More nostalgia – May 21 2012 when the bishops announced their lawsuit against the administration. Catholic News Service was there, slavering.
The Archdiocese of New York, headed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., headed by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the University of Notre Dame, and 40 other Catholic dioceses and organizations around the country announced on Monday that they are suing the Obama administration for violating their freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
The dioceses and organizations, in different combinations, are filing 12 different lawsuits filed in federal courts around the country.
The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. has established a special website–preservereligiousfreedom.org–to explain its lawsuit and present news and developments concerning it.
“This lawsuit is about an unprecedented attack by the federal government on one of America’s most cherished freedoms: the freedom to practice one’s religion without government interference,” the archdiocese says on the website. “It is not about whether people have access to certain services; it is about whether the government may force religious institutions and individuals to facilitate and fund services which violate their religious beliefs.”
The suits filed by the Catholic organizations focus on the regulation that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced last August and finalized in January that requires virtually all health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those that can cause abortions.
The Catholic Church teaches that sterilization, artificial contraception and abortion are morally wrong and that Catholics should not be involved in them. Thus, the regulation would require faithful Catholics and Catholic organizations to act against their consciences and violate the teachings of their faith.
The Catholic Church teaches that contraception is morally wrong but it doesn’t teach that priests’ raping children is morally wrong.
The Catholic church is morally garbage; rotten stinking putrescent slime-green garbage.
The Catholic church is also engaging in stealth takeovers of health care facilities as a way of depriving people of contraception access. All said, when you act as an EMPLOYER I think the government is fine in mandating that you do things you don’t want to, since it isn’t exactly an equal relationship there. I’d like to see workers at Catholic institutions unionize. The Catholic church does say it supports organized labor (in theory at least) but would they if it’s *their workers?*
Speaking of theocrats, on the occasion of Canada’s 147th birthday, our Prime Minister tweets: “God bless you all, and God keep our true north, strong and free!”
In fairness, I’m pretty sure that the Church teaches that the rape of children is morally wrong. It just doesn’t *do* anything very effective about it, pre or post facto. Not with the same vigor that they, as you point out, attempt to control the sexual and reproductive choices of people who aren’t even Catholics.
I’m not sure it does. I mean if you asked them they would probably agree it’s morally wrong, but it’s not one of the things they’re always shouting about and bringing suit about and writing encyclicals about.
They’re so accustomed to having special exemptions carved out for them that they can’t handle being treated like everyone else.
A Quaker wrote an excellent piece a while back about the difference between conscientious objection on moral grounds and just plain old objection.
Hobby Lobby has a simple way out for its tender conscience. If it can’t follow the law, it can sell the business.
Smrnda-
Most if not all of the catholic hospitals in Southern California are unionized. Having worked for them for many years I can tell you they don’t treat their employees very well. They seem to have the mindset that everyone should just work for the love of working for them and to hell with things like raises and if they can screw you out of overtime they will.
Eamon Knight:
Actually, I don’t think they do. Their morality is so warped, that making others suffer isn’t seen as a bad thing. In the case of the Ghoul of Calcutta, it’s even seen as a good thing.
To them, the only bad thing is “sin”. Nothing else. When a priest rapes a child, it’s not wrong because it’s a gross violation of that child’s bodily autonomy, which makes them suffer horribly; it’s wrong because it’s a sexual sin. Sexual activity outside of marriage in a sin, and that’s the only thing that really matters. A gay couple making love is the exact moral equivalent of a child shrieking in agony as a priest forces his penis into a far-too-small orifice.
They’re the moral equivalent of cancer. The only difference is that cancer doesn’t have a smug sense of its own righteousness.
And its hundreds of millions of adherents dare not speak against it for fear they will lose their place in heaven!
They do, actually. It’s just that both are morally wrong in the same way and for the same reasons: disobedience to god. Use of contraception is a much more frequent sin than priests raping children so, of course, the church makes much more fuss about it.