There's an increasingly sensitive tripwire between faith and policy these days. To question the latter is to incite charges you're denigrating the former.
It's especially difficult when you're talking about the Catholic Church -- which, yes, has failed miserably in its handling of abuse, but has done so much over the years for so many.
So let me put this out there right at the beginning: I love the power of faith. I respect those who embrace it. I applaud those who feel its comfort.
But policy based on a narrow interpretation of faith -- that's a whole other issue, especially when policy with roots in Biblical times is wedged into modern realities.
The Catholic church managed to shake the volatile mix of faith, policy and reality when it took on the Obama administration's directive that church-related organizations must offer birth control benefits. Never mind that many of these organizations -- colleges for one -- have been quietly doing it all along. Never mind that vasectomies don't seem to have entered the conversation.
The more you try to understand the issue, the more you wonder why any women would heed the rules of men whose personal stake in the policy is their right to make it -- in an organization that blocks all women from meaningful power.
You wonder, too, about the forces that ferociously keep in place a policy that is so clearly and sadly out of step with the times. The church is railing against something that 98 percent of their members practice.
Perhaps it's simply the age of the power structure.
The Pope is 85, and the average age of the College of Cardinals is 75. Men who are ten to twenty years beyond retirement age for virtually any other organization are not likely to be a bubbling fountain of bold initiatives.
The go-to answer, of course, is: Biblical says so -- which brings you close to that line between questioning policy and denigrating faith.
If you want to take the Garden of Eden literally, fine. But the command to "be fruitful and multiply" has a little different implication when you're the only two people in the world -- as opposed to the seven billion people walking the earth, and the additional billion that will join us over the next two decades -- most of them in places that can't support what they have now.
As with the Christian right's problem with gays and lesbians, there are ample anti-contraception verses there for the plucking. Self-serve justifications let you pick the ones you like, and avoid the ones (don't touch pigskin or own slaves from your own country) that might be inconvenient.
We can all interpret these as we will, in and out of historical context, but it's uncanny how selectively the sex and gender-related ones find their way into policy debates.
Faith-warped policy has real-life consequences -- like unplanned, unwanted children born into uncertain lives.
George Bush's laudable anti-AIDS initiative sent billions of dollars to Africa. But supported by the religious right (The Pope has said condoms will make the problem worse), program policy prohibited any of it going to family planning or counseling.
While the HIV-AIDS fight was a victory, the ban on contraception and counseling, veteran relief works believe, fed Africa's unsustainable population boom -- including babies born with the disease.
We all, of course, must be free to embrace our respective faiths. But when the interpretation of faith is used conveniently and selectively to create policy -- people suffer.
Follow Dr. Peggy Drexler on Twitter: www.twitter.com/drpeggydrexler
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There is actually, no accomodation within especially the NT to adapt to ''modern realities''. These are realities as made by men and women, and not by God, as the adherent would testify, [so would Jesus, and actually did so in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark] , hence the pushback on this policy by not only the Catholics, but Protestants, Jews, and Muslims as well.
Then too, Drexler is incapable of defending a policy whereby the heretofore ''private'' region of human lives revolving around sex is suddenly inflated to demand a government intervention on the portion of those who dishonestly hide behind a mantle of ''womens health'' in order to breach not only private right, but the wall of separation between church and state [ and now, obviously, state and church], which was envisioned over 200 years ago and codified over five decades back. Even more dishonestly, turning the thing on its head in a manner that Orwell would have instantly grasped, is that it now becomes the ''Catholics setting policy'' rather than the government where it always belonged and originated from to begin with.
The San Francisco Chronicle Mar.04,2012: ''From A Plea For Choice To A Roar For Entitlement''.
Can a commercial business take on an official religion and use its tenets to escape laws? This about this... Walmart another major commercial pharmacy or healthcare entity can then decide to not dispense contraceptives for religious reasons.
Does an institution have the right to deny individual rights? That's the crux of all this, and it's serious business. Which religious tenets are okay? Which ones aren't?
By allowing institutions religious liberties that trump the individual, the government will inherently find itself endorsing and sanctioning religious beliefs, which is therefore UNCONSTITUTIONAL
This is about what the federal can, or cannot do, as it applies to the First Amendment.
Your argument is a gross simplification of the issues involved and my above sentence is an attempt to show you how unsatisfying such a gross simplification is as an argument.
BTW, crowding "gross simplification" into the same sentence twice doesn't speak well to the goal of eliminating same.
The issue at hand is the restriction the Constitution puts on the federal government for free exercise of religion.
Either the First Amendment has the force of law, or not.
Where are all the Catholic women whose initiative and laundering power are much
needed in order to counter the overwhelming (old)man domination of the Church.
Being an ex- Catholic, I nevertheless wish for a more balanced policy and outlook
of the very influential RCC. Ladies - think it over, please make your voices heard.
is railing against something that 98% of its members practice? Funny but poll after poll (Rasmussen, Pew, etc) find Catholics overwhelmingly against a secularist administration (one that wanted the power to determine the hiring practices of all religious institutions) intruding into its affairs. For the majority of Catholics (who use contraception) the Obama birth control mandate is 100% a freedom of religion issue. These Catholics are saying "I will oppose Church teaching and use contraception; but I will oppose the State in forcing the Church and its religious affiliates to offer it. That's a decision for the Church to make, not the State."
This was never about the church but the church and the GOP decided to frame it that way to try and score cheap political points.
And just why would that be?
Better to be rational and reasonable I would think.
If they keep their religion to themselves, then I will keep my beliefs to myself. If they choose to try and convert me to their god, I will choose to try and convert them away from their god.
Do you mean like the Catholic Church, some evangelists in D.C. and of course Islam and their sharia law?
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
You've just admitted you're more interested in your own agenda over the best interests of society and what the people want.