I am really, genuinely, personally sick of hearing the Catholic Hierarchy whine about religious freedom. The more they open their mouths, the less I want that Hierarchy in the US.
I perceive them to have NO loyalty to this country. Sure they benefit from the freedoms here, they benefit from a court system that favors the wealthy over the poor. But apparently that is not enough for this organization, and I am thinking, that this hierarchy needs to be transported back to Rome.
How is it that this church organization has gotten on my last nerve? Well given all the stories in the news, I could just say that I am a woman and leave it at that. Most people would get the gist of my position. However, I would like to lay it all out there.
1. The First Freedoms are not just for Catholic Clergy. I know this will shock some the chosen, but it's true. Every AMERICAN CITIZEN, even a mere woman like myself is entitled to Freedom of Religion. And to some degree that includes the freedom to be who I am without fear of harassment or retribution.
Normally I don't really care about Catholics or Catholicism. To me, they are like many other religious sects that exist in this country. Not much more than a curiosity. Yet another group that adds a particular, proverbial flavor to our melting pot, but no more or less special than any other group. Shocking I know.
But now this organization seeks to make itself very important to me personally, a bit more each day. They do that by impugning my character by proxy through the re-animation and perpetuation of a stereotypical caricature of women that many of us thought, had been laid to rest, a long time ago. Harlots went out with Lugals, just saying.
The church claims it is trying to maintain it's religious freedoms, but in actuality, that is a smoke screen for the assault on women's freedoms- whether those women be Catholic or not.
Let that last notion sink in. The church seeks to control Female American Citizens, whether they are Catholic or not.
My problem with the church beyond this most obvious topic is this:
Because this church seeks to increase it's coverage of our [entire] culture as a church, and a health care provider and an employer, it seems to have forgotten that in those realms, my rights as an individual trump the doctrinal authority of that church.
This is the same old strategy, that this organization has used since it became a viable power in Europe. Historically, this hierarchy asked itself, "What do the people need, and how can we use that as leverage?"
Back in the depths of history, the Church offered political and military alliances to the leaders of of various settlements, in exchange for the right to set up a church, to proselytize, and eventually this organization would weasel it's way into getting said leadership to order mass conversions, sometimes at the point of a sword.
A thousand years later, the objects of trade have changed, but the desired outcome is still the same. Now the church offers to trade Health Care, and to be a Job Creator, but it's making it clear that certain preconditions must be met before these [not free] "charitable gifts" will be bestowed upon various American Communities. And remember these "[not free] charitable gifts are funded in part by your tax dollars.
1. The right to proselytize with impunity, and that includes using legislation to do it en masse.
2. Coerced Adherence to their doctrine even if one isn't a member of their church
and
3. Legal sanctions against females who refuse to comply, and short of that, the threat of unemployment and/or no affordable healthcare.
You see the Church knows it has many people over a barrel. As long as our government refuses to find a way to provide affordable healthcare, as a part of our national infrastructure, then any large, wealthy, politically connected organization can come in and offer such services; but at what cost?
The use of poverty as a point of leverage would hopefully disgust anyone with genuine ethics. But to the church, this is their version of *Expedient Means. To this organization, it is perfectly acceptable to allow poverty and guilt to drive people into accepting their doctrine, even if the embrace of the church and all it stands for is merely a mercenary function executed as a cold act of survival.
But what does this mean to the rest of us? Where does their freedom end and yours begin?
Right now, in this country, the Church has no genuine power to compel it's own membership to adhere to all of, or even some of it's rules. This is in part what has caused them to panic. Their own flock has pulled away from various edicts, knowing these instructions to be unenforceable in a free country, in addition to being ridiculous, unnecessary, and not conducive to common sense.
Individual Freedoms outweigh religious hegemony, and this is how it should be.
And as it stands, the moment the church becomes an employer, especially one that receives federal funds, it's status as an employer in that context, eclipses it's identity as a church. This organization in this context, should be subject to all the civil rights laws and labor laws that *any Employer in this country is subject to.
Meaning that It should not be able to discriminate in it's hiring based on religion, gender, ethnicity, party politics, creed, or sexual orientation, age or disability. Because in this country, none of those aspects of a person's identity should be used to make them unemployable.
When I said people should be able to exercise their freedoms without fear of harassment or retribution---employment is one avenue of harassment and retribution. Because in a Capitalist Society, money= life. Black-balling a citizen, especially a qualified worker with a good job history for simply going to the "wrong" church or not having the right genitals makes no sense and it hurts our productivity as a country and could put a tremendous load on our financial standing, by creating an entire subclass of untouchables.
And for what pay off? To make them pay lip service to a Church or to a god? That seems to be a silly waste of resources for a quality [genuine devotion] that cannot be forced.
Go out and find any gay friend you can, and ask them what it's like to hide in a closet for the sake of employment or to avoid harassment. Ask them what that life is like, because that is what the Catholic Church is offering it's female adherents, it's female employees, and it's female patients, and that is what it would like to force on all women in this country. Sure it could happen to men too and that is important, but there are additional stigmas that go with this church's attack on women's personal sovereignty and citizenship.
Now when this same church threatens to rescind Health Care to the impoverished, I have to ask; does that make you feel good about this organization? To me, it sounds like the qualities of a cult. Whenever religions start taking hostages, that is where my mind goes first: Deviant Religious Movement.
But you say, hang on a second, the Catholic church is old, established and it couldn't be deviant. Well maybe, maybe not. By today's standards, threatening to rescind humanitarian aid solely for the reason of gaining more clout in our government, so that they can attempt to control human behavior by threat of withholding, seems like a deviance from the norms that society established years ago with regard to the function of public religion.
In addition, a hospital is an employer. So that means that as an employer with diverse American employee-citizens, the church has no right to dictate how said employees live. And because a hospital treats a random sampling of American citizens, often during life threatening emergencies, this organization has an ethical obligation to avoid emotionally victimizing patients and their families during medical emergencies.
If I get sick, I don't loose my First Freedoms. Even if I am transported to Catholic Hospital. Unless they are claiming that Catholic Hospitals are foreign embassies or some such. In which case, I think that would create more outrage than anything else.
The church is free to close up their hospitals. Perhaps that would be for the best. And then we could open, secular charitable hospitals that have none of the hang-ups this organization has, and seems intent on foisting on the rest of us.
Let all the *hierarchy go back to Rome. We don't need them here. They need us way more than we need them.
We have a minimal standard here in the US, that affords everyone a certain level of freedom. And I think that any foreign organization that cannot adhere and uphold that minimal standard, has no business here as an official organization or church.
I also strongly advocate that program for Faith Based Initiatives needs to be upended completely. It blurs the line between church and state to such a degree, that it has [just as it was intended to] undermined our first freedoms in this country, while hiding behind the skirts of "charity".
And any church that seeks to be a political power, should automatically loose it's tax exempt status. And pay back any federal funds [+ taxes it should have paid as a non-exempt org] it received during the fiscal years where it can be shown that said organization violated our laws concerning tax exempt religious organizations and political activism. And in the case of large, organizations that have multiple churches as offshoots, satellites or members, if one church breaks this law, they all should loose. Let them police their own for once.
Imagine the revenue we could generate in one year from these organizations, Catholic and other.
I am an American. I don't pledge allegiance to a church or to a god. And I won't.
No more excuses.
10:40 AM PT: The more I reflect on this, two things strike out at me as patently bad. To me, this is the religious version of citizens united. 1. Churches are not people. And like corporations should not have the power to impose their doctrine on individual citizens. To me churches, are religious corporations.
2. And this goes to the notion that their large, religious-corporate financial holdings should not equate to political speech, especially when it undermines our individual bill of rights as citizens.
http://www.dailykos.com/...
I feel cut out of my own political process by corporations and corporate-churches. They have money and clout that a regular person cannot attain. They have what essentially operates as a revolving door access to our legislators and other political leaders in a manner that is unfair to regular citizens.
http://articles.latimes.com/...
and
http://www.democraticunderground.com/...
This directly affects my rights as a woman and as a nonChristian in a most egregious manner. And I imagine that the same could be said of any religious minority, atheist, agnostic, or homosexual or any member of an unpopular group whose freedoms are in danger of being abridged in order to satisfy church doctrine at the expense of individual citizen's rights.