On Facebook, last week, I took the “bishop’s side” on the Obama health care mandate regarding information on contraception. Let me begin at the outset by stating that I am pro-choice and an ardent Obama supporter. The problem with this particular issue for me is that I am also adamant about the “separation of church and state” principle that our country has adhered to since its inception. Since the Bush II era, I have been obsessed with the fear that this tea sipping evangelical movement wants to undermine our secular mandate and overturn many of our decades old - hard fought freedoms like voting rights, freedom to choose, the social safety nets and even labor rights. I continually insist to some of my old friends that “this is NOT a Christian nation” and was never intended to be.

What is even more contra-indicative is that although I was raised a Catholic, I have left the Church community because of differences over dogma, sexual hypocrisy and most of all centralized power. Although I have strong feelings for the Church of my memories, I refuse to be a “Cafeteria” Catholic, who insists on membership in a community that doesn’t share the same beliefs-----those beliefs that I now think are narrow minded and anachronistic. BUT, I am a libertarian only in the sense that I believe that because God gave us free will we must be truly given the freedom to believe anything we wish, no matter how bizarre, criminal or ridiculous. The corollary to this, of course is, that we must do no harm with our public words and actions. To me, there is nothing wrong with having prejudiced beliefs, it is our discriminatory behavior that needs government regulation.

Now to this issue at hand. Although there are many inconsistencies in how the Catholic hierarchy actually manages their health care institutions, they have a right to practice what they preach without government intervention , as long as they neither ask for or accept any government funding. And I just heard a Cardinal on a morning TV show assure the public that they do not take a penny even though their services reach out all religions and races.

Oh! Of course I wish these same Bishops would react as vehemently to the attempts by the Republican party to unravel many parts of the social safety net (such as it is)that we have constituted in the past half century to help the poor and disabled in this country. These are not political issues---these are moral issues----- just as the theme issue of this essay is a moral issue for Catholic believers. Get up to that same pulpit, you used to rally Catholics, to resist this mandate and speak out against the excessive greed ( a sin in any church), the Social Darwinism, the Ayn Rand libertarianism and the outright racism and sexism of these so called conservative zealots. To advocate for oligarchs and corporate raiders who would accumulate riches at the expense of the poor and the disabled is a moral offense (i.e. a sin) in Christian theology. If anyone doesn’t believe that, they might actually read what Jesus taught in the New Testament. To use their own theological argument---i.e. the Seamless Garment----they cannot be pro life and sit by and watch people being cheated, ignored and abandoned like the Samaritan in the ditch.

It seems to me that the Obama administration , for its part, are making the same mistake with this issue that they did at the beginning of their tenure in 2009—i.e. timing and priorities. It was certainly laudable that they tried to repair the healthcare system in 2009 when they had all of that power in Congress BUT the better political strategy would have been to focus on improving the economy first. That mistake cost them the disastrous 2010 election, which empowered the political vipers to veto anything that Obama planned to improve life for all citizens of this country. This issue is on a smaller scale but must as important as the health care bill. Why in the Dickens would they bring this up now? ---just when we seemed to have turned the election tide with good employment numbers . We could have fixed this after the 2012 election----- N'est-ce pas?