Nicholas D. Kristof on the Mandate
February 13, 2012, 1:55 pm
Posted by Lisa Fullam
In yesterday’s NYTimes.
Money quote:
The debates about pelvic politics over the last week sometimes had a patronizing tone, as if birth control amounted to a chivalrous handout to women of dubious morals. On the contrary, few areas have more impact on more people than birth control — and few are more central to efforts to chip away at poverty.
He said that he may not be as theologically sophisticated as the bishops.
That was the funniest line I have read all weekend.
Thanks for calling attention to this column, Lisa.
It’s a good column.
I laughed at the idea that the Catholic bishops are theologically sophisticated. They aren’t.
They are just stuck in Catholic natural-law moral theory regarding issues of sexual morality.
Kristof’s personal and professional advocacy for women’s issues has made him a credible spokesperson. I heard him speak last year about his book, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity” is a must read… I should give a copy my Ordinary…!
Agree with Kristoff:
If we have to choose between bishops’ sensibilities and women’s health, our national priority must be the female half of our population.
A welcome relief after the catterwauling by so many other men during the past several days. I pity the wives/husbands of the men whose hysterical anti-women columns, comments, and editorials have saturated cable news, the press, and the blogs lately.
Will the RCC (Republican Catholic Church) achieve its goal of putting Santorum in White House?
“The debates about pelvic politics over the last week sometimes had a patronizing tone, as if birth control amounted to a chivalrous handout to women of dubious morals.” This is tendentious. Can Kristof name a prominent critic of the mandate who has suggested that birth control amounts to a chivalrous handout to women of dubious morals? Or does he just imagine that this is what critics of the mandate really think even though they don’t dare to suggest it? Talk about a patronizing tone.
“On the contrary, few areas have more impact on more people than birth control — and few are more central to efforts to chip away at poverty.” This is certainly one view of poverty, and it is true as far as it goes: children cost money; the poor don’t have it. Some would say the problem here isn’t that the poor have too many children, but that we have an economy that makes it difficult for a lot of people to support their children.
@M Boudway. I couldn’t agree more. This line is tendentious at best. It seems to be that Kristoff knows next to nothing about theology so that is why he can fall so easily into oversimplifications such as this
@ Matthew Boudway: ["name a prominent critic of the mandate who has suggested that birth control amounts to a handout to women of dubious morals"]:
Yeah, how about Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich?
And remember, the hierarchs are known for their anti-feminine ideology over decades, even centuries. Some folks would even call it misogynistic.
@ Anthony Andreass: Nicholas Kristoff has spent a good deal of his journalistic career writing about the plight of mostly poor women in societies around the world. I think he knows a chauvinist ideology like the hierarchs espouse when he sees it.
Jim Jenkins,
Quotes, please. I doubt either Romney or Santorum has ever suggested it was “chivalrous” to hand out contraception to women of dubious morals. The bishops teach that contraception is immoral, as they always have. In that sense, those who use contraception (women or men) could be said to be of “dubious morals” from the bishops’ point of view. But as far as I know, nothing they have said suggests they believe that only promiscuous women (the plain meaning of “women of dubious morals”) use contraception. They know very well that lots of married couples use it, and believe that it’s just as bad for them to use it as for anyone else. You don’t agree with their position. Neither do I. Nevertheless, it is the traditional teaching of the church, and it should not be mischaracterized as misogyny.
Thanks for this post. The newly expansive claims for freedom of conscience and religious liberty by some bishops, and some of their political allies, are (to me) somewhat surprising. By way of illustration, I’ll plagiarize from, and slightly rework, a Matthew Yglesias post on the topic: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/02/13/freedom_of_conscience_and_its_limits.html
Assume that ObamaCare is repealed, in its entirety, tomorrow. The day after tomorrow Abdul Hussain, owner and CEO of a large private firm with 5,000 employees, announces that his firm will no longer offer employees health insurance that permits women to visit male doctors or male employees to be treated by female doctors. This is a newsworthy event, and the day after the day after tomorrow Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Attorney General Eric Holder both offer the opinion that this is a form of illegal discrimination and that if it’s not already illegal it should be made illegal. Will Cardinal Dolan, Speaker Boehner, candidate Santorum and their allies decry the Obama administration’s assault on religious liberty and stand up for Hussain’s “freedom of conscience” in this case?
“The debates about pelvic politics over the last week sometimes had a patronizing tone, as if birth control amounted to a chivalrous handout to women of dubious morals.” This is tendentious.
I agree with Matthew Boudway here, but what is interesting to me is how little of the talk about this issue has mentioned women’s health. On Meet the Press Joe Scarborough said:
It is politically advantageous to conservatives to make the fight about religious liberty, but if the issue becomes women’s health, as it really should be, then things will backfire for Republicans trying to make political hay.
We haven’t been talking much about the fact of unintended pregnancies (which account for 49% of pregnancies in the United States), and it has barely been mentioned that in fighting contraception, the bishops are in fact fighting the one truly practical way to significantly lower the abortion rate. Check out the IOM Report,in which the recommendations for coverage of contraception were first made. (See the section on page 102 for the pertinent information.) Unwanted pregnancies are a public health problem as well as a social problem. Abstinence and Natural Family Planning might be the answer in an ideal world, but not in this world. I think if this battle is waged in terms of women’s health, the American Bishops could be made to look very bad indeed. I don’t buy the argument that contraception is evil, but even if it is, it’s not the most evil thing in the world.
It’s easy to pick off a quote and criticize this twice Pulitzer winner who is justl y admired for his speakin gup for poor women.
But his essential approacgh rings true.
There is far too much bubble catholicism IMO in trying to uphold the catholic Bishops’ approach. It plays as some have noted into partisanship at this point and I fear we are losing perspective.
I would not have remarked on those two unfortunate sentences if they hadn’t been recommended to us as the “money quote” from Kristof’s column. Kristof has done lots of good work, but a writer who laments “a patronizing tone” must be careful to avoid one in the same sentence.
I was not aware Matthew, that you have to have things spelled out for you. That a hierarchy that has a definitive history of neglecting women now gives it to them one more time by saying that it is religious liberty they are concerned about when the bishops state they must protect women from birth control. That traditional teaching of the church is misogynistic. It is misogyny that drives birth control.
The larger truth is that the bishops are not poor. They have too much space to fete them alone while parents strive daily to feed and clothe their children.
Thanks for spelling it out for me, Bill. I think I’ve got it now. “It is misogyny that drives birth control.” I had not thought of it that way before.
Why didn’t the bishops of NY make a big issue of this 10 years when it became law in NYS? Apparantly, they found a way to comply with it. It could be thought that, if they could comply with it on a state level, they could comply with it on a federal level. Have they recommended voting against any of the govenors or representatives that approved it? To be consistent, we should all agree that a Jehovah witness couple should never have been forced to give their child a blood transfusion to save its life. I think that was a few years ago, but I could be wrong.
“Will Cardinal Dolan, Speaker Boehner, candidate Santorum and their allies decry the Obama administration’s assault on religious liberty and stand up for Hussain’s “freedom of conscience” in this case?”
Why would they? Is the insurance company selling Mr. Hussain those insurance products due to some religious reason?
Andrew P is correct about inconsistancy,,,… “a Jehovah witness couple should never have been forced to give their child a blood transfusion’ ???
Consistancy on religious liberty? First Amendment? When Mitt Romney’s grandfather was hounded to Mexico, how many bishops stood up for his religious liberty? How many joined the hounds?.
Why didn’t the bishops of NY make a big issue of this 10 years when it became law in NYS? Apparantly, they found a way to comply with it.
This is the third time I’ve had to point out to a commenter, in point of fact, Catholic Charities and all of New York’s Catholic bishops filed a lawsuit and pursued it to New York’s highest court.
It’s amazing how quick some people are to say that the Church never complained about this before, when all they’re proving is that they’ve never paid attention to the issue and they’re too lazy to use Google.
Catholics made an issue of it in Illinois back in 2003. Here’s a quote from an article at the time:
This kind of opposition is nothing new, people. It’s just the first time you’ve been paying attention.
Chauvinists are crowing, women are revolted, and the depletion of Catholicism goes on unchecked. The Kirchenauschritt is just as dramatic in the USA as in Europe.
Ausschritt, I mean. And so many of those departing footfalls are those of the mothers on whom bishops depend to transmit the faith.
@MAT (2/13, 9:29 pm) Good catch, thank-you. That post was more in the nature of a thought experiment, and so I should have written “would”, not “will”.
It does seem to me that the alliance of politically conservative evangelicals and Catholics has, over the last 10-20 years worked to shift the terrain of “church/state” debate away from the basic settlement arrived at in the wake of the mid-19th century Irish and German immigration waves. The notion that the law should provide exceptions for any individual in any profession (e.g., pharmacists refusing to fill birth control prescriptions) who has any moral or religious objection to participation in any way in the regular performance to some aspect of his/her profession seems to me to be a fundamentally “Protestant” view, and I’m not sure how or why so many “conservative” Catholics seem to be adopting it.
Stuart: I’m not going to warn you again. If you keep calling people who disagree with your positions, or who are not as brilliant as you think you are, lazy, stupid, or liars, then I am going to boot you from our site. Just stop.
Grant — if conservative commenters kept asking, “Why hasn’t Obama done X” time and time again, when everyone who knows anything about the issue knew that Obama HAD done X, and when such a fact could be easily discovered by using Google, the world wouldn’t be able to contain your scorn.
Thank you, Lisa, and thank you posters for making me feel less an outcast for being a liberal Catholic who DOESN’T agree that the bishops are right invoking religious liberty in this case. As others have pointed out in other places, Medicare covers contraception for the disabled young enough to need it and no Catholic organization I know of is trying to get out of paying Medicare taxes. Republicans (and perhaps some bishops) are looking for ways to weaken support for the Affordable Health Care Act because they just don’t like it. That’s what this contraception brouhaha is about at its core.
Do we need the thread of”kirchenauschrift?”
Stu, Sorry for my ignorance. The end result is that they protesed but complied. How do you comply with something that’s against conscience? It woould be like giving information heard in confession because you have to go to jail or the Chair. You can’t comply if you believe its against conscience no matter what the consequences. Otherwise you seem to be telling me that after they protest enough they’ll comply with this and have satisfied their conscience. I believe they can’t comply if they believe its a matter of conscience.
Bill at 6:58: “It is misogyny that drives birth control.”
Maybe there is a little of that among Catholic prelates, although I suspect it is more condescension of the we-know-better-than-the-little-dears variety. Although it was a document that affected the lives of women most directly, Humanae Vitae’s greeting was to “Venerable Brothers and Dear Sons.” (And yes, I know that is standard for encyclical letters, richly ironic as it is in this case.) But I doubt that the bishops’ attitude toward women is what’s driving this.
It’s mostly institutional. Decades ago the Church chose (and it was a choice) to proclaim the hardest possible line against artificial contraception. It was a controversial decision even at the time and has become even more problematical as its effects on health, poverty, and abortion rates have become clear. But there can be no reconsideration or relaxation, for fear of calling into question the teaching authority of the Church at a time when its hierarchy’s credibility is at low ebb. The bishops have a tiger by the tail.
@ Matthew Boudway (2/13/12; 5:26 PM):
Your logic escapes me: You wrote, “[I]t is the traditional teaching of the church, and it should not be mischaracterized as misogyny.” Because something is a traditional teaching of the church it cannot be called what it really, truly is, misogyny??? That makes no sense.
I’ll leave it to you to explain away centuries of the church’s misogyny starting with Paul, with mandating celibacy to “protect” its priests from women, with its full flowering in the Inquisition’s torture and execution of thousands of women for witchcraft.
More contemporarily, when I served on the SF review board, now Cardinal Levada return from consultations in Rome (with Ratzinger at the CDF) regarding the so-called “Dallas Charter” with objections to the fact that “lay” people, specifically women, served on American dioceses’ review boards. It was explained to me that the CDF (I would read, Ratzinger) didn’t like having women in “supervisory positions” over clerics assessing their ministerial fitness as the review boards would ostensibly have had to do.
I don’t know about the circles you operate in Matthew, but among my colleagues that would amount to resentment, fear, loathing, contempt for a whole class of people based mostly on their gender.
“A rose is a rose is a rose ….” I don’t know what you would like to call the “thing” but to me it is a pretty disreputable and discredited notion about women in particularly – one that the church should discard sooner rather than later if it wants to even survive to the end of the 21st century.
Outside apparently your bubble, the world in the last few weeks has had another peek inside the church’s sad, sad fixation with women’s autonomy especially when it comes to their own reproductive health care, and especially their sexuality.
I’m not especially hopeful, but maybe, just maybe, the hierarchs will have learned something from their recent ill-fated political gambit to sabotage the president’s reelection at the expense of women’s health care.
Children as a public health problem. If the dang poor would stop breeding like rabbits, think how much healthier the rest of us, i.e. the real people, the people who count, the people we went to school with, the people who think and look just like us, would all be.
I admit I still cling to the loony notion that we should help poor people with children. It had never occurred to me how much more convenient it would be to simply toss them some free contraception and tell them to leave us alone. If enough of them stop having children, maybe they’ll just die. It goes without saying that out-and-out killing them would be wrong, unless it’s a baby who hasn’t been delivered yet. Or at least fully delivered.
Jim Jenkins writes:
Yes, Mr. Jenkins, my logic escapes you, and maybe not only mine. If I had meant to write that the church’s position on birth control should not be characterized as misogyny because it is the traditional teaching of the church, that’s what I would have written. Instead I wrote the sentence I wrote. “And” does not mean “therefore.”
I get it now, Matthew. You have replaced logic with obfuscation. I suppose your next move will be to eschew dialogue.
Thanks, Matthew Boudway, for clearing-up all that logic for all us slow-witted out here.
Oy vey!
No wonder the church can’t come to grips with the issue of women.
And the real problem are the poor having children???
After a community meeting yesterday, someone I respect told me they thought we were headed to a tyranny here and all rights would be regulated (though he couldn’t name one of his rights that were disturbed.)
The crazy propaganda on rights/ contraception etc. makes serious discussio nof the comon good very difficult as we’veseen on a later thread.
As I sais, “Oy yey!”
“I’ll leave it to you to explain away centuries of the church’s misogyny starting with Paul…”
Jim,
Paul gets blamed for misogyny because of the words about women being subject and not being allowed to talk in church etc. But those words are in the same Epistle with words extolling women as prophets and other duties. This is why I believe the Epistle was messed with by patriarchal influences. You will not see anywhere in Christian history anyone like Paul who works with women and respects them. So I believe Paul gets a bad rap. Mainly because of those who messed with that particular Epistle.
@ Bill Mazzella:
You’re probably to a large extent correct. After all these centuries, and all the editing that apparently was applied to Paul’s epistles as orthodoxy gained momentum in the primitive Christian church, it’s hard to be precise when deconstructing his thinking from these writings.
The result we are left with renders a very complicated and confusing record for Paul. [I recall an underclassman NT scripture class I once got trapped in where we spent a lot of time trying to tease out the gnostic threads in Paul's letters?]
Of course, Paul was the pioneer of the New Testament: I suppose that we shouldn’t expect that he got everything right the first time. Nonetheless, Paul does present as “conflicted” about women in particular. As a psychologist, I recognize the “thorn in the flesh” talk as a metaphor for some kind of dystonic sexual feelings – For women? For men? Maybe. Whatever those feelings actually were is anybody’s guess.