Catholics, Christians, and the Affordable Care Act
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Catholics pray for religious freedom on Independence Day
You read that right. They demand religious freedom. What is the basis of their demand? The Affordable Care Act mandate that requires religious institutions to provide free health-insurance coverage for contraception.
Don Madden, a protestor, said, “It’s an embarrassment that our government is doing this, The government can’t just decide what you can and can’t believe.” I see nothing in the ACA which says you have to change your faith. All it is saying is religious institutions provide free health care coverage for contraception. It does not say you have to force your employees to get contraceptives. It just says “offer them the opportunity to get contraceptives”. That is it.
During the Fourth of July Mass, attended by about 150 people at St. James, the Rev. John McCormick preached that any intrusion on religion is a serious threat to the freedoms upon which the United States is founded.
“Freedom is only a word unless you live by that word,” he said. “The freedoms Americans so easily take for granted are so rare among the nations of the world”, McCormick said, “All you have to do to understand is to live somewhere else, and you will know what it is like to come back to this nation and live here with all our freedoms.”
At the end of the service, the mostly elderly congregation sang “God Bless America” and “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Afterward, Diane Engel said she agreed with the bishops that the health-care mandate is an unwarranted intrusion of the government into the affairs of the church.
“It’s totally against our religious beliefs,” said Engel, 60, of Orlando, with a flag pin affixed to her blouse.
A national poll found 57 percent of Catholics supported the mandatory coverage for birth control, but Madden said such polls are irrelevant.
“It makes no difference because it’s [opposition to birth control] what the church professes and believes,” he said.
Peggy Bonnewitz, 50, of Orlando felt the Catholic Church, in its opposition to abortion and contraception, was being singled out by the government.
“It’s an attack on Catholic religion,” she said. “They shouldn’t be telling churches what to do.”
Now that was a profound statement. The Government shouldn’t be telling churches what to do. In this day and age we have Christians and their churches telling us what to do, pushing for laws to do away with homosexuality and abortions. We have Christians not voting for programs to help the needy.
Now, a program designed to help those without insurance is under attack for what they perceive as an attack on religion.
The ACA in not an attack on Religion. President Obama could care less who you pray to. What the President wants is for people to be able to get the care and treatment they deserve. For too long people have lived a horrible nightmare with insurance. Insurance Companies would deny you coverage for a “pre-existing” condition. If you need surgery, they will cover it, then drop you. Insurance became a crap shoot and President Obama is trying to change that.
The religious faction will scream bloody murder when they do not get their way. Preachers preach the evils of homosexuality and single mothers. They say gays are undermining America and their goal is to make everyone gay. With the ACA, they now scream the Government was trying to do away with religious beliefs. They cry the Government is trying to run their lives. They want the Government out of their affairs.
Yet, the two facedness is all too apparent. The want the Government out of their affairs, yet they are trying to make the United States a Christian Nation. They post lies about what the founding fathers said about this Country being a Christian Nation and how the Founding fathers were Christians themselves. They have even gone as far as to say the First Amendment applies only to Christians.
Catholic Bishops are correct when they say the Church does not believe in contraception or abortion. Yet, there are people who work at Catholic Charities and churches who are not die hard Catholics. They believe in a God, but they disagree with many of the Churches teachings. Remember, 57% are all for the coverage.
57% is over half of the people surveyed. Over half of the Catholics surveyed are all for it. Plus, if you read the article, the protestors were mostly elderly and there was only 150 of them there. The article does not say how many people attend Saint James Church. It does not even say if the majority of the parishioners are elderly or if there is a mix.
What I am reading is a bunch of old people, past their childbearing years, telling younger people what to do. Instead of using their wisdom and working out a compromise, they have drawn a line in the sand and dug in their heels. What is so wrong with saying, “This goes against our beliefs, but we also must be flexible. We most realize this is not an assault against our beliefs, but instead a time for us to discuss our beliefs and let the younger people make their own decisions.”
Religion must realize it cannot have it both ways. It cannot complain about the Government while at the same time it is trying to become the Government. It must bend, it must flex, or people will see the hypocrisy in their views and leave the church. At least, people who still can be called “Free Thinkers”.
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At another blog, someone who signed herself as “redState girl” posted the following statement in a comment:
I cannot believe the naiveté expressed in those three sentences. That kind of simple-mindedness is one of the reasons religionists are so dangerous. They are either calculating, unscrupulous and downright criminal like Issa, Gingrich, Santorum, Bachmann, Romney, Robertson, Falwell, et. al. or they are hiding behind a rose-colored crucifix like redState girl.
People in the former group actively conspire toward theocracy; people in the latter group passively acquiesce to it.
I’m concerned that we could become a theocracy, should the right people win the elections. Mr. Blair shares my concerns evidently and the republicans are already co-opted. The proposition is scary as there’s already too much god nonsense for me.
I remember being told in Catholic school that the pope is omnipotent. That scared the crap out of me. This entire “debate” is about power, pure and simple. Great article.
There’s ample precedent. The Catholic church is nothing but a bunch of supposedly celibate old men telling people how to run their sex lives.
There’s an old joke about the pope visiting a small town in Italy, where he lectured the assembled villagers on the evils of contraception. A fiery young woman (known in the village for her many affairs) stepped forward, shook her finger at the pontiff and said, “Hey! You no play-a da game, you no make-a da rules!”
LOL. I hadn’t heard that joke in years and it’s even more important today. Unfortunately there are billions of Catholics who believe the pope is infallible and are more than willing to listen to those celibate old men.
Most Catholics (and non-Catholics) do not understand the true meaning of papal infallibility. In theory, it only applies when the pope is making a pronouncement on religious doctrine and is speaking ex cathedra. The popular notion of papal infallibility is that everything he says is de facto truth and that his farts are the sweetest frankincense.
What’s even more to the point, though, is a twofold usurpation of authority. Religious “leaders” of all stripes try to extend their authority over people who are not members of their congregations and who do not share in their beliefs. This happens when Imams tell non-Muslims not to draw pictures of Mohammed, when Catholic bishops try to deny contraception to all people including non-Catholics, when William Donohue tries to get people to not see The Golden Compass, when Rick Santorum tells people that contraception is “…a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be.” or when Roy Moore wants to post the ten commandments in his courtroom, when Pat Robertson expects the entire country to conform to his narrow idea of morality, or when a multitude of people, both clergy and non-clergy, expect the entire population to accept their definition of marriage.
The flip side of this is the willingness of people to succumb to religious authority, even from religions, sects and denominations to which they do not belong. The best example I can think of is from 1998, when the Southern Baptist Convention proclaimed that, as part of their official doctrine, wives should “gracefully submit” to their husbands. In 1998, there were around fifteen and a half million Southern Baptists, a mere ½% of the total population, yet the pronouncement caused a big stir. A lot of people got very upset by this, even though, at best, it could only be construed to apply to an insignificant proportion of the population. I wondered, at the time, what all the fuss was about* but someone told me why I should be concerned.
A friend pointed out to me that a good number of powerful politicians were members of the SBC, and these people would not hesitate to let their religious principles dictate their stances on policy and legislation. There was enormous potential, then for SBC doctrine to become embedded in the law of the land. That changed my mind in a hurry. That is the downside of the “not my congregation, not my problem” attitude. The US could easily become a nation where, even if you weren’t a conservative evangelical Protestant, the law would expect you to live like one. We’d be in the same position that non-Catholics once had in Italy or Ireland or that non-Muslims have in Saudi Arabia today.
*I told my wife about this, and she said, “Well, we’re not Southern Baptists, sweetie, but if you want me to ‘graciously submit’ to you I’ll do it – with my legs kept firmly together”.