Birth control

Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Kelly:

I know in your mind you can think of times when America was attacked. One is December 7th, that’s Pearl Harbor day. The other is September 11th, and that’s the day of the terrorist attack,” Kelly said at a press conference on Capitol Hill. “I want you to remember August the 1st, 2012, the attack on our religious freedom. That is a day that will live in infamy, along with those other dates.

It's the political season, and some rhetorical hyperbole is to be expected, but really, Congressman Kelly is way over the top here.

Recently I looked up Catholic teaching on artificial methods of birth control. The church is adamantly opposed to any use of contraceptives by either men or women, and equally against any voluntary sterilizations - no vasectomies or tubal ligations, thank you very much. Although all methods of birth control other than the rhythm method are morally objectionable, the church especially condemns the IUD, because it prevents a fertilized egg from implanting in the uterus. (As an aside, it seems curious to me that any mention of the "morning after pill" draws sharp vocal opposition from many Americans, but I've never heard of any controversy here about the IUD.)

Public opinion surveys consistently report that the great majority of Catholics do not follow church teachings on some or all of these strictures. Something on the order of 90% of Catholics have used birth control methods at one time or another. One assumes they don't think of themselves as any less Catholic than are those who abide completely by the teachings of the Vatican.

With so many people ignoring their teachings, perhaps the church fathers might want to re-examine the bases for their position against birth control. As I understand it, rhythm is approved, but condoms, pills, and such are condemned because the artificial methods tend to interrupt what nature intended, that is the creation of children.

The difference seems very subtle to me. In fact, refraining from sex in marriage seems less natural to me than having sex and using a device to prevent conception. Doesn't Paul say in his epistles that married people are not to withdraw from each other except during short intervals for prayer. Being celibate for two weeks every month isn't a short interval, in my opinion.

The other thing about all this that bothers me is the emphasis placed on it by the Catholic hierarchy. As I understand it, by provision of the Affordable Care Act, birth control methods are to be made available and covered 100% by group health insurance plans. Catholic churches and other churches are exempted from paying for this coverage in their plans.  This exemption does not apply to other church enterprises, most notably employees of Catholic schools and hospitals. The position of the church leaders, I guess, is that if they must provide this coverage it makes them complicit in sin. But it's a tenuous connection, and one must wonder if what they object to is making contraceptives available or having to pay for them, even indirectly.

There are other sins they could worry about, and we all have things to object about in federal spending. For myself, I'm deeply offended that, as far as I know, we have never fully divested ourselves of nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Our government countenanced and carried out torture of captured Iraqis and others. To me, that's far more egregious, much farther from the teachings of Jesus, than douching is. I don't remember more than a tiny minority of clergymen objecting to waterboarding.

I pay my taxes anyway.

But Congressman Kelly says taking a pill is the moral equivalent of flying jet liners into buildings, killing thousands of people, and he's a congressman.