Until now, bishops who believed that their leadership was aligning the institutional church too closely with the political right had voiced their doubts internally. While the more moderate and liberal bishops kept their qualms out of public view, conservative bishops have been outspoken in condemning the Obama administration…
But in recent months, a series of events — among them the Vatican’s rebuke of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, encouraged by right-wing U.S. bishops — have angered more progressive Catholics and led to talk among the disgruntled faithful of the need for a “Catholic spring” to challenge the hierarchy’s shift to the right…
For too long, the Catholic Church’s stance on public issues has been defined by the outspokenness of its most conservative bishops and the reticence of moderate and progressive prelates. Signs that this might finally be changing are encouraging for the church, and for American politics.
E. J. Dionne, “The battle among Catholic bishops.”
Forty-three major Catholic institutions on Monday filed a dozen lawsuits, in courts across the country, challenging the health reform law’s mandated coverage of contraceptives.
The legal documents are complicated — one suit, from Notre Dame, comes in at 57 pages. But the thing to know is this: Everything hinges on how courts interpret a law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA.
The contraceptives lawsuits, explained
The University of Notre Dame, Catholic University of America, the Archdiocese of Michigan, and the Archdiocese of New York have filed a lawsuit against an Obama administration regulation requiring employers and insurers to offer preventing health services — including contraception — without additional cost sharing. The suit, one of 12 filed Monday, argues that the requirement violates the Catholic institutions’ religious freedom– even though regulators have includes an accommodation for religious organizations. Planned Parenthood President Cecile Richards has called the challenges “unbelievable” and claimed, “This isn’t a religious or political issue – it’s a medical issue, and that’s where we should keep it.” An overwhelming majority of Americans — and Catholics — support the coverage rule.
43 Catholic Institutions File 12 Separate Lawsuits Against Obama’s Birth Control Rule
Since they’ve decided to stick their nose into politics and have clearly coordinated this political campaign, every one of these religious institutions should be stripped of their tax exempt status by the IRS.
[A]ny time someone talks about American Exceptionalism in [religious] terms I get a little bit queasy. It’s bad enough that we fetishize the founders (whose revolution was far more steeped in Enlightenment rationalism than sacred texts.) But when people talk about America as the God’s Chosen Country, suddenly you can excuse anything. That’s not good.
Digby, “God’s chosen country.”
[E]ven if you accept Romney’s word that he doesn’t remember what he said, this is still a mess. Folks on Twitter are pointing out that Romney appeared to stand by his use of Wright against Obama, only less than a day after repudiating the plan by GOP operatives to do the same. But what’s also interesting is that he stood by the claim that Obama is trying to make America a less Christian nation…
[L]eading GOP officials and opinionmakers continue to feed a deeply paranoid view of Obama as someone who doesn’t really wish the country well and harbors secret hostility towards your patriotism and religious faith and values. The problem with Romney’s original quote [about Jeremiah Wright in February] was not just the invocation of Wright. It was the suggestion that Obama is deliberately trying to secularize the country. And today, Romney stood by that claim.
Mitt Romney stands by invocation of Rev. Wright
Marriage is not only a religious sacrament, but it is also a civil rite (as well as a civil right). For reasons of non-belief or convenience or cost, couples get married at courthouses around the country every day. If the government bestows that opportunity on heterosexual citizens, it can hardly deny it to homosexual citizens.
Along with an official imprimatur, the federal government and the states bestow a wide array of perquisites and responsibilities on spouses, from survivor’s benefits to hospital visiting privileges. Gay citizens deserve those, too.
Marriage Is Civil Right As Well As Religious Sacrament
Here are some of the 1,138 rights and privileges that marriage carries — rights and privileges that gays are being denied every day in all but six locations in the United States.
Take the insistence by some conservative Christians that if same-sex marriage were broadly legal, the federal government would be in a position to force Southern Baptist ministers and Catholic priests to carry out such marriages…
Really, that’s too idiotic to merit a response — but I’m going there anyway. Has the federal government ever ordered the Vatican to marry a divorced couple whom it deemed unworthy of the sacrament? Has the government ever tried to force a Haredi rabbi to sanction a marriage between a member of his community and a non-Jew? Of course not. Such marriages would be readily and legally performed in a courthouse, but the First Amendment protects the right of religious institutions to perform only those rituals which they choose.
By the way, that same protection runs in the other direction, too. While conservative Christians — and, unfortunately, the news media, as well — tend to define “Christianity” as solely the province of conservative believers, there are many liberal ministers who have happily performed same-sex marriages in the handful of states that allow them.
Marriage Is Civil Right As Well As Religious Sacrament
Today, I am still shocked by the response of some of my black Christian friends to the plight of gay people in our nation. “I just don’t agree that gay people can compare their struggles to ours,” they bemoan. This is followed by the list of injustices blacks have experienced: the middle passage, slavery, lynching, rapes, and deaths. “Gay people haven’t suffered nearly as much as blacks,” they say. “Being black is not a choice,” they add. “As if being gay is,” I respond. I don’t support the comparison. For me, the sufferings of a person or a group of people at the hands of other humans are frightening and heartbreaking. Instinctually, I feel that if any group can be oppressed, then I can be oppressed. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. made this very point when he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” This is why I’m always flabbergasted when I see some black Christians fighting against the civil rights of gays. We know firsthand the impact and dehumanization of discrimination.
Monique Ruffin, “It’s Official: Gay Is the New Black.”
