Henneberger Nails It

MSW,
The USCCB has long ago, under JPII and Ratzinger/BXVI, tied it's wagon to the Republican horse of greed and war at the expense of the lives of others!!!

So, as the Republican party goes so too goes the USCCB abd the papacy. They have both found a perfect home with the Republican party and so it will ever be. It's now far too late for you, they or anyone else to claim otherwise!!! They HAVE condemned themselves...to all things Republican!!!!! They have joined with greed, war, hatred and evil. We have not forgotten the Crusades,. nor will we or anyone else forget this cabal of evil.

bob

Those on the Left don't want to talk about Obama's policy failures or HIS record on the economy. It is outlets such as PMSNBC, the Washington Compost, the New York Slimes, the Atlanta Urinal Constipation and the Lame Stream Media who keep this fake argument about contraception in the forefront.

This publication, with Catholic in its name, should be disavowing the contraceptive mandate simply for what it is - a mode to strip ALL religious organizations, not just Catholic, of their rights of conscience. Just because some of the followers don't or won't heed the teachings of the Church, doesn't change its mission.

Contraception is not being made illegal, and with "98%" of Catholic women, as claimed in this publication, availing themselves of it, it is readliy available and apparently prevalent. I say it again - CONTRACEPTION IS NOT A RIGHT - never has been.

Really Michael? Hitching their wagon to a partisan horse? Like the Democratic party of yesteryear perhaps? Or is partisan ship only bad when Catholics lean to the right?

Archbishop Chaput is right when he says bishops ought be neither Republican or Democrats, but Independents. That neither political party hues to the Catholic position perfectly - and shouldn't be expected to since we're the minority and they, these political parties are made of majorities of folk who for religious and ideological reasons don't like what we believe or do or represent (otherwise, they'd be Catholics!).

But between two main forces or coalitions, which "side" is more and more overtly hostile to Christian morals? Which side claims to love the poor....but has no track record in actually lifting people permanently out of poverty? Which side professes peace but has launched most of our nation's wars?

Which side professes to be open-minded and not racist...but can't help but regard Americans as always members of class, race, and gender tribes rather than individuals who happen to be rich or poor, white or black, men or women?

Democrats talk a good game...so long as no one is allowed a word in edgewise. But the Church must talk back and so it's happening. It would be nice if Catholic laity joined our bishops rather than hitched our wagons to either party first.

USCCB OVERPLAYING HAND ? ......... MSW, you aren't really serious, are you? The US bishops have been marking the deck against Obama for months and now you think they fear overplaying their hand!

Unfortunately for the bishops and their right wing apologist echo chamber, the bishops cannot count cards as well as Obama.

The bishops have recklessly started an unnecessary fight that will only further reduce their diminished influence among Catholics.

Already, media pundits are regularly raising the bishops shameful record on protecting pedophile priest, and not just the birth control issue. Up until now the bishops had skillfully managed most of the media most of the time on sex abuse scandal reporting. That is changing quickly. The Spirit certainly does work in unexpected ways.

For more on the pope and US bishops' overplaying their hand, please read the comment, "Lent and Truth", readily accessible by clicking on at:

http://ncronline.org/blogs/distinctly-catholic/lent

The USCCB overplayed its hand long ago, although to be fair, the White House goaded them into it. This was a non-issue and has been since the EEOC required contraceptive coverage in December 2009 with no opposition from the Church. The comment request should have stressed that actual coverage was not even open to debate due to the requirements of the Civil Rights Act.

I have been wondering, Michael, if this debate over publicly-sponsored health care with or without contraception and abortion coverage is something that is specifically a U.S. bishops' issue or is it also an issue in other countries, say in Germany, France, Brazil, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, South Africa, Ireland, Sweden. If bishops all across the world are not fighting publicly-sponsored health care with contraceptive and abortion provisions, then that would be more evidence that the U.S. bishops are motivated by national politics and want to simply impede the President's attempted accomplishments, and that the ethical angle (weak as it is) is being dragged out for tangential purposes. If there is something to write about this, I would appreciate it if you addressed it some day.

Actually, it is not Democrats who are raising a ruckus. It is women. Even my very Republican sister is having fits over this whole issue of a religion (even her own) or a religious person being able to dictate what health care is available in employer health insurance. She is furious over the way Issa manipulated his committee meeting. And what is happening in Virginia!!!!

This is a woman's issue. And it is an issue of religious freedom. But it is the freedom to live without having one person compelled to live by a religious tenet of someone else. Even she is calling it religious tyranny.

There is plenty of room in Catholic theology for the bishops to stand down on this issue. What they want flies in the face of the ideals of democracy and equality of the individual and in the face of the new won freedoms of women to control their own lives and their own bodies.

We have a right to free speech. Must I or you be forced to pay for our megaphone?

This blog is owned by ncr.... we are guests. We don't have to be here and they don't "owe" us a hearing. There are alternative means for us to publish our thoughts. So their editors deciding not to subsidize our thoughts is not an infringement on my "free speech".

Similarly, an employer or Church is not "taking away contraception" from women or "forcing them to not use them" by simply refusing to pay for those drugs.

The 1,000,000,000 strong Catholic Church has brainwashed its members into subscribing to a sexual ethic that regards contraception, gay sex, masturbation etc. etc, as evil and to be eradicated. Its ruling cadre is manned by professed celibates supposed to live as disembodied angels. People delude themselves that such a force as this is not going to trample on their civil liberties whenever the occasion arises.

It used to be that the bishops would balance their public statement so much that one had to know 'churchese' well enough to decipher them. I worked for the Catholic church for 24 years and over that time I saw the bishops go from cautions expressions to the embrace of extremism in various forms.

But 2012 is not the first election in which they have clearly taken a side. In 2004 they all but formally endorsed President Bush by latching onto his wedge issue du jour, opposition to gay marriage, civil unions, etc. The issue itself was a grand distraction to the real issues at hand--the illegal war, crony capitalism and war profiteering; the ballooning deficit; the national security state; the subversion of cabinet level departments with the appointment of secretaries who were philosophically opposed to the mission of those departments.

It was not only Democrats who warned about Bush's excesses. In fact, Republican Kevin Philips wrote an prescient tome, Wealth and Democracy, and another about the Bush family dynasty. (Apparently the Bush family had a long history of war profiteering.) And none of those red flags seemed to deter the bishops from support of Bush's agenda.

I would rephrase your statement to say that the Republicans and the Catholic bishops have no one but themselves to blame. They've long tied the wagon to the Republican party. They need to untie it and recover their balance.