I blame myself and everyone like me

The Church is the fastest-growing large denomination in the world, including the United States. If the fact that your colleagues are leaving the church means that the Church is not thriving, your feeling of being an idiot may not be an exaggeration.

Blame yourself if you like, but don't blame "everyone like me." Most of us didn't fall for this charade.

ELECTION YEAR PLOY ........ Cheer up, Joe. NCR's editorial board and many other loyal Catholics were also fooled. The bishops carefully and consciously misrepresented the HHS position as "bullying" by Obama. In fact, this is mainly about replacing Obama with a "friendlier" US prosecutor-in-chief, like Santorum, who won't prosecute the bishops for covering-up for pedophile priests.

For more info on the bishops' using a contraceptive Trojan Horse ploy as part of their long-term criminal defense strategy, please note the comments, "Founding Fathers' Shock", "Obama Dream Come True", and No Deal Ever, Onama!", all readily accessible by clicking on at:

http://ncronline.org/news/politics/bishops-studying-revised-contraceptio...

No worries, you are still the idiot you feel like.

The Bishops never threatened to take anyone's access to birthcontrol away. They are not willing to pay for it, either directly or indirectly. The presidential fiat dictating that insurance companies will provide birth control at no charge is diversion. Even if he has the legal authority to do that, which is doubtful, the insurance companies are not going to just accept the increased cost. They will pass the cost on to all of their customers.

You should feel dumb if you think that with only the president's word and not a legal precedent that some future politician will not try to force his will on Church institutions. Obama has offered a compromise, but the Church needs to have it written in LAW if it does not want to get pushed around in the future.

Excellent column, Joe. Jean Brookbank

Thank you for coming right out and saying it.

I quite frankly don't see that the Catholic laity has any power within the Church. Or, the only power is to withhold money in the hopes the bishops get the message. But that harms the local parish, the charities and the good works that really are one of the important ways faith is expressed.

The power you have is with your name, your own voice and pen, and your ability, however big or small that is, to influence NCR to take a lead.

How does one fight an unaccountable authority? How does one fight a leadership that is only accountable to Rome?

This is a serious question and I would be interested in others ideas of how the faithful can fight the bishops when the bishops opinions diverge so significantly from those of the faithful. As is so often noted in the comments, "the church is not a democracy" so, what are we to do -- short of leaving?

Last week, I wrote the President for supporting women's healthcare needs despite the hyperbolic opposition from the USCCB and it's mouthpiece, FOX News. I also wrote my bishop asking him to refund my annual appeal donation (yeah, like asking a vampire to give back the blood just sucked from your neck...), informing him that this would be the last donation from me, cancelling my subscription to our diocesan monthly newspaper, and questioning why we never heard this indignation from him before since contraceptives coverage has been State mandated in my state since 2001. Don't expect to see a refund check or receive an answer. My annual appeal will go to President Obama's re-elected campaign.

Joe, I really appreciate your column.

After the homily yesterday, our priest (who I think is terrific) read the Archbishop's letter dated February 7, three days before the compromise was announced. father made a brief statement of agreement.

Then the congregation stood to recite the Creed. I found I could not - with integrity - join in.

I left, actively questioning whether I could come back in my state of anger and disbelief that the Archbishop had not recalled or revised his letter, given the change in the situation.

I milled around outside and, finally, decided that I would go back inside, that I wanted be at Mass - to participate in my faith - even if the priest had been highjacked by politics for the day.

I did speak to the priest afterward. I told him that I respectfully disagreed with him. He responded that my disagreement was with the Archbishop. I know he probably was just trying to avoid a fracas in the vestibule but I still wonder at that response.

As individual Catholics, the priest and I expressed our opinions, he is in his homily and I in our conversation in the vestibule. I spoke my conscience as an adult Catholic woman. Whose conscience was the priest, then, speaking?

And doesn't that, then, get right at the crux of the matter: the USCCB have American citizens, Catholic or not, follow the Bishops conscience and not their own.

Thank goodness we live in a country that DOES respect religious liberty.

I admire your column, Joe, and I will remember it whenever I am tempted to walk away from my Church, even when it has been highjacked.

Jean Brookbank

Perhaps we need to call a series of Councils of American Catholics to articulate the concerns and beliefs of progressive Catholics rather than standing on the sidelines as so many thinking members silently drift away. We need to take back our church!

Thank you for your thoughtful article. I have been struggling the past few weeks and months over this issue and some aspects of the new translation. I have broached the subject of leaving the Catholic church with my husband on a few occasions and so far we're in a holding pattern of wait and see. I love many aspects of the church and its teachings but I do not feel like the opinions professed by many church leaders are in line with my own. I don't know how to start to push back against a church where my voice is being silenced. If you figure out where and how to start effectively fighting back please let me know.

Thought provoking essay. Perhaps the beginning of learning is when we realize we don't know and want to change that. I hope someone will help guide us to where we need to go to make the difference.

you are not the only one of us to feel thusly

http://news.yahoo.com/birth-control-debate-why-catholic-bishops-lost-gri...

bishops are not the Church
the Poor and the Illegal are

"98 percent of sexually active Catholic women"
but what percent of Catholic women are sexually active?
As Joe indicates, they might have left long ago, leaving only the inactive.

Except here among the active congregation of Ciudad Juarez, where all come of all orientations (was that a Freudian slip?) including us dried out old celibates, envious of the young within one another's arms (is that a Yeatsian slip) within this wonderful city of LIFE!

meanwhile our envious anglophone bishops grunt, if I ain't getting any, nobody does . . .

Joe wrote: "I feel like an idiot....I believed them."
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Why on earth would you "believe them"? The men in the hierarchy of this church have repeatedly demonstrated that they are men who manipulate the truth to suit their own agenda.
_____________________________________________________________________________

Joe wrote: "We don't raise our voices. Instead, we leave."
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Yes, many of us have given up trying to raise our voices, and we have left.

Those of us who have given up and walked away did so because in the church, unlike in our country, we have no voice. We may have raised them - but we were talking to ourselves. After a while, we realized that no matter how loudly and how often we "raised" our voices, it wouldn't matter because nobody in the hierarchy of the church is listening. And they aren't interested in listening. They claim to speak for "the church" but they forget that bishops are not "the" church - the church includes another 60 million or so in the United States who were not consulted - about this political issue - and another 1 billion or so who have not been consulted about the morality of birth control. Newman's essay, "On Consulting the Faithful on Matters of Doctrine" has apparently not been read by many in the hierarchy.

We may not always like how our representatives use our tax money - but we do have a voice. We can vote - and sometimes politicians are voted out of office. Sometimes policies are changed, because we have a voice.

In the Catholic church, how do Catholics stay and "fight"? How do Catholics make their voices heard in a church led by men who live lives that are totally isolated from the Catholics in the pews? Who share none of the day to day concerns and experiences of the Catholics in the pews? How many bishops have "listening" sessions and invite laity to voice their concerns

How many bishops are women? Why do they believe they have the right to claim to speak for the 98% of Catholic women who have used modern birth control methods?

How many bishops even answer the mail? During the first few years following the revelations of widespread sexual abuse in the church, I wrote letters to the chancery - I never got a reply, not even a form letter acknowledging receipt with some gobbledygook about how my thoughts are 'important" to them. They act like politicians, but real politicians answer the mail - that's because voters do have a voice, unlike Catholics in their own church.

When I stopped sending money to the Cardinal's Appeal, I got follow-up solicitations. So I stapled a letter to one of them explaining why I could no longer give money to enable a hierarchy that protected men who were molesting children, allowing them to molest countless more victims than they would have victimized had they been stopped at the first complaint. I explained that until Rome saw fit to demand a few resignations from the worst offenders, like Cardinal Law - who did resign, but was then given a few gifts in Rome to make up for it - I would not give any money to the church. I explained that I had not witnessed even ONE bishop have the courage to speak out about the failures of the hierarchy. Although I stapled this letter to the appeal from the archdiocese, I did not get a reply. I did get a phone call - asking me if I would like a representative to come to my home and explain how we could give the church money in our wills.

After a while there was one bishop who spoke out - ONE - Geoffrey Robinson of Australia, who wrote a book. When he was in the US to talk about his book, every single bishop of every diocese he visited banned him - a brother bishop - from speaking on property owned by the church. When orders of religious sisters offered him a place to speak, the bishops forbade that also.

Joe, Geoffrey Robinson is not listened to. He is a bishop. He has done what he can to "fight" for change in the church and he is banished, just as Thomas Doyle - a priest - was banished.
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"But who is fighting? Where do we go to sign up?"
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There are people fighting - but nobody pays attention. Groups like VOTF and Call to Action and We are Church. They are voices crying in the wilderness.
____________________________________________________________________________

"How do we make a difference and break through the clutter? And will anything really change? "
____________________________________________________________________________

It does not seem possible for the people of God to be heard, to make a difference in church governance. Will anything really change? No - not unless there are dramatic changes in the very structure of governance in the church (for example, it could go back to the model of early church when bishops were elected) and the teachings that underlie the abuse of authority (teachings such as infallibility).

If the people of God went "on strike" - if they closed their checkbooks, after a while somebody would have to start listening. Until then, the hierarchy has no concern about the thoughts and insights of those who pay the bills in the church, about those who pay for their own very comfortable lifestyles and privileges - all the way down to paying for 40' silken trains for these "princes".

Why do we leave? The answer is obvious. We are tired of not just feeling like idiots, we are tired of being "idiots".

It's true you don't have a voice in the Church. You can, however, ignore the bishops and stop donating to the general funds of the Church. I will now be making only directed donations so that they don't have the money to carry on with this kind of nonsense. They will pay in the afterlife for their poor leadership. They have a sacred trust and they play politics with it. This sin may be second only to their handling of the child abusers.

And I have a son born in Brooklyn Jewish Hospital and I am trying to figure out how he was discharged without being circumsized!
Speak out? how and where? The first thing our pastor and/or bishop does is deny communion. They tell you to leave. You are told you are not welcome.
you cannot stay and speak out. The "goodies" will threaten to tell father. You will find yourself sitting on the sidewalk, hat in hand. We have not given to the collection in years, but the wealthy patrons keep pouring in the money.
We used to be in many ministries as our children were growing up. We have left all but one. Our 8 children were raised Catholic. Only one remains Catholic and she is wary and "stays below the radar."
But thank you for the apology. It really hurt when NCR would not back us women who feel like we are just supposed to have babies and shut up.

Perhaps we could all join Call to Action, or Voice of the Faithful. We need to choose one or the other, however, so our voices will not be diluted. Maybe we need an Occupy RCC. I'd go.

Mr. Ferullo, you're certainly no idiot, but you are, perhaps, naive. To fight is to be excommunicated. If you were to counter with, "They can't excommunicate us all!" I'd reply, yes, they can. That doesn't mean you or the rest of us are wrong. (I await the inevitable snark from "real Catholics," who will invite me to go ahead and leave if this is the way I think. To them I'd say, simply, that I'm not going anywhere, and -- not but -- I'm going to go ahead and live my life.)

Joe, you should feel like an idiot as should Michael Sean Winters, Phyllis Zagano and anyone at NCR who contributed to the editorial stating that the Obama administration went too far. The bishops have been hostile toward President Obama from the day he was elected. In my opinion they are a gang of arrogant bullies.

Rosemary Insidioso
Bangor, MI

Thanks for a honest article. It is much appreciated.

As to what may be done by an individual, I highly recommend filing a complaint at the Department of Revenue of your state, alleging violation of not-for-profit tax law by your local bishop and your pastor (if he read the USCCB letter to his congregation or demanded political action from you).

Tim Dolan's latest comments, and the latest Republican bill regarding alleged "religious freedom," clinch the deal. The bishops are deep into conservative Republican political advocacy and need to leave their not-for-profit status behind them if that's their choice.

Something about this action which may appeal to many NCR commentators here -- all you anonymous and pseudononymous posters -- this complaint and request for investigation does not need to include your name, if you're somehow afraid of identifying yourself for any reason. All you have to do is set out what you've witnessed surrounding this issue. Just FYI, kids.

I suggest this route because only legal questions from the outside are going to expose this nonsense to the American electorate. Please don't allow fear or a false sense of "Bishop X or Father Y said so; therefore, it must be right" to cloud the personal judgment you're quite capable of as an educated American citizen.

Susan Lersch
susan.lersch@yahoo.com

Hang in Joe. When your great, great, great uncle Galilei Galileo was lined up to be fried by the “Holy Inquisition of the Holy Roman Catholic Church” for spouting off around the neighborhood that the earth is not flat but round and that it rotates quite merrily on its own axis, he like a clever Italian Catholic, recanted his great error publicly, but still into his curly beard he wisely mumbled “but it still moves.” And so Galileo managed to die peacefully in bed instead of being burnt at the stake “by the Church”.

There are those “members of the Churvch” who are always shouting to the world “what ‘the Church’ thinks” and “what ‘the Church’ says”, and “what God says ‘through us’ to His Church” without ever so much as asking us “The People of God” what we think or have to say. These people have probably forgotten that my great granddaddy St. Justin “Martyr and Father of the Church” (ad. c.160) called the Church “The great whore of Christ”. Or more recently the words of one of your great Catholic theologians of the last century, Romano Guardini: "The church is the cross upon which Christ remains crucified."

Or as my own dear father who in his life-time never missed Mass on Sunday, nor ever ate meat on Fridays and like a “good Catholic” raised 6 children, with great wisdom told me some 70 years ago: “Those people have easy talking from behind their stone walls.” “What goes against common sense is really not worth believing.”

So as I say Guiseppe, just hang in there. Things will change the day when we as Catholics again come to appreciate our intelligence as God’s first gift to us and only then “our faith” as God’s second great gift to be illumined by our human intelligence. Just pray for that day and keep on pushing along the cart of the Kingdom daily, the only reason for the existence of Jesus and of the Church that “they say” He founded.

Justiniano de Managua el 13 de feb. 2012

DO BISHOPS HAVE A SEXUAL SUPPRESSION PROBLEM?

Nicholas Kristoff called it "pelvic politics." Bishops place pelvic politics above the health and welfare of the middle class and those living in poverty. They seek to deprive employees of Catholic institutions of the ability to receive insurance coverage for contraception. By this action bishops deprive many of these employees of the ability to receive contraception.

Bishops, in my opinion, suffer from their own personal efforts to suppress their own natural sexual feelings and desires. This suppression results in their onerous teachings on marital sexuality.

Psychologists opine that people who try to suppress their feelings in turn develop problems related to their suppressions. It is interesting that married religious leaders of other denominations do not try to impose on believers the onerous impositions that Catholic bishops do.

With Catholic Charities and other institutions agreeing with the compromise and the Bishops standing firm against it, I am praying fervently for a full-fledged schism. There is no separation of church and state in the archdiocese in which I work. The only acceptable "state" appears to be Republican. I'll keep doing my job, educating children, and hold my ground - and my tongue, until I retire.

Joe, I appreciate the honesty in this piece.

The question we need to answer is why our bishops have decided to suddenly march to this particular drum beat. Jerry Slevin may have at least part of the answer--the marching orders are coming from Rome and they don't like President Obama for a number of reasons.

In the final analysis what the USCCB is demanding is that every one become a law unto themselves under the guise of freedom of conscience. That is called anarchy, and it's a real threat to the social cohesion of a democracy.

Thank you Joe! Your article resonated completely with my own feelings. I listened to the Bishops and for once I thought I agreed with them. I wrote to the White House and my senators and representatives. I expressed real anger towards President Obama whom I have supported through thick and thin up to now. I, like so many others, applauded the President's attempt at resolving the problem. I do not believe in the Church’s position on birth control but I did buy into the religious liberty argument. I was annoyed with those who attempted to conflate the two. I do think President Obama has presented a reasonable compromise. All people should have access to contraception if they want it. With you Joe, I think Nicholas Kristof’s column is on the money.
The Bishop’s are out for blood. Unfortunately, President Obama threw them a piece of raw meat. The President retreated, but the Bishops are going in for the kill. The interesting thing is that the Catholic people by and large do not support the Bishops. The Sensus Fidelium has been speaking clearly to the Church’s ban on contraception ever since Hunanae Vitae.
I believe it was appropriate for the President to seek an accommodation with the Bishops. The Bishop’s dismissive attitude toward the President, Sister Carol Sheehan, and the Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities speaks volumes about their arrogance, their never ending self-righteous need to “be right” and their boundless need to control.
The Bishop’s may have won this initial foray but I predict they have lost the war. I have a sense that the Sensus Fidelium will take the day.
Anonymous

In the Catholic Church, one doesn't vote for what they want to believe in, or what their conscience calls them to trust, or on what the bishops say or don't say. One can fight but what is there to fight when there is only one way, when there is no room to box and spar? One must understand that the news media doesn't always tell the whole story, not out of spite, rather, it simply doesn't know the whole story. Reading about the internal struggles within the White House adds a significant picture that the initial media reports didn't provide. To simply blame President Obama is clearly misguided,if one read about the internal struggles. To think that Archbishop Dolan ONLY wanted a protection for religious-based institutions was clearly shortsighted, in light of the NCR article showing it has been on the bishop's agenda for quite a while. And to say well 95% or 98% of American women say they have used contraceptives is better understood when one says 95% of those women polled. And even if it were true, what does that say about the value of Church teaching and the capacity of American Catholic women to adhere to it? Just because millions of abortions take place doesn't mean that's the right thing to do or the best practice. I don't remember being taught that moraltiy was a group decision, or that individual decisions of conscience were always right.
In one respect, this whole debate issue has not been entered into with open and forthright understandings. The bishops clearly had an agenda. The President is clearly caught between the law, the rights of non-Catholics and non-Christians, the rights of women, the politics of religion, the politics of Republican extremism, the rights of religious expression, the moral thing to do for health care of women, and the scrutiny and distortions of the media. The bishops showed they can be sued, jailed, vilified in the media and still continue with business as usual as if all the vilification never happened. Entrenchment is different than public elections. America is different than the Vatican, and an empire is different than a democracy.
So why don't some of us stay and fight? Why do we walk away and not raise our voices? If you read the NCR, you will read about and from Catholics of all kinds raising their voices. And what happens? We raise our voices at each other. Bishop Gumbleton raised his voice and his brother bishops swiftly voted him out. Where do you think the ordinary lay person stands in that hierarchy of power? Why fight? What is there to fight for? Justice? Morality? Honesty? And to who do we go? Another bishop? The media?

The Bishops lost this one. They don't speak for women. End of story! This November, women will speak for themselves, thank you.

Mr. Ferullo, you are, of course, far from an idiot. We are living in a time in which there is a gradually unfolding realization of how profound and pervasive is the moral rot in the Church's hierarchy. We are living in a time in which we are seeing more and more completely how the bishops would gladly inflict cruelty on others just for the sake of feeling fat and satisfied about their principles. We are living in a time in which we are understanding with more and more horror how much these men do not mean us well.

Jehovah's Witnesses blood transfusion confusion

Jehovahs Witnesses take blood products now in 2012.

They take all fractions of blood. This includes hemoglobin, albumin, clotting factors, cryosupernatant and cryopoor too, and many, many, others.
If one adds up all the blood fractions the JWs takes, it equals a whole unit of blood. Any, many of these fractions are made from thousands upon thousands of units of donated blood.

Jehovah’s Witnesses can take Bovine *cows blood* as long as it is euphemistically called synthetic Hemopure.Jehovah’s Witnesses also take whole blood, as long as it’s called “current therapy.” This is something not found in medical literature, per se.But, it is described by the religion as a taking of blood from a person, mixing it with compounds in a lab, and later retransfusing the blood back into the patient.
The fact that the JW blood issue is so unclear is a detriment and downright dangerous in the emergency room.
--
Danny Haszard

I was raised as a Catholic....or perhaps lowered. :-) Whatever. But seriously: I strongly disagree with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops statement, which denounces President Barack Obama's attempts at compromise as "needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions". On the contrary, the Bishops comments are themselves a needless religious intrusion upon the proper and legitimate functions of government...functions that serve to promote women's rights, equality, and fairness for ALL. No one is coming into our Churches and trying to tell parishioners what to believe. BUT If the Bishops want to start businesses that employ millions of people of varying faiths -or no "faith" at all- THEN they must play by the rules. Just because a religious group in America claims to believe something, we cannot excuse them from obeying the law in the PUBLIC arena, based on that belief. They can legally attempt to change the law, not to deny it outright. And if they want to plunge overtly into politics from the pulpit, then they should give up their tax-exempt status. Did I miss something, or when it comes to the "sanctity of life", is every single righteous Catholic still a card carrying conscientious objector, refusing to take up arms, totally against the death penalty, and against contraception in all its forms? Oh well, hypocrisy is at the heart of politics, and politics masquerading as religion even more so. This country is an invigorating mixture of all the diversity that life has to offer, drawing its strength FROM that diversity. We need to work together to preserve, enrich, and strengthen this unique experiment - NOT to tear it down with poisonous, paralyzing, and un-Christian demonization of each other.

The Church is crumbling, while the hierarchs are debating the sex of the angels. Truly sad. But I'll keep kicking until my last breath. Your mea culpa was eloquent and deserved my respect. A sugestion: start kicking harder. Our Church is not Wall Street: we won't alow hostile takeovers.

The USCCB website has set up a page to write to Congress urging support the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. Is it possible to set up a similar website to transmit to the USCCB opposition to their lobbying? Also, their financial statements state that they are partly funded by diocesan assessments. Is it possible to register with our parishes and the USCCB our opposition to our contributions being assessed for this purpose?

In my protest e-mail to the USCCB I half-joking said that I might join the "Occupy the Chancery movement". Is there any such-like movement going on?

And well you should...just like most of us. My journey from "orthodoxy" and from respect for hierarchy was slowed because of my sense of "liberal chaos" if absolutism was abandoned and orthodoxy weakened (we can deviate but always know from what we are deviating). This move by the US bishops, by standing in institutional concrete for absolutism in authority and questionable orthodoxy is about to unleash the same or worse chaos.

The potential chaos from abandoning absolutism, particularly of the patriarchal kind, was mitigated by the growing sense that the power of love, of the Spirit and message of Christ provided a principal of constancy and resolution. I am utterly convinced that in a world of relative freedom, intelligence that absolutism, particularly that of the exclusive male type and its concomitant arrogance and lack of accountability, is the percursor of worse chaos- a chaos without love or hope. Unfortunately, though the self-presumed custodians of Christ's message of love, they have grounded themselves in hypocracy and profoundly created a cauldron of dissention, confusion, lethargy, distaste and hatefullness. The age of bishops is done.

Unless someone else has a better idea, the best action we can all take is not to contribute to anything sponsored by the bishops. I've always found the witholding of money to the church to be a distasteful way to signal disagreement. We are family, after all, aren't we? Now, that they have clearly and repeatedly let us know that we have no voice in family matters, I feel not a whit uneasy about witholding my money. As a matter of integrity, I still contribute on an individual basis to those ministries I consider worthy.

I loved the article and most of the responses. We need to continue these discussions. I feel doubly hijacked by the new liturgy and the recent contraception dustup. The manufactured umbrage of the bishops was so outrageous--and very familiar, like a page out of Karl Rove's playbook. But these manufactured controversies are so draining and distracting. We all have so much frustration, disappointment and grief to process. We need to somehow invest in what we love about being Catholic. I like the idea of Councils of Catholics.

Locally, I heard that while some priests in our archdiocese read the letter from the pulpit, many simply made copies available. I gather those guys still think a homily is meant to break open the Word of God. So glad they're still there. Many priests also disagree with the current direction and are indeed very conscious of the long-suffering, talented women --and lay men---of the Church.

I think we'd like to go back to the good times post-Vatican II. But John Paul II's appointment of bishops, changes in papal election process, creation of an internal inquisitional culture--all of that means we can't go back. We have to look at other kinds of transitions across the board, other visions of Church and alternative visions for the economy.

David Couturier, OFM Cap, has an incredibly smart essay online regarding "The Catholics We Are Becoming," points of which were recently cited in NCR. It's not the end-all, be-all analysis, but, if you're feeling lonely, it makes strikingly clear how much company progressive Catholics have. http://www.cppcd.org/pdf/11_convention/The%20Catholic%20we%20are%20Becoming_Revised_1(Couturier).pdf

Also Bernard Lee's Future Church of 140 BCE explores the momentous transition from only one sacred center in Judaism to a vastly distributed sacred center as a model for Catholic laity. It would be great to discuss these kinds of works online.

I feel strongly that we are going through this painful transition for a reason. God is shaking up the church and eccesiology in preparation for momentous changes in human history. Our difficulties are the birth pangs for new model(s) of Church.

What is it that we love about the Church? I'm not sure I remember. But why is it so hard to leave? On the other hand, why is it possible that we can be forced out? It all seems quite inverted to what it should be.

Perhaps I should moderate my previous comment. Calling the writer an idiot is probably not respectful. So to ensure my comment is posted, here is a version free of my opinions of the writer and his abilities: The mandate was 'the Church must pay for contraception and abortifacient drugs'. The compromise was 'insurance companies must provide those services'...apparently for free. That doesn't make any sense, the insurance company is not, out of the goodness of their hearts, going to do this for free. They will simply up the premiums to make up the difference and these premiums are paid for by...the Catholic Church. Which is the point the bishops made and that you don't even bother to mention in your piece. And what of institutions that self-insure? The 'compromise' gives no information at all. How exactly is saying 'Since the Catholic Church has taught for 2,000 years that contraception and abortion are intrinsic moral evils, therefore we will not be coerced or forced to pay for those services' an attempt to gut the health care law? You offer no facts in support of this statement and ignore that many of these same bishops were vocally supportive of this law in the beginning. Regardless, you are entirely ignoring what is at stake here. This is an attack on a First Amendment right, the freedom of religion. The real issue is: can the Church be forced by the govt to pay (directly or indirectly is irrelevant) for services to which it is deeply morally opposed? How is this NOT a law impeding the free exercise of religion? Please at least address the actual issue and stop framing the issue as the Church trying to impose their will on people. All the Church is asking is that her teachings are respected by those she employs. The Church is not barring those it employs who want to use birth control from doing so, it is simply declining to be the provider and payer. It's disturbing to me how many people have no qualms trampling Constitutional rights simply because they think it's they support the outcome. This truly makes me fear for my country. And the 'I don't want to pay for wars' analogy holds no water. The govt has the Constitutional right to raise tax revenue and there are no clauses that give you a right to approve of their outlay of these monies. Not the same thing as an explicit guarantee to free exercise of religion. And what of the conscientious objector status? The govt has made these sorts of accommodations. The Catholic Church is not a democracy, never had been, never will be. You are free to find one that is. Also, the '98% of Catholic women use contraception' study is here, took me about 3 seconds of googling to find it: http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/Religion-and-Contraceptive-Use.pdf Even a cursory glance at the chart on one of the last pages shows that while only 2% of Catholics use NFP, 11% use no method...but are not counted? And something like 40% of respondents never or hardly ever went to Mass. Maybe that seems fine to you, but I think at the very least that 98% statistic should come with a few caveats.