The Catholic Church has always been schizy as hell, divided between those that really believe in “suffer the little children” and feeding the poor, helping the sick and dying…and those who think like Rick Santorum and the evangelical fundamentalists on the Right, and that the Church is totally non answerable to society at large.

I don’t know but I’m guessing there isn’t another Christian church that’s nearly as charitable as the Catholics.  Ironically, my father died of cancer in a Catholic hospice, and one of his nurses, a very kind lady, was a nun suffering from breast cancer herself, which was going to kill her soon, too.

I remember in the ‘80’s when John Paul II, in one of his worst moves, shut down a whole SLEW of socialist priests in Latin America working against dictatorships. 

And who can forget the Berrigans, Daniel and Phillip?  Though forced to leave the priesthood and even the Church, their marty-like dedication to morality was Catholicism at its best.

So it’s a really divided church between the moral people and the power-control people.  Still puts it miles above Pat Robertson and Franklin Graham’s unadulterated hate-filled preachings.

The bishops have seized upon contraception, which is nowhere mentioned by Jesus or elsewhere in the Bible, but have chosen to leave protests in favor of Church teachings on social justice, capital punishment and nonviolence, which are directly based on Jesus’ teachings, to a handful of old, radical Jesuits and activist nuns.

when the nuns start running the church, i “might” come back to the fold.

This society has it exactly backwards. Jesus paid his taxes specifically to avoid any entanglements with the government. He explained this carefully to Peter. Tax exempt institutions are de facto subsidized by the federal government and are therefore subject to its rules of conduct.

When he speaks of Catholic unity, Dionne is talking about himself and Shields agreeing with Pat and Bebe Buchanan.

When a group of Catholic Bishops, Priests, Nuns and Laity decided to make the Church live up to its advertised “Social Justice” mandate, Cardinal Ratzenberger and President Reagan killed them in mass in a war of eradication.  When it was
revealed that a significant part of the clergy was no more than a pedophile ring, the Church spent a great deal of effort to cover up, obfuscate and deny its existence, even to the point of claiming the exposure of the activity was “religious discrimination.  This effort was lead by the same Cardinal Ratzenberger, for his success he was given the top job in the Corporation.

As far as the Church’s “charitable work”, it seems disingenuous to claim you shouldn’t be required to follow the rules of the institution (the government) that provides most of your funding, while attempting to get that same institution to force your ideas on everyone else.  They even wish to help destroy public education to get government money for vouchers.  This issue has nothing to do with contraception, as ridiculously expressed by RCC apologists, it has to do with an employer being able to dictate what you think, feel, and believe.

The USCCB could see that they were losing “the battle” a few years ago and decided to adopt a strategy of claiming religious discrimination to force their views on the public, allying themselves with the AFC, Focus on the Family and other reactionary groups that hide behind religion.

Dionne is a joke, if he isn’t shilling for ethics free Democrats, he shills for ethics free outdated institutions.  He is as much a Tea Bagger with this opinion as any other Koch Brothers/Dick Armey operative.

“The bishops have legitimate concerns about the Obama compromise, including how to deal with self-insured entities…”

Aren’t we talking about health plans in the insurance exchanges?  That means insured plans with fewer than 50 employees.  And groups of 50 or even 100 don’t or shouldn’t self-insure.

This is a tempest in a tea pot.

Mr. Dionne, I expect more.

How about the concept of you are being an asshole.

Obviously, JoshuaM dooesn’t understand the concept of the shared liability of all insurances. You have made another classic christian fundamentalist assumption that any (woman) on birth control is sexually active or promiscuous (a slut). Check your stats, most young women take birth control pills to regulate their hormone levels. Most others take them to not get pregnant. Troglodytes like you need to place your club on the ground, takes the bones out of your hair, and EVOLVE.

@ firefly

There have been many operating within the Catholic church committed to social justice, often, but not always to the great consternation of the Vatican.

This is about compensation for services, not about religion. Health insurance is compensation, payment. If they are not allowed to control how you spend your regular paycheck the employers should not be allowed to control how you spend your heath insurance.

Remember, companies “providing” health insurance coverage was started in WWII when offering higher salaries or wages to compete for labor supplies was not allowed as compensation was capped by war time regulation. So, as an alternative compensation to attract workers they started offering to add health insurance to the pay package.

The only religious freedoms being violated come from those employers who demand that workers follow the practices of the church or church-connected outfit they work for when spending their compensation (pay) package.

This issue is merely political. If it had come up at
the very beginning of Obama’s term in office, I’m
sure Catholics would have been totally ok with it.
But those who are politically-minded instinctively
want to make (the contraception requirement for
medical insurance coverage)it an election year issue.
It happens every election cycle. Remember the gay-
marriage eruption just prior to the 2008 presidential
election. I think that Americans had better re-think
the whole tax exemption thing for churches. They’re
more like political organizations and they meet
weekly at least.

Catholic Church committed to social justice????

When?

What nonsense.

The Vatican is a sexist, fascist institution who has
dedicated its entire existence to the subjugation of
women and children.

all religions can be viewed as ideologies or as thinkings. so, i cannot see why some thinkings
are exempt from any given rule and others are not.
and if some thinkers have god in their lives, what else then do they need? for if you possess or
have god, allah, mohammed, moses, or jesus, in your life, don’t you have everything you
need? so what more do you want? isn’t god almighty to believers?
if a believer’s god needs defending [by law, rule, regulations] that believer is contradicting
him/herself.
such people, then, accept a limited god, yet call or deem it/him/her almighty.
if i had god in my life, would i speak for IT? defend IT? read her/his/its mind?
didn’t i try—oh how much—to get my jesus or god, and what happened? nothing happened.
its all just utopian thinking—and regardless whether god exist or not!

catholic church in europe had always been profascist, anti-equality, bellicose, etc.
i do not know much about catholic church in US, but venture to say it does not
differ much from european catholic church.
by catholic church [or any other christian org or church] i mean its leadership. this
leadership [structured like army] had not ever been committed to social justice,
peace in the world, modesty, honesty, etc.

Mr. Dionne…

I wish you would have elaborated a bit further on “this moment of exceptional Catholic unity”.

I didn’t see any moment of Catholic unity.

Perhaps you are speaking of the unity between Mark Shields and yourself (and a few well placed others no doubt).

It is OK to feel guilty (or even just plain stupid) about that little moment by the way.

We all have our moments.

Money is miscible.If an entity that wishes to do
something evil is given funds to do something not
evil
then that part of their budget is freed up to do the
evil thing.

Pharmacists are being required to provide the morning
after pill or lose their job. Many forms of
contraception are abortifacient.

There are arguments about when a new human being is
created, that is, is there a new human at the moment
of conception or at implantation or when the baby
utters its first cry when birth occurs. My Church
holds that when the sperm meets the egg a new human
being is created. This not a matter of science but a
matter of definition. Such matters are matters of
faith. Our government has no business interfering in
matters of faith.

There are Doctors and Nurses and accountants and
janitors and receptionist who work at faith based
hospitals who want not even the smallest involvement
with this evil business.

Incidentally Natural Family Planning has a higher
success rate than any other form of contraception and
no side affects that harm the human body. The
discipline involved increases the intimate commitment
of the couple and strengthens marriage.

The divorce rate began to shoot up when the pill
arrived.

Do you want all faith based institutions whether
schools or food banks or distributors of clothing or
provision of housing to the poor or medical care to
be shut down or lose the contributions of people of
faith? If this great harm is allowed to stand your
taxes will go up and the poor and sick will become
much worse off.

This is not so much about contraception or abortion
as it is about freedom of conscience and freedom of
religion and attacks on these freedoms are even more
important than attacks on the right to due process
and respect for the law by the powerful as well as
every one else.