Saturday, February 25, 2012

Obamacare versus the Catholic Church


The US Conference of Catholic Bishops was surely blindsided by the HSS requirement that Catholic institutions such as hospitals and schools provide contraception, sterilization and abortifacients to employees.

For goodness sake, the Church has supported a program of universal health care and regards it as a basic human "right"; so what's with the knife in the face? Why is the hierarchy in the US Church being attacked, blatantly, by their leftist friends in the current administration?

Because, surely, team Obama really believes that providing contraception and abortion is good and that religious beliefs, whatever they may be, should be no obstacle in the path of something that is fundamentally right. 

And there we have it, it's all about rights. The Church, with doubtless the best of intentions, has for decades adopted the language of its secular counterparts; for example, Pacem in Terris (John XXIII's oddly Kantian pacifist encyclical) enumerates some 53 basic human rights, from employment to health.

the government loves you
But who is going to enforce these rights? In the absence of temporal power it's not going to be the Church, which leaves the State. 

Unfortunately for the Church and for Christians everywhere in this country, the State's conception of right and wrong is by no means synonymous with the values of Christendom. The Catholic bishops and prominent Evangelicals appear to have woken up to this fact and we'll see how Obamacare versus The Church plays out in the Supreme Court next month.

In the meanwhile, the time for naive trust in the beneficence of the Secular Power should be, for catholic Christians at least, at an end.

We'll have to see how many stand up and are counted.

LSP

6 comments:

G. Tingey said...

The whole thing is a disaster
The "insurance" model for a start
Because of vested interests, a single-payer European (or Australian or Canadian or Singapoe) style system was not implemented.

ANYTHING at all that gets up the nose of the RC church has to be a good thing, in my opinion.
They won't even allow normal, preventative birth-control ...
With proper arrangements, abortion should usually be un-necessary, except in emergencies (rape, incest, ectopic come to mind)
But they set their face against this, and get a worse option.
Terminally stupid.

LSP said...

"The whole thing is a disaster" -- I'd second that, Tingey.

God bless.

Silverfiddle said...

The Catholic Church is learning the eternal wisdom of that old saying, "Lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas."

Things ain't so chirpy when the ol' social justice shoe is on the other foot...

Sean Baggaley said...

A question: What's the RC church's stance on miscarriages? These are quite common: not every pregnancy 'takes', which is why women prefer to wait a bit before telling the rest of the world that they're about to become a member of the smug set.

Are miscarriages God's will? At that stage in their development, the undeveloped foetus has no "will" at all yet, free or otherwise.

If you answer "yes" to the above, then surely the corollary is that being a victim of rape is also God's will as, again, the woman gets no say in the decision and it's basically an 'act of God' too. (After all, God created the rapist as well!)

The victim's will, free or otherwise, matters not one jot, so you cannot use the "free will" get-out-of-jail-free card here. How can an "all-loving", "omniscient" and "omnipotent" deity possibly let such acts occur right before his very presence?

This is what non-believers find difficult to understand. Your religion is inconsistent with itself, even when its own rules are being applied. I don't see anyone claiming that a miscarriage makes you evil or wrong, despite it having the same result as an abortion. The only difference is that one is selected through "free will", while the other is not. Guess which is which?

Either life is always sacred—in which case, God is doing a bang-up job of being a massive hypocrite—or it isn't.

Note, too, that this isn't a "Secularist" thing: there are any number of other, equally 'respectable' religions that disagree with yours on this area. You don't have to be an atheist, or even irreligious, to disagree with the "All abortions and birth control methods are EVIL" sentiment of the RC church.

LSP said...

That's for sure, Silverfiddle.

LSP said...

Alright there Sean.

Are you sure you're not being a little disingenuous? Surely you know that the Catholic Church regards miscarriage as a "natural evil"?

But good "problem of evil" point. How can a perfect being allow natural evil in the creation of which He is the necessary efficient cause?

The Church teaches that there is a flaw in the order of creation.

But I won't bang on.