Well this is just sad. I was wondering what Churches and Faith communities had still not made a statement on the Obama Birth Control Mandate.
I was under the impression the United Methodist had not. Sadly it appears their leadership has.
In this age of Ecumenical outreach , I certainly hope the religious liberty concerns that the Catholic Bishops had were discussed. Were they? Were we consulted? Maybe no one will bother to find out.
I take some comfort that I suspect a good many Bishops, Pastors, and Methodist Lay folk might think at the very least this full fledged endorsement was done with a tad bit of less haste.
Update- Appears the Women’s Division of the United Methodist Church does not think this goes FAR ENOUGH.
Friday, February 3, 2012
United Methodist Church Abandons The Catholic Church ( Obama Birth Control Mandate ) ( Update)
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4 comments:
What amazes me is that you people are being so frivolous to call this a "birth control mandate" when there are 1.3 billion people living under a real true birth control mandate in China. Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill. With billions of people on the Earth really and truly living under heinous oppression, you people will come up with these bogus, disingenuous claims of your religious liberty being violated just to try to get your way on such small political matters.
The Pope that I think I could care less about political matters in the USA spoke on this the day before the mandate was announced.
You might be thinking being against Contraception is silly ( a widely held belief among faiths before 1930) but Catholic Churches hold to the ancietn teaching .
Also there are concerens that some of these things might be an abortion.
We call it an mandate because it mandates the Church and others to pay for it and cooperate with a evil
It's an infringement on relgious liberty and that is why so many non Catholics are concerened
It is a "birth control mandate" in that it mandates Church affiliated programs who provide health insurance to their employees to also provide birth control as part of those plans, which is something the Church has opposed for 2000 years. The real effect of this law will be for Church affiliated schools, hospitals, charities, etc to not provide health insurance to any of their employees. The Church is never going to provide coverage for artificial contraception, the law is simply knocking tens, if not hundreds of thousands of employees out of health insurance programs.
As for China, that is also terrible. However, you don't ignore one problem because there is a more serious problem somewhere else. As James pointed out, most of the Catholic opposition to this legislation is coming from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, not the Pope. Since these bishops are responsible for watching over the US, their focus on domestic matters is understandable.
The Methodists didn't jump on the religious liberty bandwagon because it's an insane stance to take. You can't simply claim that any law that requires you to do something against your religious beliefs is bad and expect reasoning, thinking religious groups like the Methodists to support you. That's madness. What if Catholics said their religion requires their members to not pay taxes? What if they said it requires their members to abuse animals? What if they said it requires human sacrifice?
Religious liberty means you are free to practice your religion within the laws of the state. It means that laws will not be made specifically to target your beliefs. It does not mean that you are free from any laws that might incidentally infringe on your beliefs. Methodists understand that trying to make a religious liberty argument here is a horrible idea which would put churches' absurdly easy to maintain tax-exempt status on the chopping block. Methodists don't want that fight because they know there is no actual legal justification for why churches don't have to follow the same rules as other tax-exempt organizations. By drawing attention to the difference in the way churches are treated by law and by demanding further preferred status under the law for churches, the Catholic Council of Bishops is actually doing more harm than good.
Reasoning, thinking, fair minded religious persons not solely driven by a selfish desire to get whatever they think they deserve understand this and cringe whenever we see these folk cry about "religious liberty" somehow being under assault. It is not. Use your brain. Follow your thoughts to a logical conclusion and you will see that the religious liberties you are demanding would allow you to do absurd things that no sane society would allow to take place. Religious groups have to play by the same rules as everyone else. In exchange, the state agrees to not establish a preference for one religion over another and makes no effort to tell you how to worship, again apart from laws that everyone has to follow. This is fair. This has worked for over 200 years. Please stop messing with it.
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