First of all, please accept my congratulations on your recent elevation to cardinal. I am a great admirer of yours and have always been fascinated by your energy and sense of humor.

My admiration for you doesn’t prevent me from conveying this disappointment, though. I am totally disappointed by the letter you sent to your fellow bishops, on March 2, 2012. It doesn’t read like an epistle written by a priest. It reads like a political pamphlet. The Republican Party presidential aspirants, who are currently campaigning to unseat President Barack Obama, will find it heart-warming. You can bet they are going to refer to it to back up the vow they have been repeating to repeal the health care law the Obama administration passed two years ago. That being the ultimate goal of your letter, you will find their action heart-warming, too.

I couldn’t help wondering, after reading your letter, whether you are preparing your flock for another crusade. Of course, this one won’t be to liberate any holy place from Muslim heathens, but, as you say, “to protect our religious freedom from unprecedented intrusion from a government bureau, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).” I know it’s the Obama administration’s HHS you are referring to.

Ever since the Obama administration passed the landmark health care law, it has been at loggerheads with the Catholic Church, extreme-right Republicans and the right-wing media in America. You should know, however, that the vast majority in the country, especially the 40-plus million people who have been living without any health care coverage, did heartily welcome it. They applauded their president for achieving a legislative victory, the likes of which the country has not seen in half a century.

Let me now turn to what made you write this letter, two years after the passage of the law. It is, in your words, the “restrictive HHS Rule,” announced on January 20. You find the rule an “unprecedented intrusion from a government bureau.” You also say that it made you “certain of two things: religious freedom is under attack, and we will not cease our struggle to protect it.”

You have repeated “religious freedom” ad nauseam throughout the letter. The repetition may have a shock value. And Catholics, who have not been closely following the health care law controversy, may believe when you say that their religious freedom is being undermined by the Obama administration. Do you know that this is the kind of tactic jihadists resort to when they want to incite their co-religionists to act? “Islam is in danger” is their favorite slogan.

Let’s examine what the HHS Rule of January 20 says that made you stoop to the level of jihadists. It says that “the final rule on preventive health services will ensure that women with health insurance coverage will have access to the full range of the Institute of Medicine’s recommended preventive services, including all FDA-approved forms of contraception. Women will not have to forgo these services because of expensive co-pays or deductibles, or because an insurance plan doesn’t include contraceptive services....”

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who issued the new rule, did address the concern of those who get upset at the very mention of the word contraception. “The administration remains fully committed to its partnerships with faith-based organizations, which promote healthy communities and serve the common good,” her January 20 statement announcing the new rule says. “And this final rule will have no impact on the protections that existing conscience laws and regulations give to health care providers.”

In terms of those conscience laws and regulations, churches were already exempted from paying for birth-control-related medical services for their employees. The Catholic Church and right-wing conservatives demanded that the exemption be extended to church-run institutions like universities and hospitals. The Obama administration obliged. On February 10, it worked out a compromise with church representatives, under which those institutions would be allowed to shift the cost of birth control coverage to their insurance companies.

Medieval Mind-Set of Catholic Church

You still are not satisfied. I can think of only one reason: You and many in the Catholic Church still have a medieval mind-set. In your scheme of things, any sexual act that doesn’t aim at procreation is sin. So paying for contraceptives is a sinful act. Even insurance companies shouldn’t pay for it.

Don’t you know, Cardinal, that 98 percent of Catholic women in America are not with you on this? According to a study conducted by the Guttmacher Institute, they have used some form of contraceptives sometime in their lives. Those among them who are sexually active and don’t want to become pregnant regularly rely on contraceptive methods that are prohibited by the Catholic Church. Most of them, the same study says, are regular church-goers.

Does a democratically elected government have a responsibility to tailor a law, which relates to women’s sexual activities, to reflect the prevalent sexual practice among them? Or should it disregard the interests and rights of those women because a bunch of bachelors like you, to whom sex is taboo, consider such tailoring a violation of their religious freedom? Most of these contraceptive-using women, to repeat what I said above, consider themselves religious.

You say in your letter: “We have made it clear in no uncertain terms to the government that we are not at peace with its invasive attempt to curtail the religious freedom we cherish as Catholics and Americans. We did not ask for this fight, but we will not run from it.”

This is not the kind of language one expects from a Christian priest. And this is not the kind of language that Jesus, whose name you have invoked in your letter at least once, would have approved of. You don’t have to go to the extent showing the other cheek a la Jesus. But you should be catholic enough to give the other party a chance to prove that it means what it says. It says that the new “rule will have no impact on the protections that existing conscience laws and regulations give to health care providers.”

In a democracy, adversaries resolve their differences through negotiations. Also in a democracy, every effort should be made to accommodate minority viewpoints. But when a minority tries to impose its antiquated views on the majority, who should be the final arbiter? That’s the question you must ask yourself before you pooh-pooh the directive issued by the HHS. The problem with all organized religions is that each claims to be the final arbiter of truth. Each claims to speak in the name of God.

The belligerent tone in the sentence I referred above is followed by a civilized one – thank you – in the next sentence: “As pastors and shepherds, each of us would prefer to spend our energy engaged in and promoting the works of mercy to which the Church is dedicated: healing the sick, teaching our youth, and helping the poor.” It conveys the laudable mission of your vocation. Stick to that mission, Cardinal. Don’t politicize your noble calling. Also, please show some mercy toward the less fortunate in society, whose health issues are at stake here.

Is Preventing Pregnancy Sin?

It is unfair to characterize a legal provision aimed at helping women meet their health needs as an “intrusion into the internal life of the church.” And nobody is jeopardizing “the ministries entrusted to [you] by Jesus.”

Why are you turning your wrath on the Obama administration when you know full well that the 98 percent Catholic women who admit to having used contraceptives did it before the HHS Rule in question was issued? Some of them have been using contraceptives since before Obama was born. And what punishment are you going to mete out to these women? Excommunication or stoning to death?

There is nothing sinful about preventing unwanted pregnancies, unless you want to define ‘sin’ in medieval terms. The Obama administration did not ask women to go and buy contraceptives. It only decided to lessen the financial burden of those who have already been using them. In doing so, it was also implementing a recommendation made by the Institute of Medicine. Do you know that there are insurance companies that pay for performance-enhancing drugs that men use? You know the kind of performance I am talking about. Oh, I get it: Use of such drugs doesn’t prevent procreation, and that’s the reason why you are not opposed to it.

The second-last paragraph of your letter says: “Brothers, we know so very well that religious freedom is our heritage, our legacy and our firm belief, both as loyal Catholics and Americans. There have been many threats to religious freedom over the decades and years, but these often came from without. This one sadly comes from within. As our ancestors did with previous threats, we will tirelessly defend the timeless and enduring truth of religious freedom.”

Which prompts me to ask: Was it in the course of enjoying “religious freedom” that some “pastors and shepherds” engaged themselves in criminal activities? What is the remedy when the victims of those activities are innocent little children? Yes, I am talking about the crimes committed by pedophile priests that rocked the Catholic Church a few years ago. But for the “intrusion” from secular authorities, the rest of the world would never have known about those crimes. And the church hierarchy would have succeeded in hushing them up. Barring an admirable few, all priests, all the way up to the pope, were involved in the hush-up.

Where were you, Cardinal, when your fellow priests, some of whom you might have known, committed such despicable, sinful acts? I wish you had fought those pedophiles with half the fighting spirit you are demonstrating now to take on the Obama administration. Even now it is not too late. The church is still scandal-ridden and the issue still has not been resolved to the satisfaction of all victims and their families. Why don’t you divert your energy and spirit from contraception to pedophilia?

In conclusion, I have to say what you already know but won’t say: No freedom in this world is, and should be, absolute. If the Catholic Church had been allowed to enjoy unfettered “religious freedom,” we would still be witnessing autos-da-fé.

_____

The picture, on top, of Cardinal Timothy Dolan is reproduced by courtesy of The Daily News, New York.

(Published on March 14, 2012)

(Readers are invited to comment. Send the comments to letters@eastwestinquirer.com)