This weekend on the Talking
Heads programs, Newt
Gingrich has decried the “War On The Catholic Church” that the Obama
administration is supposed waging. I have to say that I had almost completely failed
to notice this horrible threat to the American way of life!
The gospels report that he answered "Render unto Caesar
the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's."
It would appear that even Christ believed in the separation of Church and
State. In the times of the story’s setting, taxes were paid with coins bearing
the image of Caesar. It was (according to Matthew and Mark) the hopes of the Pharisees
to trap Christ. If he agreed to the payment of taxes, he was heretical – as the
coins, it could be argued, bore graven images proscribed in the Torah. If he
answered that they could not as it was proscribed by the law of God, he was
trapped into sedition as he was espousing civil disobedience and incitement of
tax evasion.
The “War” that the former speaker is talking about is a
ruling that catholic hospitals must offer contraceptive drugs to their
employees in the choices offered for health coverage. The religious right has
couched this as an infringement of the separation of Church and State. But the
problem is that this is not a religious issue at all!
If the church wants to believe that it is immoral to cover
contraception, they are welcome to do so. The church may disallow the coverage
all they want as long as they are talking about the church.
-BUT-
If the church should choose to spread into some other
venture they must be bound by the rules covering that area of interest. You
cannot extrapolate legislation covering commercial activity as in any way inhibiting
religious freedom. If the church should happen to get into the car business, we
should still be able to compel them to put certain safety devices that are
required by law into their cars. If they decided to go into the airline
industry, we could still compel them to take certain safety procedures.
Companies doing business in certain industries are subject to the laws
governing that industry. The alternative for the Catholic Church to offering
health care to its workers that includes reproductive coverage is not to get
into those industries in which it is required.
Why is it that this is important at all? It is sophistry to
say that it is because there is biblical proscription against birth control.
For one thing, there is no such proscription. There are proscriptions against
lots of sexual practices and implied proscriptions against other. Forget, for
the moment that most of these can be ascribed to the conditions that existed in
the middle east in the pre-Christian world and you are left to wonder why this
one topic seems to be so important to the religious right.
There is a clear biblical proscription against lending money
for interest. (Exodus 22: 24-25,
"If you lend money to one of your poor neighbors among my people, you
shall not act like an extortioner toward him by demanding interest from him.") This must have been important to the biblical authors; it appears more than twenty times throughout the bible. And still, you do
not see the religious right trying to put all the banks and credit companies
out of business! It is because reproduction is inherently and inexplicably
involved with sex that the prudish right takes an interest. It appears to be
only because it offends the prudish sensibilities of their personal beliefs that
they are opposed to it. I find it interesting that those so prone to trampling on
other people’s personal rights scream so loudly when they think that theirs are
being infringed.
Wherever you are today I hope you will show as much tolerance
of others as you want them to show you!
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