Just one more modest concession
by digby
This is a powerful post by Frances Kissling discussing the debate among Catholics on the issue of reproductive health and freedom. It raises a very interesting question: by acceding to the conservative, overtly pro-Republican Bishops, is the administration taking sides in an internal religious dispute? I confess that I hadn’t thought of it that way, but if I were a Catholic I certainly might.
If course, in typical Village fashion, the goalposts are so skewed that acceding to what is a blatant power grab on the part of the highly political Bishop patriarchs is seen as a small concession that women should be grateful wasn’t worse than it is. Here’s the usually sensible E.J. Dionne:
But the question of what a fair and principled compromise would look like on contraception and the health-care law should not be lost in the political maelstrom. Even an expanded exemption covering Catholic hospitals and universities would still go far beyond what the bishops have called for, as Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, chairman of their Committee on Pro-Life Activities, made clear in a September statement opposing mandated contraception coverage altogether.
Far from constituting a “cave-in” to the bishops, in other words, a broader exemption would be a modest concession, honoring the rights of religious institutions that liberals and Obama have long respected. And as Sister Carol noted in an interview, “we’re not talking about taking away from women anything they have,” since Catholic institutions that don’t cover contraception now wouldn’t cover it in any event.
Catholic bishops need to lower the rhetorical temperature — as the head of the conference, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, seems to be trying to do. Advocates of reproductive rights need to do the same.
If the administration is pressured into refusing any accommodation on the contraception rules, the people who will be undercut most are progressive Catholics who went out on a limb to support the health-care law and those bishops holding the line against the Catholic right by standing up for the church’s commitment to social justice. This will only strengthen the most conservative forces inside the Catholic Church. That can’t be what advocates of reproductive rights really want.
So the progressives need to give in once again because it could make the other side mad if they don’t and then all hell will break loose? That’s exactly what abused wives tell themselves.
And I guess we’re supposed to believe that the Catholic Right will be strengthened by losing this battle but not by winning it. That’s a nice little bit of sophistry I hear every time social conservatives hold the line and get their way.
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