I’ve been fascinated with the furor over the Obama administration’s decision to make Catholic hospitals, charities, and universities provide contraception coverage in their health insurance. The administration, which could hardly have handled the situation more stupidly, ultimately backed off, though the accommodation it eventually offered has not satisfied the bishops or s (...)
Columnists
We Are Complicit
IT GOES WELL BEYOND CONTRACEPTION
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Thank You !!!
Thank you, Father John, for illuminating the "sea of blood" behind our line in the sand.
"Does it follow that Jehovah’s Witness employers should be permitted to offer insurance that doesn’t cover blood transfusions? "
No, it doesn't. Blood transfusions serve an actual medical need. Contraception circumvents the natural functioning of the body in order to allow recreational sex.
Mr. Kasarski might ask any health insurance company if pregnancy constitutes a medical need (for instance: try to get health insurance while pregant before the abolition of denials due to pre-existing conditions).
Further, I find it self evident that marital relations - regardless of the possibility of procreation - are as sacred as the spouses' devotion to each other makes them. Contraception has nothing to do with whether sex is "recreational" - every argument I've seen to the contrary has suffered from a Manichean divorce from the experience of love.
Very well written and thought-provoking. Thank you for getting to the heart of the matter.
"Contraception circumvents the natural functioning of the body in order to allow recreational sex."
What Mr. Kasarski terms recreational sex is in truth life-giving sex in a faithful marriage. Humans are the only mammal who are physically able to mate outside of estrus. I submit that God gave us this capability (i.e. through natural selection), because human young need a long period of maturation to adulthood and they are more likely to survive under the care of both parents. Sex plays an important role in binding a man and woman together in a faithful marriage that supports the life of the children they conceive. Teaching couples the pro-life nature of a loving and passionate sexual relationship would do us a real service. There is no need to demonize "recreational sex" within a faithful marriage.
So very eloquent, speaking volumes. The College of Bishops would do well to read -- carefully -- Mr. Garvey's article.
The appropriate focus in this excellent column is on us. We are complicit. With our "narrowing of morality," we are missing much or most of Christ's message. It's easier to slip into legalism than to live the gospel. It's also easier to participate in churchly functions including the Mass than to follow Christ's law of love -- as pointed out in the Communion Antiphon for today's Mass: "To love God with all your heart, and your neighbor as yourself, is worth more than any sacrifice."
Amen. And thank you.
It was not until I read this excellent column by John Garvey that I could put into words, succinctly, why I feel so indifferent to the current flap regarding health care insurance and Catholic institutions. It seems as if there are no issues aside from abortion and contraception that can prod our bishops to rally the faithful with the gusto that we are witnessing at the moment. In the past decade we have seen our nation prosecute a preemptive war with substantial loss of civilian life, engage in an open and widespread policy of torture, suspend Habeus Corpus, and begin an assassination-by-drone program without due process. It's getting tiresome that many bishops go all-in over issues connected to sexuality, while pulling punches on most everything else..