Women real target of church suits
Your
parents spill a few secrets as they get older. One night at dinner withmymom, I ventured that the rhythm method had worked well for her, given that there were six years betweenmysister Peggy andmybrother Kevin, and six more between Kevin and me. She arched an eyebrow.
“Well, sometimes your father used something,” she said.
Myparents were the most devout Catholics I’ve ever known. Butmydad came from a family of 16 in County Clare in Ireland, andmymom’s mother came from a family of 13 in County Mayo. So they balanced their faith with a dose of practicality.
After their first three kids, they sagely decided family planning was not soul-staining. So I wasn’t surprised to see the Gallup poll Tuesday showing that 82 percent of U.S. Catholics say birth control is morally acceptable. (Eighty-nine percent of all Americans and 90 percent of nonCatholics agreed.)
The poll appeared on the same day as headlines about Catholic Church leaders filing lawsuits in an effort to block President Barack Obama’s attempt to get insurance coverage for contraception forwomenwhowork or go to college at Catholic institutions. The church insists it’s an argument about religious freedom, not birth control. But, really, it’s about birth control and women’s lower caste in the church. It’s about conservative bishops targeting Democratic candidateswhosupport contraception and abortion rights as a matter of public policy. And it’s about a church that is obsessed with sex in ways it shouldn’t be, and not obsessed with sex in ways it should be.
The bishops and the Vatican care passionately about puttingwomenin chastity belts. Yet they let unchaste priests run wild for decades, unconcerned about the generations of childrenwhowere violated and raped and passed around like Communion wine.
They still have not done a proper reckoning, and the acrid scandal never ends.
Some leading Catholic groups endorsed the compromise struck by the Obama administration that put the responsibility for providing the contraceptives on the insurance companies, not religious institutions. But others wanted to salute the Vatican flag and keep fighting. On “CBS This Morning” Tuesday, the pugnacious Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of Newyork rejected the compromise and charged that the White House is “strangling” the church.
Interpreting the rule in the most extreme way to scare Catholics, he said: “They tell us if you’re really going to be considered a church, if you’re going to be really exempt from these demands of the government, well, you have to propagate your Catholic faith and everything you do, you can serve only Catholics and employ only Catholics.”
The Archdiocese of Washington put an equally alarmist message in the church bulletins at Sunday’s Masses, warning of apocalyptic risk:
“1. Our more than 600 hospitals nationwide, which will need to stop non-catholics at the emergency room door and say, ‘We are only allowed by the government to heal Catholics.’
“2. Our schools, which will be required to say to non-catholic parents, ‘We are only allowed by the government to educate Catholics.’
“3. Our shelters, on cold nights, which will be required to say to the homelesswhoare non-catholics, ‘We are only allowed by the government to shelter Catholics.’
“4. Our ‘food pantries,’ which will be forced to say to non-catholics, ‘the government allows us only to satisfy the hunger of Catholics.’’
The church leaders headed to court hope to undermine the president, but they may help him. Voters who think sex is only for procreation were not going to vote for Obama anyway. And the lawsuit reminds the rest that what the bishops portray as an attack on religion by the president is really an attack on women by the bishops.