There is a healthy struggle brewing among the nation's Roman Catholic bishops. A previously silent group, upset over conservative colleagues defining the church's public posture and eagerly picking fights with President Barack Obama, has had enough.
The headlines this week were about lawsuits brought by forty-three Catholic organizations, including thirteen dioceses, to overturn regulations issued by the administration requiring insurance plans to cover contraception under the new health-care law. But the other side of this news was also significant: That the vast majority of the nation's 195 dioceses did not go to court.
It turns out that many bishops, notably the church leadership in California, saw the litigation as premature. They are upset that the lawsuits were brought without a broader discussion among the entire membership of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and wanted to delay action until the bishops' June meeting.
Advertisement
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 and pushing a "Fortnight for Freedom" campaign aimed at highlighting "threats to religious freedom, both at home and abroad."
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 American 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.
Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, California, broke the silence on his side Tuesday in an interview with Kevin Clarke of the Jesuit magazine America. Blaire expressed concern that some groups "very far to the right" are turning the controversy over the contraception rules into "an anti-Obama campaign."
"I think there are different groups that are trying to co-opt this and make it into [a] political issue, and that's why we need to have a deeper discussion as bishops," he said. "I think our rhetoric has to be that of bishops of the church who are seeking to be faithful to the Gospel, that our one concern is that we make sure the church is free to carry out her mission as given to her by Christ, and that remains our focus.” Clarke also paraphrased Blaire as believing that "the bishops lose their support when the conflict is seen as too political."
Blaire's words were diplomatic. But in a letter to the bishops conference that has not been released publicly, lawyers for California's bishops said the lawsuits would be "imprudent" and "ill-advised." The letter was not answered by the national bishops' group before the suits were announced.
Already, there are reports that some bishops will play down or largely ignore the Fortnight for Freedom campaign, scheduled for June 21 to July 4, in their own dioceses. These bishops fear that it has become enmeshed in Republican election-year politics and see many of its chief promoters, notably Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, as too strident.
The irony in the current acrimony is that Catholics were broadly united last January across political lines in opposing the Department of Health and Human Services initial rules on contraception because they exempted only a narrow category of religious institutions from the mandate.
Facing this challenge, the president fashioned a compromise under which employees of Catholic organizations such as hospitals and social-service agencies would still have access to contraceptive services but the religious entities would not have to pay for them. This compromise was accepted by most progressive Catholics, though many of them still favor rewriting the underlying regulations to acknowledge the religious character of the church's welfare and educational work.
But where the progressives favor pursuing further negotiations with the administration, the conservative bishops have acted as if it never made any concessions at all. Significantly, Blaire identified with the conciliatory approach. As Clarke wrote, "Bishop Blaire believes discussions with the Obama administration toward a resolution of the dispute could be fruitful even as alternative remedies are explored."
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.
(c) 2012, Washington Post Writers Group
For more coverage of the contraception mandate, click here.
like louis p font, the first conscientous objecter graduate of the usma (west point), my objections with the catholic hierarchy stem, not from it's detractors, but it's supporters.
Where were the Bishops when Bush announced the second Gulf War? Where have they been when the Republicans have threatened to further disempower the poor by privatizing social security and Medicare, defund Medicaid, protect the very wealthy from paying more taxes even if it costs the middle class undue hardships? The American bishops seem less and less Christlike and more and more Pharisaic these days. If less self-Rightgeous bishops don't start to take a stand, we'll look more like the church of the Inquisition and the Crusades than of the Apostles and Martyrs.
Corrected Copy
Wiliam Daley arranged for Cardinal Dolan to have a private meeting with Obama who. according to published reports, agreed to consider and confer with the Cardinal on the proposed mandate. However the Cardinal and the Church were shut out of all discussions and the proposed rule was issued by the HHS Department with no input from the Cardinal,the Bishops or the Church's representatives. After several Cardinals and the Bishops raised objections Obama issued an accommodation, not a compromise, as it was a unilateral declaration with no Catholic Church or other religions input. Despite the liberal media and the liberal Catholics rush to accept the 'accommodation' which again unilaterally redefined the role of religious groups, the original rule or mandate is now the law of the land. All Catholic and other religious religious hospitals, charities, schools et al are facing the immanent implementation required by the legal mandate or suffer huge fines or shut their doors as several Catholic adoption agencies have done for refusing to bow under liberal secular laws.Jesus Christ was tempted three times by the devil and each time refused to negotiate with the devil, a lesson Mr.Dionne and his liberal "catholic" followers should follow the next time Obama holds out an apple of compromise or accommodation.
I have to agree very strongly with E. Patrick Mosman that the real core of the danger in the Administration's actions is the arbitrary redefintion of a a relgious group, or religions ministry, contrary to almost 200 years of tradition in this country and millenia elsewhere. I have always considered my self a liberal Catholic. Now, I cannot understand why so many fellow Catholics of similar convictions do not see the obvious danger to advancing Catholic Christian positions, on any issue, including the Peace and Justice issues we so treasure, if the Administration is allowed to act so arbitrarily without a strong and vigorous challenge. I think all Catholics, and maybe especially those who are more liberal, will deeply regret that we all did not stand behind Cardinal Dolan and the USCCB on this particular issue.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do. Oh Please Dear Lord get me a new butler! Oh how long must the true Body of Christ suffer the lashes of the Roman whip? Once again I repeat. Only the poor among the employees of Catholic institutions in the United States will continue to suffer under the Roman anti contracepive health care mandate. No one is mandated under Obama Care to buy, take or use contraceptives. The whole thing is this simple. All else on this subject is pure unadulterated bull, or is that a Papal Bull?
"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." Yep no truer words were spoken, let's hear it from the Catholic liberals!!
“This is not a Catholic issue. This is not a Jewish issue. This is not an Orthodox, Mormon, or Muslim issue. It is an American issue.”
Yes, exactly, then why is religion getting involved in an American issue? Separation of Church and State mandates this, so why are the Bishops getting bent out of shape over an American secular issue? Why are men getting involved in women’s bodies once again? Within the context of all this hullabaloo are there ever any women’s voices heard at all? Where are the ethics and morals of allowing women to make their own choices for their own private reasons? Where’s the privacy in this? This appears as if men are the only decision makers when it comes to making children and making policy. Are you men in this alone or does any woman have any authority to speak at all? Has the other half of humanity been heard at all, been given a voice in this debate at all? It seems here that there is no record of women discussing this and making it public, well, perhaps it is about time.
I’d like to start off citing this article a couple months ago that appeared in Commonweal:
Jacques Maritain said in:On Good Authority? Jacques Maritain & ‘Humanae Vitae’ by Bernard Doering, “Though the discussions of this commission were kept under strict secrecy, many prominent Catholic intellectuals, both laymen and clergy, were keenly interested in its workings. One such layman was Jacques Maritain, the philosopher and convert to Catholicism who, at the close of Vatican II, had received from Pope Paul VI the council’s message to the intellectuals of the world; and one such cleric was Cardinal Charles Journet, theologian of the papal household and adviser to Paul VI. Maritain and Journet were longtime friends—the former had chosen the latter as his “confidant-théologien” [Confidant théologien? or théologien confidant?—there is a difference] or years before—and from their first meeting in 1920 until Maritain’s death in 1973, they exchanged 1,774 letters. Publication of this prodigious correspondence was completed in 2008 with the appearance of a sixth and final volume.
As readers of these letters will discover, decades before Humanae vitae Maritain and Journet were already taking up the church’s position on contraception, especially in response to the 1930 encyclical Casti connubii and its interdiction of all forms of birth control other than the “natural” rhythm method. In the face of pressure from Roman authorities and local ecclesiastical superiors—there was discussion in the curia of placing some of Maritain’s books on the Index, and Journet risked being relieved of his position as professor of theology at the seminary in Fribourg—neither man dared to go public with his reservations, and after the 1940s there followed a long silence on the subject.
“Then Maritain, during his 1958 stay at Princeton University, once again broached it. Discussing the recently invented birth control pill, he invoked a distinction between the finis operis (the intrinsic end or purpose of an act) and the finis operantis (the end or purpose of the actor). In the former case, Maritain felt it was easy to distinguish between what is natural and what is against nature (sexual intercourse was teleologically ordered to procreation), while in the latter, a distinction between the use of the rhythm method and the use of the pill struck him as “vain and futile.” “I have met young Catholic professors who already have seven or eight children and for whom the problem of additional births would be tragic,” he wrote to Journet. “Has the church made a pronouncement on the subject of these pills? Would their use be licit while waiting for the church to make such a pronouncement?” In reply, Journet sent a copy of a papal document forbidding the use of pills for the limitation of births, and remarked: “I too would hope that their use be permitted: I find your distinction well founded. Alas I see the opinion of the moralists running in the opposite direction.” He went on to speculate whether using the pill to “regularize” ovulation and thus maximize the effectiveness of the rhythm method might be “legitimate and in conformity with nature.”
Ah, a smoking gun here. Reservations even back in the 30’s and 40’s. So the question here is this a political move by the USCCB to discredit Obama since we are close to reelection or is this about access or non-access, payment or non-payment of contraceptives by Catholic organizations?
So let me ask another stupid question here, they say natural means of contraception which can be interpreted as being God-mandated, but did not God grace the scientists with the development of the 'pill' in the first place? So is it reasonable to say that the 'pill' is a natural means of birthcontrol, just more evolved and sophiticated because it is of God anyway?
Can we reopen the debate perhaps about whether the rhythm method can be morally and ethically equated with the ‘pill’ and other forms of birth control and if families, single pregnant young teen mothers or human-trafficked women find themselves unable to support a child for whatever are the reasons; is not the ethical and responsible thing to do, but to limit births?
Whenever this subject is up for debate, adult women’s voices seem to be sorely missing. Have any of the Bishops ever faced a dilemma of being jobless, with no family support, no home, yet pregnant and as the mother, still a child herself, with no place to turn and no knowledge of where to go for help? Have they? Not likely, but I ask what would they do in this situation? It is so easy to speak when you have all the resources in the world at your feet. Most women have none and if carried to term risk so much if they are already poor, which most are. I ask the bishops to walk in the moccasins of women for a bit and visualize this as a real situation; then I would ask them to reflect on the poverty of women worldwide who have no alternatives and raise children as the poorest of the poor. Where is the ethical idea of contraception in this picture? Women need to know they have options that can help them get out of poverty, not be stuck in it. That is what a compassionate, loving Church would do; that’s what Christ would do and that question and answer should weigh in here somewhere. Where is the love in this?
Fortnight of Freedom, is it right? Is it needed or just another smokescreen?
E.J. Dionne wrote: "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 American 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."
"With the rich history of their women religious predecessors and the fervent support of the laity behind them, the nun's servant-leadership should prevail in the end -- after all, this is not 1431." So what's with the 1431?
Nineteen year old Joan of Arc was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431 -- after being condemned to death as a heretic, sorceress, and adulteress in a trial by a tribunal presided over by the infamous Peter Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais. Some thirty years later, she was exonerated of all guilt and she was ultimately canonized St. Joan of Arc in 1920, by Pope Benedict XV.
With reference to my May 7 comment on the May 1, 2012, Editorial," Rome & Women Religious," <http://commonwealmagazine.org/rome-women-religious?page=2>, I found it ironic that the feast day of St. Joan of Arc falls on May 30 – during the May 29 - June 1, 2012 time period when LCWR’s national board was to begin its discussion of the conclusions of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s doctrinal assessment and the implementation plan put forth by that Vatican office.
Dear USCCB:
While some of you may attempt to silence many of your sheeple, some of us can, do, and will continue to read and will simply act as if we are deaf in your presence.
Additionally, given that power is a function of wealth, some of us will also withhold or redirect our offerings to those who will use it in a manner which is more in line with the true light of the gosple. Paying attorneys fees to support arrogant law suits are not in line with my personal understanding of the gosple.
I hope you have a good and productive conference.