From the New York Times:
The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops have rejected a compromise on birth control coverage that President Obama offered on Friday and said they would continue to fight the president’s plan to find a way for employees of Catholic hospitals, universities and service agencies to receive free contraceptive coverage in their health insurance plans, without direct involvement or financing from the institutions.The Roman Catholic Church will take matters to the courts, and they will call upon Congress for relief from their oppression.
Already three lawsuits have been filed against the birth control mandate, two by religious colleges and one by a Catholic media outlet.Whoa! Internal divisions are developing.
The bishops will also renew their call for lawmakers to pass the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act,” which would exempt both insurance providers and purchasers — and not just those who are religiously affiliated — from any mandate to cover items of services that is contrary to either’s “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”
However, the bishops are now facing a potential rift with some of their allies who welcomed the compromise yesterday — including Catholic Charities, the Catholic Health Association, which represents Catholic hospitals across the country and individual Catholic Democrats and liberals who had helped persuade the administration to make the change.It's about time!
James Salt, executive director of Catholics United, a liberal advocacy group that is organizing support for the Obama administration, said, “The bishops’ blanket opposition appears to serve the interests of a political agenda, not the needs of the American people.”
Is it possible that President Obama will offer further concessions to bullying, celibate, old men, who experience nothing of the costs and difficulties of family life?
The RC bishops would gladly OUTLAW contraception.
ReplyDeleteEverything they say or do on the subject, is in service of this goal.
Being attacked by the RC bishops for failing to respect their freedom of conscience is like being accused of promiscuity by a cat-house madam.
ReplyDeleteI hope Obama doesn't give in one whit more.
ReplyDeleteAnd if ANY of these RC institutions receive even one dollar of public money in student loans or social service programs or any thing else, we ought to withdraw the funding if they fail to live in to public policy and keep costing public money with their shameful law suits.
The bishops are out of control and beyond reason. They feel they've won a victory, and they're emboldened to flex their muscles and push for more concessions. Every time I think about what they're doing, I get furious.
ReplyDeleteRoman Catholic women need to stage a walk out -with out them the church would fall apart. Bishops think they run things but really without the laity - you don't have a church.
ReplyDeleteSo according to the "Respect For the Rights of Conscience Act" I can refuse to do most anything I don't wanna do? The two-year-olds of the world will cheer this one on. The president has responded to the demands of the bishops. The bishops have stamped their little feet and refused. What was I saying about two-year-olds?
ReplyDeleteSome people used to model the church in the form of a triangle (with the point at the top representing the hierarchy and the laity as the broad base. The bishops forget that the "base" is what holds up the whole thing. Unfortunately, it is easier for most people to keep on attending Mass, not going to confession, and using birth control than it is to openly oppose their bishop or priest.
ReplyDeleteIn the minds of many RCC people, the clergy are the "gatekeepers" to a relationship with God/Jesus and also many don't want their children to see them being in opposition to their priest.
After all, how can u say to your teen "Remember what Fr. so and so said about wearing mini skirts" and then openly defy Fr. so and so yourself by not bearing one child after another, Much easier and safer to avoid the confessional and let things slide along.
nij
It's way past time for the Roman Catholic laity and clergy to band together against this sort of episcopal bullying. There's power in numbers. The RCC's shortage of priests is critical, and if the clergy and the laity, who pay for the temper tantrums of the bishops, banded together, the church would hardly be in a position to pull the licenses of a large number of priests. If the laity withheld their donations to the church, the whole edifice would collapse.
ReplyDeleteA reflection of the fact, separation of church & state notwithstanding, that come election time the bishops, unlike many of the clergy & laity, are pretty-well a wholly-owned subsidiary of the RNC.
ReplyDeleteLapin, so it appears, and playing heavy-handed politics seems to be the norm today.
ReplyDeleteWill somebody please take away the RCC's tax exempt status and do it quickly. Please!!!
ReplyDeleteRC women, stand up to your hierarchy. They are NOT how you develop a relationship with God.
Or the RC institutions could stop taking tainted federal money.
ReplyDeleteSo, if I've got this right, any Jehovah Witness-sponsored organization should have the right to insist that its secular employees should not be covered for blood transfusions; 7th Day Adventists should be able not to allow same to be covered for hospital food containing meat, and Jews and Muslims, pork.
ReplyDeleteWhere will it all end? Perhaps Archbishop Dolan will give us a verse of "And I am the Queen of Romania"!!
Tobias, there's no end to it. Those who have been appeased inevitably want more.
ReplyDeleteRC folk are friendly, but live Don't ask Don't tell. When BP was still Catholic, one of her friends assured her that if the priest refused to give her Communion (becuase she is gay and married), the friend (a Eucharistic minister) would be sure she got it. Her friends didn't understand why she felt she couldn't continue life in the choir closet. HELLO, people. You are supporting this church. Stand up!
ReplyDeleteThis was a Beltway fight, and now EJ Dionne (prominent liberal AND RC, apparently. Who knew?) is appeased, so it's all over.
ReplyDeleteSeriously.
The Bishops never swung any weapon in this. They didn't like affordable health care, either, but the nuns did. Guess who won?
Obama took away the impetus of this "outrage," and now it's a non-story. The Bishops may pout, and the GOP may pontificate, but nobody's really listening anymore.
Which is to say, nobody inside the Beltway. On to the next outrage du jour, and what was last week's?
O, my dear, that's so last week.....
IT, your story of BP's friend, the Eucharistic minister, is so familiar from my 60 years in the church. And to think I put up with that sort of thing for a very long time.
ReplyDeleteRmj, the story may be beltway, but I dread the cries from bishops and Republicans from now until kingdom come about how the Obama administration took away our religious liberty.
I was puzzled that so many opinion writers tiptoed carefully through their columns, seemingly cowed by the bishops. And what's the essential difference between the original plan and the tweaked plan? I don't get it, but the nuns like the tweak, so yay! for the nuns.
As far as I can tell the tweaked plan was what the nuns and RC allies of the President asked for - but it is really no different.
ReplyDeleteI agree completely with your comment about the R.C. bishops' over-the-top opposition to even the revised government plan to provide contraceptive coverage, except for one thing, you should revise your description of the bishops from "bullying, celibate old men" to "bullying, unmarried old men"--for obvious reasons.
ReplyDeletejames, one definition of 'celibate' is 'unmarried', which is how I use the word in my statements. Whether the bishops are chaste or not, I have no idea.
ReplyDeleteFamily life isn't a difficulty or a cost- it's an honor and a duty. But I'm not surprised you think, along with President Obama and 99% of the US Prosperity-based-on-a-culture-of-death population, that the Bishops are out of touch with the greed and selfishness that doesn't want to pay for raising the next generation.
ReplyDeleteContraception is just selfishness, prejudice, and bigotry against children. No wonder Grandmere Mimi's generation taught their children not to have children to the extent that we have to import workers now.
Theodore, people who prefer not to have children, should not have children, and there should be no onus attached to the decision.
ReplyDeleteContraception is just selfishness, prejudice, and bigotry against children.
Not at all. What do bishops know of the hardships of raising a family, and why should celibate old (mostly) men lay down the rules for everyone? If breeding is so vital, why don't bishops marry, have children, and experience family life for themselves? Since the prelates don't practice what they preach, what right have they to give "expert" advice to others?
For what it's worth, I have 3 children and 6 grandchildren who consume far more than their share of the world's goods.
Mimi, orthodox judaism regarded celibacy as a form of selfishness. Some of the rabbis were very hard on it, and saw it as a violation of the first commandment: be fruitful and multiply.
ReplyDeleteAnd of course, applying the principle that if something is good everyone should do it, if everyone were celibate it would be the end of humankind!
If birth control is wrong on these grounds, so is celibacy. And I don't think either is wrong...
Tobias, I don't think either celibacy or contraception is wrong, but if the pope and the RC bishops talk the talk, they should walk the walk.
ReplyDelete