[Vision2020] Father Doesn’t Know Best

[Art Deco]

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May 22, 2012
Father Doesn’t Know Best By MAUREEN
DOWD<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/maureendowd/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

WASHINGTON

Your parents spill a few secrets as they get older.

One night at dinner with my mom, I ventured that the rhythm method had
worked well for her, given that there were six years between my sister
Peggy and my brother Kevin, and six more between Kevin and me. She arched
an eyebrow. “Well, sometimes your father used something,” she said.

My parents were the most devout Catholics I’ve ever known. But my dad came
from a family of 16 in County Clare in Ireland, and my mom’s mother came
from a family of 13 in County Mayo. So they balanced their faith with a
dose of practicality.

After their first three kids, they sagely decided family planning was not
soul-staining. So I wasn’t surprised to see the Gallup poll Tuesday showing
that 82 percent of U.S. Catholics say birth control is morally acceptable.
(Eighty-nine percent of all Americans and 90 percent of non-Catholics
agreed.) Gallup tested the morality of 18 issues, and birth control came
out on top as the most acceptable, beating divorce, which garnered 67
percent approval, and “buying and wearing clothing made of animal fur,”
which got a 60 percent thumbs-up (more from Republicans, naturally, than
Democrats).

Polygamy, cloning humans and having an affair took the most morally
offensive spots on the list. “Gay or lesbian relations” tied “having a baby
outside of marriage,” with 54 percent approving. That’s in the middle of
the list, above a 38 percent score for abortion and below a 59 percent
score for “sex between an unmarried man and woman.”

The poll appeared on the same day as headlines about Catholic Church
leaders fighting President Obama’s attempt to get insurance coverage for
contraception for women who work or go to college at Catholic institutions.
The church insists it’s an argument about religious freedom, not birth
control. But, really, it’s about birth control, and women’s lower caste in
the church. It’s about conservative bishops targeting Democratic candidates
who support contraception and abortion rights as a matter of public policy.
And it’s about a church that is obsessed with sex in ways it shouldn’t be,
and not obsessed with sex in ways it should be.

The bishops and the Vatican care passionately about putting women in
chastity belts. Yet they let unchaste priests run wild for decades,
unconcerned about the generations of children who were violated and raped
and passed around like communion wine.

They still have not done a proper reckoning, and the acrid scandal never
ends. In the midst of a landmark trial in Philadelphia charging Msgr.
William Lynn with covering up sexual abuse by priests and then
recirculating the perverts, the Archdiocese of Philadelphia announced
Sunday that two priests in their 70s who worked in parishes and hospitals
had abused minors at some point and were unfit for ministry.

This follows five priests sidelined earlier this month because of
substantiated claims of sexual abuse or other violations, plus 17 others
suspended after last year’s sickening grand jury report on rampant sexual
abuse in the Philadelphia Archdiocese.

Some leading Catholic groups endorsed the compromise struck by the Obama
administration that put the responsibility for providing the contraceptives
on the insurance companies, not religious institutions. But others wanted
to salute the Vatican flag and keep fighting. On “CBS This Morning” on
Tuesday, the pugnacious Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New
York rejected the compromise and charged that the White House is
“strangling” the church.

Interpreting the rule in the most extreme way to scare Catholics, he said:
“They tell us if you’re really going to be considered a church, if you’re
going to be really exempt from these demands of the government, well, you
have to propagate your Catholic faith and everything you do, you can serve
only Catholics and employ only Catholics.”

The Archdiocese of Washington put an equally alarmist message in the church
bulletins at Sunday’s Masses, warning of apocalyptic risk:

“1. Our more than 600 *hospitals* nationwide, which will need to stop
non-Catholics at the emergency room door and say, ‘We are only allowed by
the government to heal Catholics.’

“2. Our *schools*, which will be required to say to non-Catholic parents,
‘We are only allowed by the government to educate Catholics.’

“3. Our *shelters*, on cold nights, which will be required to say to the
homeless who are non-Catholics, ‘We are only allowed by the government to
shelter Catholics.’

“4. Our *food pantries*, which will be forced to say to non-Catholics, ‘the
government allows us only to satisfy the hunger of Catholics.’ ”

The church leaders headed to court hope to undermine the president, but
they may help him. Voters who think sex is only for procreation were not
going to vote for Obama anyway. And the lawsuit reminds the rest that what
the bishops portray as an attack on religion by the president is really an
attack on women by the bishops.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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