKv4hnU_story.html?td=sm_facebook&utm_campaign=wpapp&socialreader_check=0&denied=1

[rug]

1. Pretty lame analogy.

[cleanhippie]

3. Pretty lame reply.

[rug]

9. Want a stronger one?

[cleanhippie]

10. Do you?

[rug]

11. Yeah. Got one?

[cleanhippie]

13. Fail.

Play your word games elsewhere.

[rug]

14. Uh, that's lamer, not stronger.

[cleanhippie]

15. I agree. With each response, yours have gotten lamer.

[rug]

16. Well, you told me.

[cleanhippie]

17. I guess so.

[rug]

19. I hang my head in defeat.

Utterly bereft.

[cleanhippie]

20. Good Boy.

[rug]

21. Oh, one more thing.

[cleanhippie]

22. "Don't fret precious I'm here. Step away from the window, and go back to sleep."

[rug]

23. OK

[cleanhippie]

25. Your musical tastes leave much to be desired.

But to each his own. Do you have Mr. Traux's entire anthology?

[FarPoint]

2. Let's keep it simple...

Separation of church and state....that should end this angle of birther games....If the church continues...then tax them.

[Leontius]

4. My questions to the administration is why these drugs, why now, is this part of a continuing

process? Waiting on the usual suspects to spin my question into support for the RCC position which I do not support.

[cleanhippie]

5. What do you mean "why these drugs, why now, is this part of a continuing process?"

Taken at face value...

why these drugs

Because women need them.

why now

Because there is a movement to prevent women from having unfettered access to those drugs.

(Why) is this part of a continuing process

You tell us. It would seem that religious organizations are the ones responsible for this debacle in the first place.

[mr blur]

6. ^THIS^ nt

[cleanhippie]

26. As usual, you make an asinine post, then run away.

[edcantor]

7. Between the simple issue of modern birth control methods and..

Last edited Sun May 27, 2012, 04:28 PM - Edit history (1)

the other issues surrounding the demands for equality of all human beings to make sensible and rational choices in their lives, be it gay folks choosing whom they wish to love or women deciding if they must spend 8 more months bringing a baby into the world when they know that they cannot properly care for that child, the Catholic church seems to have come up on the wrong side of history and philosophy repeatedly in the last 50 years. Add to that, the unearthing of generations-long cover-ups of scandals of a male dominated voluntarily "celibate" clergy, and the known psychological implications of any person "choosing" to remain "celibate", and we have a recipe for a disaster in an age of modern law-enforcement investigations, and in an age when a 15 year old can have access to contraception, perhaps even from a public school.

The Catholic church stood for many centuries, up until the Renaissance, as the only beacon of light in the literate intelligentsia, (other than a few Kings and Dukes and Nobles rich enough to afford to become literate). Now, in an age where universal literacy, and the concepts of free choice and equal rights for all men and women are the cornerstone of a progressive and civilized society, the Catholic church has failed to adapt in the most fundamental of ways.

Although there still may be lessons of morality and ethics which the foremost singular Christian faith in the world can provide to her people, the church's inflexibility and astounding lack of understanding of the concepts of a gender neutral, democratic, and justice-loving society continue to afflict the health of that church.

Plagued with sexual, financial and injustice scandals of the last 50 or so years, the church begins to look like a gang or a mob, flaunting their power and re-stating their ignorance of concepts of a modern, egalitarian society. It will be unfortunate if the church, herself, chooses to shoot herself in the foot over and over, but modern history of the church indicates that this is the pattern. The most influential religious movement of the last 2000 years may soon fade into the modern day oblivion of a nominal cult, continuing to refuse equal rights to the female gender among them, continuing a pattern of covering up her own misdeeds, continuing to insist upon a special place of immunity in the criminal justice system, continuing to refuse to accept modern scientific techniques of something as fundamental as birth control, just as the church once refused to accept a heliocentric view of the Solar System. Just as a geocentric view of the Universe was tragically and simplistically wrong, so today the concept that the rhythm method of heterosexual contact is the only acceptable view of sexual relations is an equally limiting view of the vast array human potential.

Would that the church would open herself up to realizations of human potential, or, sadly, within the next century, she will painfully fade, (and is today fast fading) from the human view as a "reasonable" religious faith.

[daaron]

8. Nicely put. Thoughtful. nt

[dimbear]

12. The conservative 'minority' of US bishops are siding with the large majority of worldwide bishops.

That's the problem. The 'liberal' US bishops are a drop in the world bucket.

[edcantor]

18. "liberal" US Bishops, in agreement with 80-99% of US Catholics

hardly a "drop in the bucket" more like a strike to the gonads!

If the Catholic faith cannot continue to sustain financially, and the US Catholic membership contributes more millions of dollars or Euros than any other nation. Just saying, week after week, another few thousand American and Canadian and other Catholics worldwide don't show up on Sunday to put their $5 or $10 in the collection plate.

Eventually, as we are seeing, churches go up for sale, are shut down, fewer people show up. In the USA, the saving grace for the church has been the religious schools, the thousands of places where dissatisfied parents send their children to nuns and other underpaid women, (mostly) who attempt to educate the kids.

But when the church can't pay the heating bills at the schools, when the lay teachers don't take those underpaid jobs, when the priests leave, when the nuns fail to show up. The Cancer of a religion locked in the past, where the only legitimate way of avoidance of pregnancy is the rhythm method, where the concept of sexual relations for the sheer human pleasure of the sex is proscribed unless it is for procreative purposes, where followers of the faith simply cannot reconcile any longer such Spartan regulations upon their human intimacy, all because modern methods of contraception are forbidden, then we see a church in her own peril, a church no longer able to sustain her own membership, a church trying to be living in a distant past, before simple aspects modern science.

I don't think we need to beat up upon people so locked in their own past. They find out, sooner or later, that they were in error, just as slave-owners found a difficult and tormenting lesson about their previous beliefs. Concepts of equality and modern living do feel painful when people previously had believed otherwise and find it hard to adapt. It can be unfortunate, but some people refuse to accept change, and become victims of such rigidity.

[laconicsax]

27. Statistically speaking, it is a drop in the bucket.

Based on numbers I've seen, US Catholics account for about 6% of the global total (Roughly 74 million out of 1.2 billion).

[MineralMan]

24. Suits filed by churches that affect anyone but members of those churches

should be summarily dismissed by the court. The moment any church attempts to control, by law, anyone not voluntarily a member of that church, they violate the 1st Amendment.

Such lawsuits should never be entertained by the courts.

In this case, what the RCC wants to do affects employees, including employees who are not Catholics. Throw the case out.