In response to Gail Collins' column "Reproductive rights debate creates early holiday hangover": The U.S. Catholic bishops' lobbying efforts for exemption for employers who object to artificial birth control is unjust. The hierarchy is out of touch with their fellow Catholics on this issue. Ninety-eight percent of sexually active Roman Catholic women in the United States use birth control; 70 percent use sterilization, the birth control pill or an intrauterine device (Guttmacher Institute, 2011). The teaching of the church since Pope Paul VI wrote "Humanae Vitae" in 1968, regarding the use of birth control, has never been accepted by most Roman Catholic men and women. If the institutional church approved of women priests, then women's voices would be heard and certainly included in decision-making that affects women's lives and well-being. Women and men have the human right to act as their own moral agents and make responsible decisions on family planning. How can pro-life church leaders oppose contraceptives that prevent unwanted pregnancies and abortions? The bishops should not impose the church's official beliefs on employees or on Catholics who dissent from this teaching. This violates a core Catholic teaching, primacy of conscience, which also applies to non-Catholics. Dozens of Catholic hospitals and universities offer contraceptive coverage now. Justice toward all, a core biblical value, should guide the bishops in their coverage of contraceptives for their employees.
This is what, I believe, Jesus would do and so should the bishops.
Bridget Mary Meehan,
Sarasota
5 comments:
"This violates a core Catholic teaching, primacy of conscience, which also applies to non-Catholics."
You're one to talk about Church teaching...
A modest sampler of recent Church "teachings":
- some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately. Some anti-retroviral drugs are also infected "in order to finish quickly the African people" (September 2007, Archbishop Francisco Chimoio, head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique, as reported by http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7014335.stm
- the HIV virus could actually pass through tiny holes in the rubber of condoms (2003, Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo of Paraguay)
- The condom is a cork, and not always effective (2008, Bishop Demetrio Fernandez of Spain).
The Vatican neither reprimands nor denounces such assertions. Hence they are true. And yes, pigs fly.
Meanwhile, somebody dies of Aids every two minutes in South Africa; 23.9% of Botswana adults between 15 and 49 are HIV positive; 26.1% of Swaziland adults have HIV; 15 % in Namibia, and 23% in Lesotho.
The prohibition against birth control is rooted in misogyny and economics; women with many children lack political power. The very small percentage of active Catholic women who still allow the Vatican to police their sexuality wind up making lots of Catholics. That the Magisterium permits some kinds of contraception and not others underscores the disingenuousness of its policy. As a person married for 26 plus years, I know there is nothing "natural" about "Natural Family Planning"-- which the Vatican not only permits but which it authorizes parishes to teach! Natural Family Planning prevents a pregnancy that nature/God/bodies yearn to engender -- yet the pope is all for it.
Were Christ to return today, would he find one good person left? If these previous two posters are any indication of the masses, then I doubt He would.
If you want to strip the sexual act of its reproductive function, a function created by God Himself, then fine. You can answer for your sinfulness to the Almighty when your day surely arrives. But don't expect the Church to capitulate and turn away from calling a spade a spade because you have set your genitalia on a pedestal that needs to be pleased before God.
The problem, Mike, is that it's increasingly difficult to see any relationship between a disconnected Magisterium bent on preserving itself by reinventing truth, and the love of God made Man.
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