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Always raise concerns, but never make policy
Q: U.S. Catholic bishops are defending their direct involvement in congressional deliberations over health-care reform, saying that church leaders have a duty to raise moral concerns on any issue, including abortion rights and health care for the poor. Do you agree? What role should religious leaders have -- or not have -- in government policymaking?
The challenge here is that when the religious of any group begin flexing their muscles in ways which others of us don't like, we start claiming that it should not be so. As long as we are in agreement with the religious groups (the civil rights movement, for example), it's okay. But, when we are not in agreement, we expect "those religious folk" to put away their faith.
That is not a sufficient response to what the bishops are doing. If it were, any of us who have a problem with their actions would also level the same critique at the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
American Catholic bishops, like religious leaders everywhere, are 100 percent right to raise their voices about an issue of moral concern to them. Genuine faith is not simply a once a week thing designed to relieve tension and give us something to do before a shared meal with family and friends.
Serious spiritual engagement, engages the faithful in ways that shape virtually everything that they do. And I know of no religion that suggests otherwise.
But the bishops are not only raising a voice of moral conscience, they are attempting to dictate policy. And between those two, lies a world of difference. Failing to make that distinction is not only inappropriate, but potentially dangerous to Catholics and any other religious minority in this country.
The bishops must distinguish between their concern about abortion, which they view as murder, and attempting to impose that view on others who do not share it. They can and should, at least from a Catholic perspective, invite all Americans to think about the "culture of death" which they believe is fostered by our current approach to abortion. I even think that we could all learn from those concerns even if we do not deem abortion to be murder.
But when religious doctrine is invoked to curtail the freedoms of others, we all suffer. That is pretty much the case in every case in human history, whichever faith is used to do so.
And their behavior here could easily blow back against the bishops and the rest of the American Catholic community as well. What if American Protestants sought to disqualify the Catholic Church from the privileges it enjoys as a religious institution because they decided that Catholicism is not an authentic religion? This too would be a case of religious doctrine shaping public policy. Would the bishops be comfortable with that?
Ultimately, it is the place of religious teaching to influence the moral and ethical sensibilities of people, not shape government policies. The founding fathers had many and various notions about religion and the law in this country, but churchmen making law was never one of them, and it shouldn't be one now.
By
Brad Hirschfield
|
November 18, 2009; 10:35 AM ET
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Posted by: Schaum | November 19, 2009 10:53 AM
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Catholics Support Healthcare Reform, Including Coverage for Abortion
According to a new poll of Catholic voters carried out by Belden Russonello and Stewart for Catholics for Choice, Catholics support both a public option in healthcare reform and a plan that would include funding for abortion. The results show that the views of Catholics have been seriously misrepresented by the US bishops and by conservative Catholics in the debate over healthcare reform. A large majority of those polled, 84 percent, attend church regularly, from several times a week to a few times a year.
While Catholic voters are split on President Obama’s ideas for healthcare reform, they do want to see costs lowered and overwhelmingly support a government plan that would make health insurance available to the uninsured.
Large majorities of Catholic voters support health insurance coverage for abortions—either in a private or a government-run scheme:
when a pregnancy poses a threat to the life of a woman (84 percent)
when a pregnancy is due to rape or incest (76 percent)
when a pregnancy poses long-term health risks for the woman (73 percent)
when test results show a fetus has a severe abnormal condition (66 percent)
Opinion is split on whether insurance plans should cover abortion whenever a woman and her doctor decide it is appropriate (50 percent support and 50 percent oppose).
Catholic voters believe the US Catholic bishops are wrong on healthcare reform. Sixty-eight percent disapprove of US bishops saying that all Catholics should oppose the entire healthcare reform plan if it includes coverage for abortion and 56 percent think the bishops should not take a position on healthcare reform legislation in Congress.
Posted by: Schaum | November 18, 2009 1:25 PM
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Pretending the issue of pedophile priests is a "caricature of the Church" used by Catholic-bashers is no less disingenuous and immoral than Donohue pretending molested little boys were nothing more than gold digging sex- workers the Church later paid for their "voluntary services" I never have and never would take one of the Church's stinking, blood-and-semen stained pennies minted by Satan himself for what one of your "Brothers of Christ" did to me against my will.
As long as Catholics snub their noses at civil criminal law and hide, aid and abet pedophiles among their clergy, I will continue to be their "caricature" of a "Catholic-basher." Have you no shame or guilt for using Jesus' name to hide those who get their crude sexual jollies using and throwing away children as if it were one of their special-dispensation rights God gave to your clergy as the "Pope's Ambassadors"? How could anyone pretend they belong to "Christ's Church" and continue to look the other way?
Round up and arrest the pedophiles you are hiding in your clergy now. Until you do, you are nothing more than immoral hypocrite disciples of the Devil himself and until then may all you rot in the imaginary hell you created to control and manipulate others.
Posted by: coloradodog | November 19, 2009 9:16 AM