Bishops bally-hoo over over birth control is a blow against my freedoms

Lorraine

So a group of old white guys aka, Catholic bishops, are having a major snit over whether they have to provide contraception to their workers of all faiths, as the Obama administration is demanding. Since a great many Catholic institutions--hospitals and universities--were already providing contraception to their workers of all faiths--including a good many Catholic women--this ought to be a no-brainer. And no problem. Instead the bishops are stomping around like a bunch of angry kids who have just had spring break cancelled.

The Catholic Conference of Bishops in the U.S. say including contraception as a benefit of their insurance policies this violates their faith, since contraception of any sort other than just saying No is against the rules. And it doesn't matter if the workers they are talking about are Catholic or not. The bishops don't want to let them have The Pill. Hell, if I'd had The Pill back in the day I wouldn't be spilling my
guts out here to the lifelong reaction of having relinquished a child. I'd be, you know, a tad more relaxed. Something like that turns you into a rather radical believer in need for all insurers to provide The Pill, an I.U.D., or whatever kind of contraception--including Plan B, or the Morning-After Pill--to anyone who wants it.

CATHOLIC LEADERS LIKE THE OBAMA PLAN

Just to be clear: Obama right off exempted parish churches and all houses of worship from insisting that these workers get contraception coverage. When the bishops squawked and said that's not enough--we don't want to have to cover anyone for contraception since we are against all artificial contraception, he came back with a compromise that said, Okay, you won't have to pay for the coverage, the insurance plan that Catholic institutions use will pick up the cost. The insurance companies were more than agreeable, because contraception is a whole lot cheaper than pregnancy and, uh, children.

A great many Catholic leaders said, Let's do it. The heads of several large Catholic organizations that work directly on poverty, health care and education have welcomed the president’s plan as a way to basically satisfy the bishops, while allowing employees who request it to have contraceptives covered by their insurance plans. We are not talking about fringe Catholic organizations, but the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, also known as nuns; the Catholic Health Association, which represents 600 hospitals and 1,400 health care facilities; Catholic Charities, the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities, the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas. They added that details like what to do about those institutions who “self-insure” could be worked out.

Band of Boys against birth control

The bishops response: Not good enough. Instead, they announced they plan to work with other religious groups, including evangelical Christians, on an election-year public relations campaign that may include TV and radio ads, social media marketing and a push for pastors and priests to raise the subject from the pulpit. Good luck with that one, as every survey of Catholics, when asked if they have ever used artificial birth control (that's anything other than the infamous Rhythm Method, notoriously ineffective) indicates that 98 percent of them have, the same percentage as non-Catholics. And artificial birth control has been against the official rules since the beginning of artificial birth control. 

A New York Times/CBS poll of Catholics found that 57 percent of Catholics supported religiously-affiliated institutions to provide contraception coverage, and there was almost no difference between Catholics and non-Catholics on this question. I'd like to see the polling data broken down further along gender lines; my best guess is that it would be more like 98 percent of Catholics (see above) who believed in contraception coverage for all--including, say,  Catholics and non-Catholics who work at a Catholic hospital. 

BISHOPS' PLAN TO WAGE WAR ON MY FREEDOM
Having been schooled by nuns for twelve years, I can hear the bishops response: The Church is not a democracy run by the will of the people. Well, nice try, but that means that 98 percent of your flock is not listening when you pontificate about pelvic politics, and going its own way. The bishops are stomping around saying that having to provide contraception for their Protestant, Jewish, Muslim, Sufi, Shinto et cetera workers is a "war on religion" and violates the separation of church and state.

If you want to go that route, then all the Catholic institutions that hire non-Catholic workers should stop putting their hands in the till for federal funds. That comes from my taxes, too, and I believe in true freedom of religion, one that allows those whose conscience calls for contraception to follow their own beliefs, not a "freedom of religion" tethered to the bishops' sensitivity to a rule from Rome that most Catholics patently ignore.--lorraine