If you don’t know what is going on with the government’s universal healthcare mandate which requires insurance policies to cover contraception, crawl out of from underneath your rock and get educated. Now, this doesn’t seem like such a big deal if you aren’t Catholic, but Catholics believe that the use of contraceptives is immoral. Basically, the government is requiring Catholics to violate their consciences.
I look at this mandate through the light of two lenses. First I view it as a Catholic. Secondly, I view it as an American. As a Catholic I am sorrowful, but not surprised. Christianity has a long history of persecution. When one’s beliefs and values are counter-cultural, one can expect the rest of society to fight against you.
If the devil is an intellectual creature –much like in C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters-, I think this move is brilliant. Firstly, it is an attack on crucial and very pertinent values. The next generation, will be brought to existence through sex. If our views are distorted on sex, they are distorted on life. Secondly, it is an attack on values that have long since eroded from mainstream American Catholicism. If this healthcare program remains unchanged, it will not be a lost battle, but an admission of a past defeat.
I am not only a Catholic, but an American citizen, and as a citizen, the situation enrages me. I cannot see this as anything but a violation of the Bill of Rights. This issue is not about the morality of birth control, or mandated healthcare. I am concerned for my country because its constitution seems to me to have been blatantly ignored. I wonder the broken system that allowed such a transgression.
I think that the situation calls for civil disobedience. I wonder if and when such disobedience will occur, and if it does, whether the party will be a morally convicted Catholic, or a political tool.
I feel very odd writing about such things. Normally, talking religion or politics is a social faux-pa. I do not think it is odd to feel strongly about such things, but in today’s age, discussion is difficult because so few people agree.
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