- Jon O'Brien
This is quite possibly my favorite quote of the decade. Jon O'Brien, president of Catholics for Choice made this remark in response to the controversy that ensued after a doctor performed an emergency abortion for a woman at St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix, Arizona. She would have died had the procedure not been done.
"St. Joseph’s committee of ethicists employed both reason and compassion when they made their recommendation on this sad case of a woman whose pregnancy was literally killing her. Both the mother and the fetus were dying. If the mother died, this pregnancy could not be brought to term. Only the mother’s life could have been saved." Excerpted from Jamie L. Manson's column "Grace on the Margins" in The National Catholic Reporter
http://ncronline.org/blogs/grace-margins/st-joseph%E2%80%99s-hospital-phoenix-desert
As a result Bishop Olmstead of Phoenix informed St. Joseph's Hospital, which many still question his authority to have done so, that they could no longer call themselves "Catholic."
Bishop Olmstead isn't enjoying much public company from his brother bishops on this situation but the US Catholic of Conference Bishops are still doing their part for women's health. On September 17th, 2010 the USCCB hand delivered a letter to the US Department of Health and Human Services
stating, " that in our view prescription contraception as well as chemical and surgical sterilization are particularly inappropriate candidates for inclusion under mandated "preventative services" for all health plans."
So here's how I see it, the USCCB is of course entitled to make their opinions known, thanks to free speech, and they have the authority to make and enforce the rules and laws as it pertains to the realm and domain of the Catholic Church in the US. This is part of their real authority and function as Bishops but their actual authority goes no further than these limits and boundaries. And while they also have the right as we all do to practice a religion thanks to the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment, the rest of us are also constitutionally protected by any attempt to make laws that reflect a particular group's religious beliefs. We have the Establishment Clause to thank for that. "The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from passing laws that will establish an official religion or preferring one religion over another." -US Constitution http://www.illinoisfirstamendmentcenter.com/religion.php
What's especially disconcerting to me is that bishops and others claim that this isn't about religion at all but about women's health, racism and the environment. *
Why am I not convinced? Not at all, not a shred. It is hard for me to imagine that today's US Bishops are mobilizing on behalf of women's health--that they got all Mr. Smith Goes to Washington and said, "we're going to write a letter to the president because we're worried about women, racism and water pollution." It would be funny if it weren't sad. They are plain and simply using and exploiting these issues to advance their rigid, dogmatic beliefs about women's reproductive health--a matter which they know absolutely, positively nothing about. We promise.
This isn't to say that there aren't some beautifully written pastoral statements from either the US Bishops or the Vatican, but in my thirty years as a witness to Catholicism in the US I haven't really seen the US Bishops model a strong commitment to any of these things. I see it in regular ole priests and women religious, and in lay persons. And I am proud and honored to know them and to have been taught by them in my sixteen years of Catholic education. I wouldn't have lasted as a Catholic for as long as I did if it weren't for those Catholics that I saw actually living out Catholic Social Teaching, the Gospel Works of Mercy. Let's not also forget the Catechism "Supremacy of Conscience" teaching to live according to one's own conscience. I've included the "Wo" to make it inclusive, (which Catholic women have to do all the time. Some would rather be included at the outset so they don't show up for a party they weren't invited to, or they decide to leave the party when they realize they weren't invited in the first place). I digress, this is another strand for another blog for another day. Back to the Catechism and the Supremacy of Conscience:
Paragraph 1782 "(Wo)Man has the right to act in conscience and in freedom so as personally to make moral decisions. "He must not be forced to act contrary to his conscience. Nor must he be prevented from acting according to his conscience, especially in religious matters." Catechism of the Catholic Church from http://www.scborromeo.org/ccc/para/1782.htm.
Perhaps I'll get a letter from some Bishops telling me that I can no longer call my conscience Catholic.
* http://www.lifenews.com/2011/
http://www.thetablet.org/bishopcolumn.aspx
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