Commentary

Contraception and little sisters carrying a big stick

Contraception and little sisters carrying a big stick
This week, the Supreme Court of the United States decided to take the unprecedented step of asking both sides in Zubik v. Burwell to provide further arguments to assist the lower court in arriving at a reasonable compromise. The Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic order of nuns and the defendants in the case, sued the federal government to reverse its mandate of providing contraceptives in employee insurance health plans, which the Little Sisters argued violates their freedom to follow the tenets of their religion.

My point here is not to discuss the merits of the case, per se, but rather I want to raise some critical questions concerning how best to protect young people, establish and preserve strong families and communities, aid individuals and families to rise from poverty, and ensure the preservation of humanity from its efforts to self-destruct.

First, though I don’t agree in any way with the Catholic Church’s position on women’s reproductive freedoms and women’s rights (not) to control their own bodies, I at least understand their perspective on abortion. And though I also understand where the Church is coming from on its stands opposing contraception, public school-based sexuality education, homosexuality, and gender-nonconformity, I find these staggeringly irrational and, quite frankly, abusive.

Calling itself the “Little Sisters of the Poor,” the order focuses its attention on aiding elderly poor people, a very noble and extremely honorable and needed service in a country with a shrinking middle class and increasing working class and poor. I value Pope Francis’s outspoken criticisms of unbridled Capitalism, the ever-increasing gulf in wealth between the rich and poor, and what he termed the “idolatry of money.”

We as a society can do much if we joined together to challenge the ideology of unrestrained greed and “free market” economics, and if we acted more communally. We can also assist individuals and families by providing them with accurate and age-appropriate information and tools by which they can make informed and empowered decisions regarding family planning.

The Catholic Church’s position opposing contraception consigns many into conceiving unwanted and unaffordable offspring, thereby increasing the risks in the continuing cycle of perpetual poverty, dissolution of the family unit, or worse: abuse or abandonment of youth, which can and does occur in families of all economic backgrounds.

In addition, the Church opposes the teaching of sexuality education in the schools that discuss condoms, birth control pills, and other forms of contraception, in addition to education regarding HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases. In opposing honest, accurate, and age-appropriate sexuality education, the Church is sticking its head in the proverbial sand by implying that young people are either not yet sexual or will not soon become so, and by giving the impression that students would be better served by mistakenly impregnating, carrying an unwanted pregnancy, or by contracting a serious infection. This is child abuse plain and simple! And with approximately 7 billion people already inhabiting this planet, many who suffer abject poverty, the Church and its policies increasingly raise the changes of us overpopulating ourselves to extinction.

The Church remains in the 11th century with its stands on same-sex sexuality and gender non-conformity. Regarding same-sex sexuality, according to the Roman Catholic Church Catechism 2357:

“Basing itself upon Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that homosexual acts are gravely disordered. They are contrary to natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of love [i.e., children]. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.”

“Gravely disordered” in this passage refers to acting on same-sex desires with another person while not necessarily applying to the person or people involved: the tired old “we hate the sin but love the sinner” slight-of-hand.

For individuals within the Church who cannot or will not change to heterosexual expression, the Church tolerates them if they are able and willing to scale the unreasonable and inhumane heights of the Catholic ramparts by following Roman Catholic Church Catechism 2359:

“Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.”

But if the Church values families so highly, why then did Catholic Charities of Rockford, Illinois — an adoption and foster care agency that receives state funding – figuratively dump the babies out with the bathwater by shutting its doors in 2011 rather than place any young people in the guardianship of LGBT people or in same-sex headed households as the state mandated according to Illinois’s equal rights policies.

In addition, why then did the Vatican hierarchy recently fence-off Alex Salinas, a 21-year-old transman from Cadiz, Spain, by informing him that it had denied his request to become the godparent of his nephew because being transgender is incongruent with Catholic teaching. According to the Church’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, its doctrine-enforcing agency:

Transgender status “reveals in a public way an attitude opposite to the moral imperative of solving the problem of sexual identity according to the truth of one’s own sexuality. Therefore it is evident that this person does not possess the requirement of leading a life according to the faith and in the position of godfather and is therefore unable to be admitted to the position of godfather or godmother.”

The Vatican asserted that there is “no discrimination toward [Salinas], but only the recognition of an objective lack of the requirements, which by their nature are necessary to assume the ecclesial responsibility of being a godfather” – the dishonest “we’re not prejudiced, but…” [non]reasoning. But then again, religion is not based on reason.

So the questions remain, if the Little Sisters and the Catholic Church as an institution are really “of the poor,” how can they square their policies with truly serving poor people? How can they reconcile their precepts with their attempts to make the world a better place?

I hope, on the other hand, that Pope Francis can truly usher in a new era of the Church. It’s the only thing that can save the Church from itself.

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