Just to say: I find it offensive that this entire controversy has been accepted as an issue of religious freedom because Issa and the reactionary right wing say that it is.
I see it as a case of playing two political minority groups - the Roman Catholic church hierarchy + reactionary Catholic perspectives and women outside of the "pro-life" (or rather, pro-birth) stance - to undermine workable health care for all of us. Both pro-choice and pro-religious liberty groups use the same atomizing libertarian ideology to talk about access to health care - which should be a universally guaranteed right - in terms of individual right to practice religion or individual right to control one's own individual (but no one else's) body. This kind of foundation is, in my assessment, incapable of framing health concerns in a workable, social and public fashion. It functions instead to keep us focused on issues of personal choice and freedom, is Christianizing illegtimately (where are the rabbis, pray tell? How about the right of Jews or other religious groups, or atheists, to realize their religious freedom? It is impossible not to notice how particular this issue of "religious freedom" is - and that is what we should be calling out, especially as Christians), and as a by-product of all this, it can initiate another destructive round of bash the bad Catholic church for being authoritarian.
Which it is, unfortunately, but saying "liberals have it wrong" because the Church is a tradition, and in that tradition, hierarchy determines doctrine and not the laity or some majority thereof - is also wrong. The Church hierarchy have succeeded in demoralizing and alienating a lot of us - and we have left our practice, though not necessarily our creed. Our abandonment of practice and ceding of ground to the reactionaries, however, does not mean that one can simply read off the actual power structure an uncontested normative power structure - it means a lot of us are demoralized by the total failure of hierarchical leadership and the lack of a dignified share of ecclesiastical control for laity where it counts. So yes - the Church hierarchy has in fact the apparatus of power. But also in fact, that hierarchical control is not uncontested - it's just that the majority of us contest it by abandoning practice because we don't have the stomach for that fight after the failure of '60s radicalism.
That being said, I would appreciate it, on behalf of my very militantly pro-laity Catholic cousins, on behalf of my friends and other family who want an active authoritative role for the laity in the Church, if criticism of liberals did not simply accept at face value the hierarchy's claim to embody "the tradition." Because to say the liberals have it wrong because you take at face value the hierarchy's claim that it *is* the tradition, is to imply to me and to my family and friends that those of my family and friends who are fighting do not exist as Catholics, that they are not really Catholic, that they are wrong as Catholics to fight because they are not the tradition - and I will not accept that that is true, because it is not. Respectfully, as a weak, non-practicing Roman Catholic, I would rather be shamed by the liberals on this issue with their admittedly often religiously tone-deaf ideology, than be defended liberally with acceptance of the hierarchy's reading of the RCC authority structure. Politically and morally, the liberals have it right to the degree that they want Catholics to fight as Catholics. They have it disrespectfully wrong to the degree that they may use Catholic statistics without involving actual Catholics in this fight - but I'd say that's the lesser sin in this case.
I'm sorry, but no.
I see it as a case of playing two political minority groups - the Roman Catholic church hierarchy + reactionary Catholic perspectives and women outside of the "pro-life" (or rather, pro-birth) stance - to undermine workable health care for all of us. Both pro-choice and pro-religious liberty groups use the same atomizing libertarian ideology to talk about access to health care - which should be a universally guaranteed right - in terms of individual right to practice religion or individual right to control one's own individual (but no one else's) body. This kind of foundation is, in my assessment, incapable of framing health concerns in a workable, social and public fashion. It functions instead to keep us focused on issues of personal choice and freedom, is Christianizing illegtimately (where are the rabbis, pray tell? How about the right of Jews or other religious groups, or atheists, to realize their religious freedom? It is impossible not to notice how particular this issue of "religious freedom" is - and that is what we should be calling out, especially as Christians), and as a by-product of all this, it can initiate another destructive round of bash the bad Catholic church for being authoritarian.
Which it is, unfortunately, but saying "liberals have it wrong" because the Church is a tradition, and in that tradition, hierarchy determines doctrine and not the laity or some majority thereof - is also wrong. The Church hierarchy have succeeded in demoralizing and alienating a lot of us - and we have left our practice, though not necessarily our creed. Our abandonment of practice and ceding of ground to the reactionaries, however, does not mean that one can simply read off the actual power structure an uncontested normative power structure - it means a lot of us are demoralized by the total failure of hierarchical leadership and the lack of a dignified share of ecclesiastical control for laity where it counts. So yes - the Church hierarchy has in fact the apparatus of power. But also in fact, that hierarchical control is not uncontested - it's just that the majority of us contest it by abandoning practice because we don't have the stomach for that fight after the failure of '60s radicalism.
That being said, I would appreciate it, on behalf of my very militantly pro-laity Catholic cousins, on behalf of my friends and other family who want an active authoritative role for the laity in the Church, if criticism of liberals did not simply accept at face value the hierarchy's claim to embody "the tradition." Because to say the liberals have it wrong because you take at face value the hierarchy's claim that it *is* the tradition, is to imply to me and to my family and friends that those of my family and friends who are fighting do not exist as Catholics, that they are not really Catholic, that they are wrong as Catholics to fight because they are not the tradition - and I will not accept that that is true, because it is not. Respectfully, as a weak, non-practicing Roman Catholic, I would rather be shamed by the liberals on this issue with their admittedly often religiously tone-deaf ideology, than be defended liberally with acceptance of the hierarchy's reading of the RCC authority structure. Politically and morally, the liberals have it right to the degree that they want Catholics to fight as Catholics. They have it disrespectfully wrong to the degree that they may use Catholic statistics without involving actual Catholics in this fight - but I'd say that's the lesser sin in this case.