While our staff is spread out across the country these days, every one of us traces our roots back to Lincoln, Nebraska. To anyone who's spent some serious time in Lincoln, that means we pay attention to Husker sports, we enjoy Runza and Valentinos restaurant cuisine, and we're somewhat used to weird weather - like 70s in January. No doubt, sooner than later - this weekend, in fact - temps will be back in the freezer in Lincoln.
For some Catholics in Lincoln, spending serious time here also means having endured many years in what is considered by many of the local faithful to be the most extreme, right-wing, conservative diocese in the nation.
Regardless of our personal feelings about the diocese and those who lead it, the separation of church and state in America allows us, as a group, to speak our collective minds freely in this secular format, while not having to fear that our government will be used as a weapon by religious hierarchies, to attempt to get us - Catholics and non-Catholics alike - to live our lives according to the beliefs of others.
It also allows us to disagree with those in our profession, like Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, over a recent action by the Obama Administration, on birth control.
The issue is both simple and complex. As part of the Affordable Care Act, the Department of Health and Human Services implemented the regulations of the conscience clause for employers - including those of faith organizations - in January of this year. In short, faith-based employers who PRIMARILY employ people of their own religions, are not forced to cover the cost of contraception for their employees. Every other employer in the country, large enough to have to provide health insurance, must provide coverage for contraception in ALL their health care plans.
That this action happened should surprise no one. People on all sides of this issue knew it was coming for many months now. That HHS settled on a narrow interpretation of the law, instead of the expansive and potentially non-defendable interpretation favored by some Catholic Bishops, and advocated by Mr. Dionne, does not surprise us at all.
Right-wing extremists have been fighting against the Affordable Care Act in virtually every way they could, for several years now. Thinking the Obama Administration would weaken its own argument in favor of the ACA, in order to satisfy the whims of a few extremists of a single religion is naive and offensive.
As a group of people who both respect other religions, and also give deep respect to women, we see absolutely nothing wrong with requiring employers to provide coverage for contraception and birth control. Most health insurance laws require that medicines like Viagra, Cialis, and Levitra are covered for men. Yet, in so many cases, health issues that women face are often disallowed by insurance companies as though women choose to have medical issues like endometriosis.
So often, religious extremists in America want to pick and choose which benefits they get to receive in the United States - like the MAJOR issue of tax exemption. Yet, when the time comes for them to be bound by the laws of this country, they want to be able to blatantly violate those laws by preaching politics from the pulpit, with the expectation of no backlash for their actions.
In the Catholic church, those members who wish to pick and choose which religious rules they'll follow, while ignoring those they don't like, are often derisively called 'Cafeteria Catholics,' as a sort-of shorthand for religious hypocrite. This label doesn't just apply to those in the church who believe in the religious teachings of social justice, but choose which other rules to follow elsewhere in Catholicism. It also applies equally to those who make sexual teachings a higher priority, yet think they can pick and choose which social justice teachings they wish to follow. Both kinds of worshipers are truly "Cafeteria Catholics" - because both the rules about sex & marriage, and the responsibility to care for one another, through tools like health care, are moral issues.
Only one kind of Cafeteria Catholic seems to be treated differently, however. This kind of hypocrisy is another reason for the diminishing number of church members in the U.S. and Europe.
That many in the upper ranks of the Catholic hierarchy say they don't think differently of any their own members, yet want to apply the same kind of cafeteria hypocrisy to the secular set of laws in the United States, makes them no less of a group of hypocrites.
In fact, their desire to build walls around their own set of ideas on issues like health care, while still having access to the tax benefits America provides, only makes their hypocrisy more visible.
