Many here at the Great Orange Satan are upset that America's Catholic Bishops have inserted themselves into the political debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. More specifically, the Bishops are not rejoicing that it extends the availability of health insurance to millions of Americans. No, they are outraged that its provisions require any organization offering health insurance to include coverage of womens' health services, including contraception, without copays. Even though they've been just fine with the same provisions in the health care laws of 28 states.
The Bishops' position on this issue actually stands in direct opposition to traditional Catholic moral teaching. Follow me below the squiggle to see why.
The Roman Catholic Church prides itself on its long tradition of consistent moral teaching. At times the Vatican and American Bishops have tortured both languange and logic out of all recognition in order to make this claim, but still. That's their story and they're sticking to it.
But it's apparent to me that the current Church position on this womens' health rule is absolutely opposed to the fundamentals of tradition Catholic moral teaching. It goes like this: all of us are born, through the grace of God, with free will. Every one of us. We are free to make moral decisions as we see fit, for good or for evil, every day of our lives. And each of us individually is responsible for the consequences of those decisions; we will answer for them when we are judged before the Lord when we leave this life. No one can make moral decisions for us; we alone are responsible for the decisions we make.
This is the absolute bedrock of Roman Catholic moral logic: individual responsiblity for one's own moral decisions.
Why then is the Church so bitterly determined to remove any room for moral judgment from America's women? Why are the Bishops demanding that they be permitted to make all moral judgments for all of America's citizens, women & men alike? If each of us is responsible for our own moral judgment, with our salvation or damnation hanging on our decision, then how in all of heaven & earth can the Church justify yanking that decision out of our hands and making it for us?
This removes all moral agency from the individual. It regards us all as children, as cyphers incapable of making any moral judgments. It means we're mere pawns, whose salvation is solely in the hands of the cranky old men in the Vatican and in the various Dioceses scattered across America.
It directly contravenes traditional Catholic moral teaching.
To me, it's a 'divide by zero' kind of error.
Of course, what else should we expect from an institution that spend decades carefully shielding pedophiles from prosecution and exposing hundreds of thousands of children to known sexual predators?