Color me naive, but I cannot understand the furor over the USCCB’s continued refusal to place the rubber stamp of their approval on free contraception for all. The issue has been in the news for months now, ever since the HHS first announced that universal health insurance meant universal coverage of contraception. As the conservative blogosphere lights up with virtual air-fives at the bishops finally, finally doing something that makes them unpopular, the secular press has, for the most part, attacked the bishops with a steady stream of inflammatory rhetoric, flawed studies, dishonest reporting, and utter disregard for the ordinary laws of logic. The latest is another New York Times editorial, characterizing the religious freedom lawsuit as a “dramatic stunt, full of indignation but built on air.”
There’s no reason to waste time dissecting the editorial’s arguments; there is nothing new there, nothing that has not been refuted a dozen times already. The “what” questions are already answered; it’s just a matter of Catholics continuing to get the word out. My question is a “why” question, the same one that’s been nagging me since the beginning of this debate.
Why are they doing this to us?
Is it naive to ask that? As there really a simple, convincing answer? If so, I have yet to hear it.
Why is it so important to them that we pay for their pills? Why would they not be content to let us live and let live, to treat us as the Amish of All Things Reproductive?
Oh yes, those weird religious people who don’t use electricity … Oh yes, those weird religious people who don’t use contraception … It’s not as if they need us to pay for the stuff, any more than we need the Amish to subsidize our consumption of electricity. Sandra Fluke made that argument, and I’m sure they’re a few liberals who believe her; but these folks cannot but be in the minority. After all, most of them are contracepting themselves: they buy the stuff: they cannot help but know how much (or rather, how little) it costs.
So why are they doing this to us? Do they hate us for policing our own pleasures? Do they despise us for what they perceive as our hypocrisy (especially in light of the well-publicized scandal of abuse coverups)?
These may be the reasons for some; but I refuse to believe, even of my enemies, that emotions explain everything. There must be some kind of rational thought process going on there, behind all the anger.
It can’t be that they think contraception is no big deal to us—if some of them thought so once, they’ve been disabused of the notion by now. Nor can it be that they think contraception should be no big deal, and are angry that we make such a fuss over it—see the point about the Amish above.
There’s only one reason for anyone to go after an organization that isn’t really harming anyone, and that would like nothing better than to be left in peace with a pint of Guinness in an air-conditioned chancery. You go after such an organization because you think they’re evil.
No, really. They think we’re the bad guys. They truly believe every word they’ve read about the Middle Ages. They’ve seen all the old Hollywood movies that trade on the mysterious magnetism of the Church, everything from Going My Way to The Ten Commandments to On the Waterfront. They’ve swallowed the sentiments of Dan Brown and Philip Pullman. And they are generally scared that we Catholics might, by the arcane powers we possess, somehow reproduce *ahem* another Dark Ages (which were really the product of pagan barbarism, but never mind that).
They’re scared of us. Not of what we are, but of what (they think) we’ve been and what (they fear) we might become again. Not of what we’re doing, but of what we might do. We are the Iran of religions. We are Frank Miller. Captain Bligh. Darth Vader. Lex Luther. Chaos.
And this after our repeated failures to take over the world! And all we’ve done to brand ourselves as utter wimps! Really, the Holy Spirit has a lot of explaining to do.
The other thing to understand is, they haven’t got our confidence. We know we’re going to win—if not this battle, still the war; if not the little war, the Great War. So some of our big people flake, even all of our big people; so some of us are ridiculed, or go to jail, or die; we know we have a Father in Heaven, and an Advocate before him who “will come again to judge the living and the dead.” Game over already. We win.
The secularists haven’t got that. Not even Alain de Botton could figure out a way to get them that. Have you ever thought how scary the world would be without having that? (“A tale told by an idiot … signifying: nothing.”) Or how weird and crazy and frightening people who do have That would seem to those who don’t?
It almost makes me feel sorry for the folks at the New York Times.
Oh, don’t say that RC! You sound like my old professor. He used to give lectures about how awful the world had become since he was a boy (and since he’s pulling close to 90 now, he can remember the times when it wasn’t). He’s always conclude though by telling all of us shuddering undergrads that we were incredibly lucky and that he envied us for being alive and young in the 21st century.
“WHY?” I finally burst out one day. “It sounds horrible, the way you talk about it. Why are we LUCKY to be alive now?”
“BECAUSE!” he said, pounding the table, “you’ve got something to FIGHT!”
Heh, I never thought of it like that before! I think you may be on to something there, Sophia. We know they hate us, they may just as well fear us. However, a deep hatred coupled with a paranoid fear, that is quite the lethal combination. So why we will win the war (or rather God will win it for us), these battles are going to get even more hellish in the coming years. Not something I’m really looking forward too, but so be it.
lol Sophia! That does sound like me! 😀
Though minus that bit about us being lucky, I would not go that far. I’d say something more like, God put you here for a reason.
Gandalf said it better:
(To Frodo’s “I wish none of this had happened.” )
“So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.”
Amen, RC. Amen.
Don’t feel sorry for them. They are acting out of malice.
Obama picked this fight to motivate his base for the election. He certainly didn’t need to do it now. He did it now for a purpose, and the NY Times are just there to support his re-election bid.
Obama is gambling that more will come out to the polls to support contraceptiion than Catholics will switch their votes against him. I can’t switch my vote because I never voted for him in the first place. Let’s pray that Catholics who did vote for him the first time will see the light. Let’s hope he loses that gamble.
Sophia, I’ve had the same reaction to my Catholicism. The less educated, non religious even associate my religiosity with “redneck fundementalists.” Sigh is right.
Ah, Sophia, you do know so well how to lighten the darkness–not just lucid thought, but humor (much more effective, I think).
But I think (not sure) that I disagree, at least in part. What they fear is, in a word, surrender. Yes, exactly that.
Even those of us who have officially surrendered our hearts to God struggle to surrender–it’s an ongoing and difficult way of life. It’s hard to let go of our will–even if we want to! And they don’t even want to, like we do…
Their great fear is Kool-Aid.
The Holy Spirit woos us all constantly, believers and non-believers alike. We try to surrender and fail–usually. They, on the other hand, are utterly terrorized, and run like hell.
They run like hell from the very idea that there is such a thing as Objective Truth, from a love that will strip them from all those habits and things and thoughts they believe make them “free.” They stand in front of a brick wall all their lives and deny that it exists–because if it does exist, well, that changes Absolutely Everything.
They hate us for one reason: fear–the great begetter of all hate.
p.s. Just read Manny’s comment. How this figures into Obama’s politics: It’s not malice. Malice is the expression of the fear, and fear bespeaks emotional involvement. When the Holy Spirit wins (which he does, you know, sometimes) the great revelation to the fearful is that underneath the fear, they loved God all the time. But the opposite of love is not hate (which they express until surrender), but–indifference. The fearful can be saved; the indifferent cannot. Obama is indifferent. He is not afraid of Catholics, and so he feels completely at liberty to use anti-Catholicism to his political advantage. He doesn’t care about the Church one way or the other. It’s like everything else–useful, sometimes. He deserves pity, not the haters who idolize him. There is a cure for hate, but there is no cure for indifference.
Manny,
I was “almost” sorry. Tongue-in-cheekly sorry, sort of like when I wrote that Nancy Pelosi ought not to be excommunicated, because that would be unfair to someone who is demonstrably insane …
You’re probably right about some of the political folks. We’re a handy whipping boy. Nonetheless, there are at least some secularists who’re genuinely, if absurdly, scared by us. I know this because, well, I’ve met a few of them; and they truly couldn’t understand how a nice person like me could be part of a horrible organization like that. Sigh.
If we lived in a pro-Church age, Obama would be quite different. He is simply a chameleon. To know his position on anything at all, one has only to look at whatever position is the most politically advantageous to him. He’s that simple. And that lost.* Church-haters are Sauls–who always have the potential of becoming Pauls. He doesn’t hate the Church. If he did, the prognosis for him would be more favorable.
*There is no one there. No one is at home at that address.
Obama as Spock. I remember the photo-shop pictures from back in … ’08?
Thanks, Dena.
Indeed. Fear does motivate a lot of hatred; and it’s fairly normal to fear (and then to hate) what one does not know. But, as you point out, strong emotions like these can at least be starting points for grace, while the absence of emotions …
Apo. 2:16: “But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold, not hot, I will begin to vomit thee out of my mouth.”