Catholic Bishops Join Culture War on Obama: Margaret Carlson
I was surprised when the bishops didn’t declare victory last week. Heeding their protests, President Barack Obama relieved Catholic institutions of the indignity of having to pay directly for contraception for their employees.
In the compromise worked out by the White House, insurance companies would instead provide contraception coverage separately and absorb the cost, which is less than paying for the alternatives.
Instead of marveling at this miraculous turnaround, the bishops raised holy hell, calling the deal an “outrage” and a “sham.” Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, said it was like letting Catholics have pornography as long as someone else paid for it.
To borrow a football metaphor, the bishops moved the pearly gates. They want the president to enforce a religious doctrine against artificial birth control that they gave up enforcing long ago.
I grew up in a devout Catholic family of three children, small for my neighborhood. My father called out numbers at Friday night bingo. My mother delivered starched linens to the sanctuary on Saturday night. But they didn’t take Communion on Sunday morning. I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach at every Mass because I was ashamed of them, though I didn’t know what they’d done wrong.
Despite the misplaced shame, I wanted to be married in the church. By 1972, many priests and most Catholic women had given up on church rules on sexual conduct. When I volunteered at my obligatory pre-wedding confession that I used the pill, the priest said that would no longer deprive me of a state of grace. I said five Hail Mary’s, took Communion and later baptized my daughter at St. Ann’s.
Good Faith Effort
Last week, the federal government made a good-faith effort to comply with a religious doctrine that isn’t taken seriously even by many of its most vocal champions. Why do the bishops want to continue this fight? Plenty of Catholics would like to rally around a church still (justly) paying a price for protecting priests who sexually abused children. Despite all, the church continues its commitment to helping the poor and the sick.
But if the controversy evolves from a conflict over religious prerogatives to one about contraception, the bishops will lose cafeteria Catholics who are accustomed to picking and choosing our doctrines.