At least the Pres­i­dent has man­aged to pre­serve reli­gious free­dom for every­one who works for Catholic hos­pi­tals, schools, and uni­ver­si­ties and yet deprive the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates and their media arm, FoxNews, from their unfounded asser­tion of a “war on Catholi­cism.”  Yet I’m still pretty annoyed at our inabil­ity to pro­vide an effec­tive counter-narrative dur­ing the 3 or so weeks where this kept build­ing, and build­ing, and building…

So, time to re-cap and take an analy­sis of mes­sages that could improve this narrative:

This is about free­dom of reli­gion – indeed.  It is about free­dom of reli­gion for all of the thou­sands of employ­ees at Catholic uni­ver­si­ties, hos­pi­tals, health care cen­ters, etc., who are not Catholic – and even for the major­ity of Catholic work­ers at said employ­ers who might still *gasp* choose to use birth con­trol.  As I get counts on the num­ber of work­ers at these employ­ers in some Con­gres­sional dis­tricts, it becomes very evi­dent that in many regions, if you want to work in your pro­fes­sion, work­ing at a Catholic hos­pi­tal may well be your only option.  Should that mean that your insur­ance ben­e­fits are pro­scribed by the reli­gious beliefs of your employer?  Seems to me the Founders intended for indi­vid­u­als (human beings, not cor­po­ra­tions, or quasi-religious insti­tu­tions) to have free­dom of and free­dom from reli­gious expres­sion.  Bish­ops may dic­tate the faith to the flock, but they don’t speak for them to the gov­ern­ment – polling fig­ures this week, in fact, showed that most Amer­i­can Catholics dis­agreed with the Church posi­tion on this.

There are pre­cious few insti­tu­tions cov­ered by these rules that do not ben­e­fit greatly from fed­eral, state, and local fund­ing from tax­payer dol­lars.  They should have a rea­son­able expec­ta­tion that they will be required to abide by gov­ern­ment stan­dards as they do on work­hours, OSHA stan­dards, and, in fact, many state require­ments that say that health insur­ance plans in their state have to cover con­tra­cep­tives.  In fact, in states that have these require­ments (and a Repub­li­can gov­er­nor, that’s con­ve­nient!), we should ask whether the Repub­li­can lead­ers believe that the state of [let’s say, Wis­con­sin] has declared war on the Catholic church.

I really don’t see how pay­ing for insur­ance cov­er­age equates to vio­lat­ing the Church’s moral beliefs – and by the way, the Church is an orga­ni­za­tion, not an indi­vid­ual.  Is it pos­si­ble for a hos­pi­tal board to com­mit a sin?  Twelve years of parochial edu­ca­tion cer­tainly sug­gested to me that I was respon­si­ble for my own sin­ning.  These orga­ni­za­tions hap­pily pay for Via­gra pre­scrip­tions to be filled.  If their employ­ees then use their Via­gra to go out and com­mit adul­tery, does that mean the hos­pi­tal has sinned?  Or the dude with the Via­gra?  Pro­vid­ing a pre­scrip­tion ben­e­fit is not the same thing as swal­low­ing a pill with the intent to pre­vent a preg­nancy – only an indi­vid­ual can do that.  Being given an occa­sion of sin, as I was exhaus­tively told, is your moment to shine!  It’s called free will.

Most Amer­i­cans, includ­ing Amer­i­can Catholics, do not see con­tra­cep­tives as a lux­ury, or an elec­tive health care expen­di­ture.  It’s part of every­day life.  Any indi­vid­ual has the absolute option not to use such meth­ods, but let’s not allow that right to over­shadow the Right’s con­stant, unre­lent­ing will­ing­ness to make the issue about them­selves rather than about deny­ing women access to basic health­care cov­er­age that pre­vents unwanted pregnancy.

The Daily Kos/Markos tweeted today a hys­ter­i­cal point:  “Now that the GOP is an adjunct arm of the Catholic bish­ops, can’t wait for their sup­port of DREAM Act and UI exten­sion!”

The Catholic High School that I grad­u­ated from (Mas­cot: The Cru­saders!  Get them infi­dels!) is cel­e­brat­ing its 50^th anniver­sary.  Pre­dictably, they are des­per­ately fundrais­ing from alums for the occa­sion.  What a shame that as a reg­is­tered Demo­c­rat, I’m not really allowed to be a Catholic any­more (okay, so I quit years ago, when at 11 I real­ized that if my best friend was des­tined for hell because she was Jew­ish, yet a much bet­ter per­son, than I, then this cat­e­chism was crap).  My 75 year old par­ents, life­time Catholics and Democ­rats, are increas­ingly tired of being told that their polit­i­cal views are not Catholic.  Donate to the Cru­sader Fund?  You must be joking.