Church Wants Government To Do What It Can't

Centuries after Jesus walked this earth, the Catholic church made a rule enforcing celebacy on its all-male clergy. Then it made another rule that prohibited its female parishioners from using contraceptives.

According to current statistics, 98% of those female parishioners have defied the dictum imposed upon them. I haven't seen any stats on the rate of clergy compliance with its rule, but the decades-old and ongoing scandal of clergy pedophilia might provide a clue.

So now comes the Catholic hierarchy demanding that the government do what it has so utterly and miserably failed to do.

After weeks of rancorous debate and vitriol about whether or not employers or their insurers should have to include contraceptives in their healhcare benefits, one of the highest ranking Catholic officials, Timothy Dolan, a cardinal who is New York archbishop, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a former Milwaukee WI archbishop, weighs in with an opinion piece that was published recently in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel newspaper arguing that his church has a First Amendment right to impose its will on everyone. http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/it-is-a-matter-of-religious-liberty-3s4ipri-143003455.html

Even more galling than Dolan's contentions, which are not surprising, was that his piece was stripped across the top of the front page of the paper's Sunday opinion section with a half-inch headline and no countervailing voice anywhere in the four-page section, much less in an equally visible space.

There are many hypotheses about the purpose of the Catholic church's rules. Among the suppositions about mandatory clergy celebacy that has a lot of credibility with me is that it better enables the church to control the wealth amassed by the clerics through their various religious activities, particularly since celebate clercs have no families to support or heirs to lay claim to any assets or support.

Given the great wealth the church has amassed, it looks like that rule has worked. And, of course, the objective of banning contraception is to control women.

It's bad enough that a bunch of old men who, ostensibly, have no experience with or stake in the consequences of their own or anyone else's sexual activities are dictating the bodily functions, health decisions and reproductive destinies of woman. Far more insidious is trying to get the govenment to enforce Catholic rules, not only on its own flock, in the perverted guise of religious freedom and First Amendment rights, but to insinuate the church's rules on everyone else.

What is never mentioned in this discussion is that most if not all of the Catholic-affiliated institutions that oppose including contraception coverage in their employees’ benefits receive federal funding in one form or another. That includes indirect funding via use of government-provided infrastructure and public-safety services that they don’t pay for, thanks to being tax-exempt, and more direct funding via grants and programmatic subsidies.

Doesn’t that trample the liberties of those who morally, religiously and otherwise object to funding of the church’s ideology and practices?

What’s the saying? One person’s rights end where another’s begin.

It’s important to clear the smoke that is clouding this debate. The Catholic church needs to:

• understand that the views and rights of non-Catholics are equally as valid as the Catholic stance,
• focus on enforcing its own rules internally,
• quit trying to get the government to do its work for it, and
• stop trying to impose its version of morality on the rest of us.

That's being truly conservative.

The Choice is NOT Ours

A friend of mine publishes an e-newsletter that is chock full of all things political with a focus on money and healthcare reform -- and a lot of his own opinion. Although he's a self-identified Republican, I agree with a lot of what he says.

Occasionally, though, I really disagree with him. That's true with his most recent issue, which is at http://www.throwtherascalsout.org/eNewsletter157.htm, in which he took on the current debate over employers and their healthcare benefits including coverage for contraceptives. Here's what he wrote:

-- Sorry, I just don't agree. Though I am pro-choice, health plans and taxpayers should NOT be required to cover birth control or contraceptives or Viagra or abortions or morning-after pills or vasectomies or Vialis or whatever. When I say "keep the government out of my bedroom," I mean here too. Buy an extra-coverage policy if these things are important to you.

Here is my reply to him:

Really, Jack? Why stop with personal issues such as pregnancy prevention, especially when "the pill" is also prescribed to alieviate for all kinds of medical conditions such as ovarian cysts, endometriosis, severe acne, abnormal facial hair growth, etc?

How about all kinds of other morally or religiously offensive procedures/medications/etc.? Anyone who's Christian Scientist could object to providing healthcare benefits for all medical treatments entirely and just tell his or her employees to pray.

I personally find it repugnant that insurance plans and Medicare cover erectle dysfunction prescriptions, particularly when so many women's conditions and preventative programs/procedures aren't covered. 

Should insurance plans not provide coverage for alcohol-related conditions because some people find alcoholism a moral weakness, or coverage for obesity-induced diabetes because an employer might blame obesity on personal choice and thus, the person is responsible for her/his diabetes?

But why stop with healthcare? How about my tax dollars supporting behaviors and practices that I find morally offensive, such as certain church sects' subjugation of women and denying them equal opportunity, or that is even criminal, such privately tolerating pedophilia and sheltering/excusing/playing shell games with pedophiles in their ranks?

Despite the Constitutional guarantee of "separation of church and state," that has been reduced to little more than a fig leaf. All taxpaying Americans fund all kinds of government services that are provided to those churches/religious organizations for nothing. Examples include police and fire protection, use of tax-funded infrastructure, access to safe food and water suppies, benefit of non-polluted air and waterways, federally funded grants and academic scholarships for students attending religiously affiliated colleges and universities. The list is endless.

Trying to wall off one aspect of Americans' life choices and situations because some people find them morally objectionable on ideological or other grounds is like trying to remove salt from soup.

And telling people who want or need such services as you list in your newsletter to "Buy an extra-coverage policy if these things are important to you" is great advice for people who can afford or even find such coverage in this world of private insurance companies that have expanded denial of coverage because of "pre-existing conditions" so broadly that it can even include pregnancy.

And for schmucks like some of the GOP legislators to say that people who work for religiously-affiliated employers, such as Catholic hospitals, and want employer-provided healthcare coverage to just go work somewhere else is unbelievably specious when most if not all hospitals in many areas, including major metropolitan regions, have religious affiliations.

There is no sanity or refuge for the average person seeking healthcare coverage in the private insurance industry. And it's way too easy for people with guaranteed health coverage like members of Congress, rich people who can afford and find loopholes around anything, and oldsters like you and me who are fortunate enough to have access to Medicare to tell other people to just buy your own.

The only recourse in a society like the United States that is becoming increasingly backwards, i.e. its steadfast rejection of universal, single-payer healthcare coverage, is for the government to prohibit institutions and profiteers of human suffering from discriminating on ideological grounds, trumped up or otherwise.

In summary, Jack's opinion on this issue reflects the current American society-destroying affliction of "I've got mine, screw you."