Well, this was all predictable was it not? The Obama Administration throws crumbs the way of the Catholics, Catholics fail to accept what amounts to no “accommodation”, and suddenly we are the bad guys?
A sampling of the news today:
Bill Press says we are “crying wolf” in the Chicago Tribune…
The Washington Post says we are being political…
The Philadelphia Enquirer goes with the ever popular “Catholics are hypocrites” defense…
The esteemed Huffington Post has also accused us of “playing politics”…
So what is the truth? Well, for starters, the Catholic Church did not insert themselves into politics; politics inserted themselves into the Catholic Church. We have not moved in 2,000 years. It is interesting that only one side here wants to deal in universal absolutes. Catholics are not seeking to ban all insurers and employers from providing coverage for or access to abortion or contraception. The Obama administration wants to fit us all with that rule. The Obama administration picked this fight.
Furthermore, many of the left like Bill Press seem incapable of understanding how this new governmental power could be abused. Like all new government power grabs, it looks great when your guy has it, but what about the reverse? What if a conservative Catholic President decided to prohibit all insurers and employers from providing coverage for abortion and contraception? The outcry from the left, and rightly so, would be that he or she was imposing their religion on the rest of the world.
Just because Barack Obama has no discernable formal religion, does not mean he is not imposing a religious ideology of some sort on us. In fact, if we were to view this as a theological debate, who would you rather side with? The Catholic Church and 2,000 years of theological thinking and study, or Barack Obama? The argument that the Catholic Church is inserting itself into politics holds no water.
As for the argument that we are hypocrites, that is an attempt to paint Catholic leadership as a bunch of old, out of touch, unmarried white guys. It will only get nastier, we will sex abuse cracks and reporting on that resurface.
The truth is not all Catholics follow the church teachings on these issues. Just like not everyone follows what their doctor or dentist might recommend for them. It does not invalidate the teaching nor the source of their authority.
Nor, in this case, does it somehow prove the Obama policies desired. Those Catholics who are using birth control now are paying for it. Those employees of Catholic institutions who may be non-Catholics or using contraception, are paying for it. The rallying cry of Obamacare was not, “free pills for all!”. It was not even discussed. The Obama Administration, working on a policy no one is sure we can pay for, decided of their own volition to step into this. The question is why?
Only Bill Press’s piece hints at this. For older, far left wingers, members of the Baby Boom generation who fought these battles in the 1970s, there is an animosity towards the Catholic Church. They believed the defeated the Catholic Church when birth control pills came out in the late 1960s. They believed in 1973 with Roe v. Wade we were again defeated. They are very angry that we have not “gone away”.
But a funny thing happened on the road to victory. Science picked up our argument. Research has conclusively demonstrated a link between abortion, oral contraceptives and cancer. Check the American Cancer Society website for known Level I carcinogens. Tobacco, asbestos, and oral contraceptives. Hmm, if I were in-house legal counsel at a big pharmaceutical, I would be nervous.
This notion of “progress” took hold in our society as well. You know the argument that was used to advance these causes? Young people seem to be asking themselves why progress is supposed to move forward in every other area of life, but somehow stop in the area of contraception in the mid-1970s? They do not feel good about 40 years of abortion. They have been marketed 8,951 different variations of birth control. It does not feel like progress.
There you start to get to the root of why the Catholic Church’s position on these issues has not gone away. On some level, liberals like Bill Press know this and this is what agitates them. There are only two reasons why, in the face of unbelievable cultural advocacy for abortion/contraception on the political, industrial (how much has big pharma made off of birth control pills), and media fronts the Catholic Church’s position still rallies millions of defenders.
The first possible explanation is that everyone believes it and it has been completely ingrained into every member of society. Clearly not the message we have gotten for the past 40 years. The second possible explanation? The Catholic Church is right.
But what we should not lose sight of in this debate is that even if the Catholic Church is right, it is still only the other side seeking to impose their viewpoint on everyone. That is the amazing thing about Jesus Christ on whom the Catholic Church’s teachings are based. Though he gave us the truth and the full revelation of God’s word, he did not try to do it by fiat. The same cannot be said of President Obama.
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