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Why aren’t people told about
this? (May 24, 2012)
"America’s conservative Catholic bishops are so worried that some woman in
their employ will get access to birth controlthat they have filed 12 lawsuits against the
federal government. What they are failing to see is a much bigger challenge that
should have them truly worried: the independence of Catholic women.
At issue in the lawsuits is the Obama administration’s pending regulation
that would require church-run institutions, like universities and hospitals, to
provide coverage for contraceptives as part of any employee healthcare package.
The Roman Catholic Church, of course, condemns birth control and equates some
contraceptive methods with abortion. This dispute erupted in February and
spilled over into the Republican presidential primaries, onto the floor of
Congress and, notoriously, into a three day Rush Limbaughrant in which he labeled a pro-contraceptive
woman a slut.
When Republicans saw that siding with the bishops was causing them
to rapidly lose ground with female voters, they tried to change the subject. And
once the Obama administration massaged the regulation to mandate that insurers,
not employers, provide contraceptive coverage, the brouhaha seemed to die
down.
But now it's back. The insurance loophole is not big enough for the
consciences of some bishops and leaders of Catholic institutions to pass
through. Women who work for them will still be getting contraceptives as a
benefit of their employment. Conservative bishops have been very vocal in their
condemnation of the Obama administration and they are organizing a “Fortnight
for Freedom” to run from June 21 to July 4 in which they plan to highlight
threats to religious freedom -- which they consider the contraceptive mandate to
be.
Out of 195 Catholic dioceses in the U.S., though, just 13 are going to
court. In all those nonlitigating sectors of the church, there are thousands of
Catholics, including quite a few bishops, who think the lawsuits are not only
premature, but that the conservative bishops have turned this into a partisan,
anti-Obama crusade.
In California, church leaders are complaining that, before anyone rushed to
court, the dispute should have been addressed by the entireU.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops. Reportedly, lawyers for the California bishops have sent a
letter to the national bishops’ group that calls the lawsuits “ill-advised” and
“imprudent.”
Moderate priests and bishops are refraining from participation in the
“Fortnight for Freedom” because they see it as too tainted by pro-Republican
election-year politics. While they share some of the concerns about
contraceptive coverage, they believe the issue has been hijacked by
right-wingers in the church.
So, there is revolt in the clerical ranks. And if the conservative bishops
don’t see that as a problem (and, since they have so successfully stifled
progressive Catholic voices in recent years, they may not), they should think
about all those Catholic women who are weary of old, unmarried men telling them
how to be holy. The undisputed fact that the vast majority of Catholic women use
birth control suggests that the bishops are defending a prohibition that seems
absurd to most of their parishioners."
