Tag: contraception

Ads for Secular (Liberal) Catholics

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Amy Levin: The New York Times committed a liberal faux pas last month. As if they’d forgotten just how controversial ads can be, they accepted $39,000 from the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) to run a full-page. . .well I’ll just say it, “anti-Catholic” advertisement. The ad features a political cartoon–with a grumpily outraged male bishop and a frustrated cosmopolitan, white, middle-aged female sandwiching a birth control pill–that reads, “All the outrage over something like this is a bit hard to swallow.” Next to the cartoon in giant bold letters the ad visually screams “Open letter to ‘liberal’ and ‘nominal’ Catholics. It’s your moment of truth.” Feast your eyes down the page and you’ll find any number of quintessential reasons to leave the Catholic church, most prominently, women’s reproductive rights. Here’s a fun clip:

Why put up with an institution that won’t put up with women priests, which excludes half of humanity?

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The Conscience Clause: It’s Not Just About 750,000 Hospital Employees

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There’s much more at stake in the discussion about conscience clauses than who gets the bill for the pill.

By Ann Neumann

On January 20th Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that contraception would be covered free-of-charge in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the Obama administration’s stifled, delayed-release attempt at reforming health care.  The announcement included an exemption “for churches and houses of worship, but not for other religious institutions such as hospitals, universities and charities.”  Women’s rights groups cheered the decision, having feared the worst after the record of “compromise” this administration has established.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) did not cheer; they immediately orchestrated a campaign that included letters read at mass and heavy lobbying of conservative lawmakers and activists, peculiarly claiming that the decision was an affront to religious freedom.  It was yet another sparkling demonstration of the access that bishops have over health care legislation. The Pope himself took the opportunity of a visit with U.S. bishops and military leaders on January 19th to lament the erosion of religious freedom, saying:

When a culture attempts to suppress the dimension of ultimate mystery, and to close the doors to transcendent truth, it inevitably becomes impoverished and falls prey… to reductionist and totalitarian readings of the human person and the nature of society.

Prohibit families from deciding when to have children, he threatened, or risk the specter of totalitarianism!  Or rather, Comply with Catholic teaching and be free! Continue Reading →

The Conscience Clause: It's Not Just About 750,000 Hospital Employees

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There’s much more at stake in the discussion about conscience clauses than who gets the bill for the pill.

By Ann Neumann

On January 20th Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that contraception would be covered free-of-charge in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the Obama administration’s stifled, delayed-release attempt at reforming health care.  The announcement included an exemption “for churches and houses of worship, but not for other religious institutions such as hospitals, universities and charities.”  Women’s rights groups cheered the decision, having feared the worst after the record of “compromise” this administration has established.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) did not cheer; they immediately orchestrated a campaign that included letters read at mass and heavy lobbying of conservative lawmakers and activists, peculiarly claiming that the decision was an affront to religious freedom.  It was yet another sparkling demonstration of the access that bishops have over health care legislation. The Pope himself took the opportunity of a visit with U.S. bishops and military leaders on January 19th to lament the erosion of religious freedom, saying:

When a culture attempts to suppress the dimension of ultimate mystery, and to close the doors to transcendent truth, it inevitably becomes impoverished and falls prey… to reductionist and totalitarian readings of the human person and the nature of society.

Prohibit families from deciding when to have children, he threatened, or risk the specter of totalitarianism!  Or rather, Comply with Catholic teaching and be free! Continue Reading →

A Truly Catholic View on Feminism

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Priests for Life, a Catholic anti-choice group, and EWTN (Global Catholic Network) have teamed up to challenge women’s daytime talk shows with a show of their own, “The Catholic View for Women.”  Tired of talk shows that don’t represent traditional Catholic values?  Vatican II ruin your faith?  Think “Madonna of the Kitchen” might change the tenor of your dinner conversation — and your need for a career?  Want to tell your story about how women’s liberation stole you away from Christ?  Let those spiritually advised by Father Frank Pavone teach you New Feminism. Continue Reading →

My Catholic Conscience

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We’ve been here before. And no, it didn’t work then either.

by Jon O’Brien

Like others, I am deeply concerned about recent moves in Congress that would restrict access to reproductive healthcare services, especially for poor women. The situation reminds me of other experiments where a few people with extreme views sought to pass policy that impacted a significantly wider group of people—with devastating consequences. Below, I will recount how the hierarchy of the Catholic church hijacked a process that was on the verge of overturning the complete ban on contraception. But today, in the U.S. Congress, an antichoice cabal in the Republican Party is seeking to prevent poor women accessing federally funded family planning and other reproductive health services.  There are currently three bills that would do just that: the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” (HR 3), the “Protect Life Act” (HR 358) and the “Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act” (HR 217). They, along with the budget which passed the House and did not include crucial family planning funding will severely impact the lives of millions of American families. As a Catholic, the fact that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has supported these attacks on healthcare services for poor women adds insult to injury. Continue Reading →

Believing in Contraception

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An excerpt from today’s announcement by a coalition of pro-choice and anti-abortion faith leaders, urging the Institute of Medicine panel to include contraception as a preventative service in health care reform, without a co-pay requirement, from Faith in Public Life.

Data from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services shows that 99% of women aged 15-44 who are sexually active have used a form of contraception, and two recent polls found extremely high support for contraception among evangelical Protestants, who are overwhelmingly opposed to abortion. An April 2010 survey found nearly 90 percent of evangelicals leaders said they approved of artificial methods of contraception, and a 2009 poll conducted by the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) in partnership with Gallup showed that 90 percent of evangelicals find hormonal/barrier methods of contraception to be morally acceptable for adults.

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