Despite the Catholic Church’s mission to help the poor which took expression in their recent report blasting the idolatry of global markets, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops remains little more than Republican-front organization.
The latest dispute centers on a decision by the Department of Health and Human Services in late September to end funding to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to help victims of human trafficking, or modern-day slavery. The church group had overseen nationwide services to victims since 2006 but was denied a new grant in favor of three other groups.
The bishops organization, in line with the church’s teachings, had refused to refer trafficking victims for contraceptives or abortion. The American Civil Liberties Union sued, and HHS officials said they made a policy decision to award the grants to agencies that would refer women for those services.
The bishops conference is threatening legal action and accusing the administration of anti-Catholic bias, which HHS officials deny.
The fight further sours an already difficult relationship between the government and some Catholics over several issues. The bishops fiercely oppose the administration’s decision in February to no longer defend the federal law barring the recognition of same-sex marriage. Dozens of Catholic groups also have objected in recent weeks to a proposed HHS mandate — issued under the health-care law — that would require private insurers to provide women with contraceptives without charge.
I do not like to mix religion with politics. But that is precisely why I get frustrated with the Bishops. Why are they seeking government contracts in the first place? Is the Catholic Church short on funds? Their desire to confront human trafficking and sex-slavery is admirable. Their decision to try to make it our government’s policy to deny contraceptives and abortion to sex slaves? Abominable.
I don’t like how the Bishops inject themselves into our political debates, telling Catholic politicians how to vote. That’s precisely what people feared about John F. Kennedy. We don’t want politicians who are beholden to Big Oil or Wall Street. Why would we want politicians who are beholden to the teachings of any particular religious leader or leaders? And they always seem to weigh in heaviest on abortion or contraception or gay rights. Where was the pressure on Republican lawmakers to support the health care law or the crackdown on credit card companies?
I know a lot of Catholic people and the only ones I’ve ever met who oppose contraception are old ladies. If you talked to them when they were of child-bearing age, they probably were singing a different song. Or, maybe, they’re just old enough to be a little old-fashioned. My point is, the Bishops can complain all they want about losing a government contract, but they weren’t ever going to support the Democrats because they’ve placed their reproductive dogmas over their mission to the poor. That’s their right, but let’s not pretend that the Obama administration has caused a rift. They just decided that any group that would deny a sex slave contraception doesn’t deserve a government contract.
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In support of Bush policy …
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The problem with Christian churches in America is that too many of them are dominated by the members of the 1% who contribute money and sit on their boards. That prevents many otherwise concerned clergy from speaking out against inequality and poverty. Which makes the few who do seem impressive for just doing their jobs. And the fewer who put their careers and lives in danger for acting on their faith even more remarkable.
We have seen in the past week how the chapter committee (made up of the British upper class in government and business) prevented St. Paul’s from picking up the issues that Occupy the London Stock Exchange (LSX) had raised. Parish committees, boards of deacons, official boards, executive committees and other financial trustees of churches exert the same influence on every congregation in the world.
Until Jerry Falwell created the religious right and Baptist ministers from Atlanta and Dallas turned the Southern Baptist Convention into a Republican front group, the only folks who seemed opposed to women’s right to choose were women who had difficulty carrying to term and some conservative priests. It was this issue that caused the Catholic church to force Father Drinan to resign from the House; he refused to mix Catholic doctrine with government. After the religious right got going, more white men started opposing abortion–swayed by the argument that permitting abortion amounted to genocide of whites. Well not stated so boldly, but the same idea.
As the GOP and religious right have won one obstruction to abortion after another, the actual availability of abortions in the US has become out-of-reach to all but the 1% (who after all can go out-of-country just like they did before Roe v. Wade). So the issue doesn’t turn out voters like it used to. So the GOP and its religious front groups have upped the ante. The issue is now birth control in any form. Remember that the Roman Catholic church prevented the delivery of condoms to prevent AIDS in Africa.
All the while hollering about big government’s invading our private lives.
It’s time to cut off federal aid to parochial schools. Even the ones that have a “Chinese wall” in their curriculum. If we can’t afford public schools, we can’t afford to be subsidizing religious and private schools either.
And exclude religious institutions from tax deductions as well. The idea that that is a way of helping the needy is absurd. Most of the money that religious institutions save from tax deductions adds to even more lavish buildings and clergy salary and benefits. The poster children for this absurdity is Pat Robertson and the Bob Jones family, who are multi-millionaires as a result of being tax-deductible. And who advocate against the interests of a lot of elderly folks with small incomes who “support their religious missions”.
Personally, I think part of the problem is that Pope John Paul II was such a Cold Warrior that he basically opposed any sign of socialism in the third world or in his church. I feel like he politicized the church and that had more impact here than anywhere else because we were the supposed beneficiaries of his approach to Soviet Communism.
So true.
This is an oft-overlooked point.
I would go back to Pope Paul VI’s counterrevolution after Pope John XXIII.
The catholic church has very quietly been removing nuns of their leadership role in the administration hospitals, nursing homes, schools. They are replaced by lay or outsourced to some corporation.
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"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I remember when the nuns’ groups released that statement.
Millions of American Catholics sat back and asked themselves, “Whom do I trust more, nuns or bishops? Hmm…..”
Not really a tough call.
It may be cold comfort, but this is nothing new—as evidenced by this statement from John F. Kennedy: “”In my experience, all nuns are Democrats and all bishops are Republicans.”
It was, I believe, among the reasons he was hopeful of winning the 1960 election. There are a lot more nuns than bishops, and the average Catholic knows and trusts nuns a lot more than bishops. True then; true today.