Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Separation of Church and State


[Hat tip to Patrick Lee and Michael Liccione]

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Yet the Church is inmensely rich and enjoys tax exempt status, and doesn't even have to pay in the mandate, just lay catholic institutions. And the worst is that, the Pope has already decreed that one may use condoms to prevent STDs in marriage, and the Church allows the use of BC pills for many health reasons unreleted to abortion or prevention of birth. This whole opposition to this mandate is ridiculous.

Cynic said...

Senor Rodriguez,

The Church may be spiritually rich, but I don't see how she is financially very rich when she is operating in the red because of dwindling members and massive law suits because of priestly sex scandals.

The Pope has decreed no such thing as you claim. As he pointed out, this was mere academic speculation on his part, always a danger with academic popes.

If opposition to the HHS Mandate is "ridiculous," as you claim, it is because it constitutes too little too late, like peeing into the wind. Church leaders have neglected instructing the laity in the proper understanding of WHY contraception, abortifacients, abortion, and sterilization are wrong. It has preferred to find itself embarrassed by these teachings rather than do the required spade-work to understand and defend them. As a result, the anemic protest against the HHS Mandate on the thin grounds of "religious liberty" is about as pathetic as imaginable.

But there is nothing about those traditional teachings that is ridiculous or indefensible. They are the soul of common sense once understood.