Conservative Catholics complain that too many liberal Catholics instinctively greet every statement from the Vatican with suspicion, skepticism, or derision. It’s a fair point. The motives and judgment of those who appear unthinkingly hostile to all hierarchical authority should be questioned. Patient attention to the legitimate concerns of others and the presumption of goodwill on the part of those we disagree with are essential virtues.
Unfortunately, patience and the presumption of goodwill were not much in evidence in the response of the U.S. bishops and many conservative Catholics to President Barack Obama’s compromise on the question of mandated contraceptive coverage for employees of religious-affiliated institutions. Even before all the details of the president’s proposal were known, the bishops rejected it and then upped the ante by insisting that the only possible solution was to repeal the mandate altogether. In other words, the bishops are now demanding that no employer be required to offer free contraception coverage to its employees. To justify their response, they offered only the most tendentious reading of the possible flaws in Obama’s proposal. Now the USCCB is threatening a concerted political and public-relations campaign—during an election year—that casts the president as a determined enemy of religious freedom.
What is going on here? Is the question of contraception coverage—something most American Catholics already have, and which the bishops have said almost nothing about before now—really where the hierarchy wants to issue a non-negotiable edict? Why were they not this vocal in their opposition to the Bush administration’s use of torture? Has the USCCB thought through how these demands are likely to undermine the church’s much more important effort to change hearts and minds about abortion? Or how they will further divide Catholics?
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The Catholic community was largely united in its rejection of Obama’s initial failure to exempt religious-affiliated institutions from the contraception mandate (see “An Illiberal Mandate” and "Bad Decision"). Many of the Catholic leaders who led that protest, such as Sr. Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, and the presidents of various Catholic colleges and universities, are guardedly optimistic about the new mandate. Ideally, the administration would have simply broadened the original religious exemption. Nevertheless, the new plan, which requires insurance companies, rather than Catholic institutions, to cover the cost of contraceptives, is a welcome development. The details of how this will work are not entirely clear. One particular difficulty has to do with Catholic institutions that self-fund their health plans. Administration officials have expressed confidence that some workaround will be found that will prevent these institutions from directly paying for contraception coverage. This is a complicated legal and administrative matter, and a degree of caution, even skepticism, is warranted. What is not warranted is the USCCB’s demand that the contraceptive mandate be done away with entirely. This is a novel interpretation of the First Amendment, and one that will almost certainly be rejected by the courts. It is also a political gift to abortion-rights groups, who will use it to make the case that the church’s opposition to abortion is motivated by a larger disregard for the health of women. Republicans have already seized on the controversy, hoping to use it as a wedge issue in the presidential race. None of these developments will be good for the church or the nation.
The fact that many Catholic institutions already comply with state laws requiring contraception coverage makes the USCCB’s extreme demands all the more curious. For Catholic institutions to participate in insurance plans where individuals may decide to use contraception is at most remote cooperation with what the church considers evil. It is implausible for the bishops to insist that the revised mandate compels them to cooperate directly in a sinful activity when even the original mandate did nothing of the kind.
So, why are the bishops reacting in this way? Are all the bishops comfortable with the USCCB’s rhetoric? Will any bishop publicly express reservations or skepticism about this strategy? Are the bishops not worried that this initiative will be seen as transparently partisan by much of the public?
In their 2010 book American Grace: How Religion Divides and Unites Us, Robert Putnam and David Campbell showed what the likely consequences of this fight will be. By the 1990s, after decades of the culture wars waged by Protestant and Catholic groups, many younger people came to think of “religion” as politically divisive and overly judgmental, especially on questions of sexual morality. As a result, the number of Americans who have abandoned institutional religion has risen dramatically. One-third of adult Catholics have already left the church. Isn’t that sobering fact more deserving of a national campaign than this self-defeating battle over contraception coverage?
For more coverage of this issue at dotCommonweal, click here.
A flawed reading of the response and what is in play here. Focus on the second and more contentious part of the problem - that of narrowing religious liberty and the objection as to conscience. If your reading were the issue: why would others (Lutherans, Baptists, Jews, etc.) also be responding thus?
I have found those who, like you, see but one side of this mandate are simply trapped in the confines of the mindset that would offer this particular mandate.
Jolly good to make Mr. Obama and his handlers carry the water here.
All this discussion and some basic unanswered questions. First of all, in the spirit of EB White and James Thurber's book "Is Sex Necessary?", is this discussion necessary? Do we know if the mandate changes much or anything? How many Catholic institutions with non-Catholic employees now offer insurance policies with no birth control coverage? How many offer birth control coverage? The basic question seems to be whether non-Catholics working for Catholic employers have their religious freedom respected. Perhaps this is what HHS intended, but they didn't listen to VP Biden and others who warned them.... And then the bishops didn't reflect or think this through but just reacted.... And then the arguing began....
Is this what happened here? All this has missed the central point? It IS about religious freedom -- only not about religious employers but about religious workers whose employers don't respect their religious freedom. This, of course, raises a few further questions (and then I promise to stop): what of Catholics working for religious employers of another denomination (or for that matter a secular firm), where the health plan includes BC? Are their religious freedoms being disreapected?
One thing I think we can all agree on: we don't want workers religious freedoms disreapected.
The problem with staking out extreme positions, as I believe the Bishops have done, it that it then very difficult to explain inconsistencies in the position, leading to ridicule. For example, many Catholic related institutions already provide health insurance that provides contraception. Will they be required to revise their policies in the face of this stated position? Should not Catholic institutions then be required to divest of any investments in drug companies, retail stores, and who knows what other commercial enterprises that profit from the manufacture, distribution and sale of contraceptives?
Knicker twisting by men who refuse to marry and wear dresses ~ that sums up this American's view of that sovereign state, the VATICAN, attempting to manipulate MY SECULAR government for the Vatican's ideology. We just don't 'do' that in these United States.
And, as far as ORGANIZED (read that MALE-DOMINATED) religion and birth control, I'll let Monty Python explain this whole kerfuffle> http://youtu.be/r-L3JMk7C1A
We more liberal Cahtolics have a problem. Many of us are bashing the bishops on their latest "post-compromise" stance on the healthcare mandate, based on habit, more or less, and not with much depth of thought. E.J.Dionne, earlier in this debate, rightly accused President Obama of "tossing under a bus" his liberal Catholic supporters. However, as soon as the President, stealthily on a Friday afternoon, annouced his "compromise" (which as later facts would confirm, is no compromise at all, but no more than a sort of openness, perhaps a cynical campaign ploy, to consider the issue further) Dionne more or less called the issue over. It's not. In fact what the President has done is to stop, temporarily, the bus running over us, half way on our bodies, offered us some pain relief and said we will talk later about whether we will squash you. Let us beware. We often, rightly, I believe, take the bishops to task for not talking out more forcefully on other peace and justice issues, torture, for instance, as one blogger pointed out. However, now, the very existence of the Catholic Church as an independent and forceful voice may be threatened if the bishops do not succeed in overturning this mandate legislatively or judicially. All Cahtolics will be truly "voices crying in the wilderness" if they lose, liberals and conservatives alike. If we want to maintain our power to influence this society as Catholics, and not just as indivduals of this or that politcal persuasion, we have to stand with the bishops here, as distasteful this may be for some of us.
Simply put: they are obsessed with sexual issues to the grave neglect of many areas of sin and injustice in our world. This absurdly recurrent response to all things sexual would evaporate like morning mist if women and married people were allowed to expercise their gifts in authority and deliberation in the institutional Church. It is simply one of the most dysfunctional authority structures in existence now. The good words the Church needs to speak about the dignity of life and the beauty of virtue are simply muzzled by this body of celibate men who lack all credibility and who feel no oligation to listen to---never mind love---the people they claim to "shepherd." I am sick to death of the whole mess. It is very hard to stay in the Church.
Below is an insightful, explanation of the Church's teaching on the issue of contraception.
Personally, I think the Church's teaching on marriage, sexuality and the family is incredibly beautiful, dignified, and uplifting.
Whether one agrees or disagrees, this short essay provides a succinct and powerful explanation of the teaching, while leaving the open-minded reader with a lot of food for thought.
http://allhands-ondeck.blogspot.com/2012/02/contraception-and-catholicis...
JH, someone posted the same link to the same blog post in a comment thread on an NCR article about a week ago; I read it, reflected on it, and tried to explain and document my objections. I was not the only reader to do so at that time. I also commented on the original blog post and invited the author to engage in a dialogue; so far, neither the blog author nor the linking commenter has responded to anyone's objections. If you'd like to, please, please, please do (if you're interested, just ask, and I can also repost this on my LiveJournal and anyone can respond, to spare Commonweal from having to host a lengthy comment war).
Below are the Allhands-ondeck essayist’s bullet points on the catastrophic effects of contraception on American moral and ethical culture, with my attempts to explain (with links to my citations) exactly why I’m not convinced.
<b>• Half of marriages end in divorce</b>
I haven’t found any studies anywhere that even come close to establishing a causal relationship between the availability of contraception and divorce rates; <a href=http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/marriage/data/census/index.html>the US Census Bureau’s 2009 report on divorce statistics</a> points out that the highest rates of divorce in the US are in the more socially conservative Southern and Western states (yes, yes, that includes California, but let me assure you that even though we’ve got San Francisco, Berkeley and Hollywood, they’re mostly surrounded by gated communities or small towns and farms), and the lowest divorce rates are in the left-leaning, overeducated, gay-marrying Eastern elite states. One Google search led me to a group called Americans for Divorce Reform (their stated agenda is reform of US divorce law and I’m uncertain of how I feel about some of their reports, but their statistical tables seem pretty solid and are all sourced from US Census Bureau data) who pointed out that the US divorce rate has actually fallen slightly from 1991 to 2005. Most studies seem to agree that the biggest factors in marriage success are age and education – the older you are and the more schooling you’ve got, the more likely you are to stay married.
Interestingly, England, Japan and Australia all have widely available contraception and abortion services, with very little of the controversy that surround both issues in the US, even among the devoutly religious, and all three have had much lower divorce rates than the US for decades. Which makes it very hard to justify connecting BC&A to divorce in the US, since by that logic, their divorce rates should be much higher than ours, not solidly lower.
<b>• Almost half of today's babies are born out of wedlock</b>
According to <a href=http://www.childstats.gov/americaschildren/famsoc2.asp>The Federal Interagency Forum on Child and Family Statistics, a consortium of 22 federal agencies researching and serving children and families, the actual rate of out-of-wedlock births in the US in 2009, the most recent year for which stats are posted, was 41%. Still high, but also a far cry from almost half.
<b>• 50 million abortions have been procured in the US alone over the last 30 years</b>
Actually, according to <a href=http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1363/4304111/pdf>this 2008 study from the peer-reviewed journal Perspectives in Sexual and Reproductive Health,</a> using data from the US Census Bureau, Guttmacher and health departments from all 50 states, it’s 49.3 million over the previous <b>35 years</b>. If you look at just 30 years, it’s 44 million; additionally, the 2008 number of 1.2 million is down 400,000 from the high of 1.6 million in 1990, the middle of Bush I’s singe term.
In a perfect world even one abortion is one too many; nevertheless, it’s extremely damaging to one’s credibility to fudge, by SIX MILLION, an easily checked and confirmed number. If one is too many, than 44 million in 30 years is 44 million too many, and it’s pure self-sabotage to post and widely disseminate an obvious untruth.
<b>• The spread of sexual disease is rampant</b>
It's true that sexually transmitted diseases are much too prevalent, examination of nationwide health department data shows that their spread is shockingly un-rampant. All of the following is drawn from <a href=http://www.cdc.gov/std/stats10/default.htm>the CDC’s most recent report</a>:
Much like divorce rates, Chlamydia transmission rates are highest in the South. Gonorrhea rates have declined quite a bit since 1974, though here again the South continues to show impressive numbers. Syphilis transmission rates have been in steep decline over the last 20 years, with the year 2000 showing the lowest rates ever since they started being tracked way back in 1941. They rose a bit in 2001 but seem to be dropping again, and some CDC researchers think it may be possible to eradicate syphilis completely in another few decades. Other STDs are a mixed bag; HPV is up a bit, herpes is down a lot, and a couple others that I’d never even heard of before are steady to slightly down. HIV transmission, due to aggressive prevention and public education efforts, has dropped through the floor. In 1980, when it was starting but not yet identified, 95 out of every 100 people later proven to be HIV+ were infecting other people; by 2006, that rate had dropped to just 5 transmissions per 100 HIV+ people.
Again, even one case is one too many, but all the evidence shows clearly that we’ve made huge progress against them over the last few decades, in large part to better treatments and better public education about how to live safely with these diseases and protect one’s partners from infection; it’s extremely unlikely that contraception has had any effect one way or the other (chemical contraception, anyhow -- condoms, of course, have helped cut HIV, herpes and gonorrhea transmission).
<b>• "Hooking up" and "friends with benefits" have replaced romance and courtship</b>
They’ve come much more out in the open, that’s for sure. But from my recollection of my friends in high school and college in the 1980s, stories my mother told me of her friends and family in high school and college in the 1950s and 60s, and stories my husband’s father told of his friends and family (and his own self) in the 1930s and 40s, it seems to me that hooking up and FWB have been around and complicating romance and courtship for a very, very long time. Possibly all the way back to that very first time, way back in prehistory, that two young hominids who didn’t know each other very well looked each other up and down and thought, “Ugh! Og think Throg cute! Og kiss Throg! What happen next?” The only real cultural change is that now instead of every Og and Throg feeling alone and ashamed and confused by the morass of desire and affection and all the ways their expectations of one or the other, both or neither can mess things up, at least we can openly engage with those big questions and try to work out a better alternative.
<b>• A popular culture rooted in the debasement, objectification, and sexual exploitation of women (have you looked at the magazines in the checkout line lately)?</b>
This is one bullet point with which I’m in total agreement, and I’m pretty sure any number of women’s rights organizations would be delighted to know that someone deep within the Church is raising a voice in loud and passionate solidarity with a major feminist critique of Western culture and the way it views women and girls.
In short, the blog entry has a lot of passion, but even cursory research suggests that it doesn't have a lot of facts. As the nun told my mom many long years ago: "There certainly is a grave sin happening here, but it's not what you think it is. The real sin here is that God gave you a perfectly good brain, and you're not using it."
JH: It is not so much the substance of the teachings and the (partial) wisdom they might impart, but their lack of nuance, their being promulgated by a largely monolithic group of celibate men who have shown an almost absurd ignorance of sexual issues and the relationship between sexuality and power and who, from PP VI onward, have resolutely refused the considered advice and ignored the insight of women and the married in formulating teachings that work to enhance and forward the cause of human dignity. The teachings have also been emphasized in a way that is totally disproportionate to the emphasis on other important teachings. The bishops appear to be sex-obsessed and their voices largely irrelevant in influencing others. Their arrogance and the lack of credibity inherent in the structure they support have muzzled them. If folks can hear anything at all, growing numbers of them are no longer listening.