Why, when the Catholic Church has actually taken numerous admirable stands in history, does the Church decide to stake its moral prestige on something as ridiculous as preventing affordable access to birth control?
For the most part, people will still get birth control people will still get birth control. It will just be a bigger hassle and cost them more money. The Catholic Church was never faced with the possibility of directly paying for birth control. People pay for their own insurance out of their compensation. Yes it may be through a group plan, but the employer is not required to make a contribution. Also, many Catholic universities and hospitals are already offering coverage for contraception without issue.
The bishops chose to pick this particular fight. And the reasons they picked it were political, not moral. If the Catholic bishops had been motivated by morality, there are a lot of other issues they would have picked before they picked this one. Like the death penalty, or war, or immigration, or unfettered capitalism. Issues that affect virtually every human being on this planet in one way or another.
This was a profound and massive moral fail for the Catholic hierarchy.
Conservative Catholics accuse me of being a “cafeteria Catholic,” picking and choosing which parts of the church suit me best, rather than observing everything that the church and, in theory, God says is true. Well you know what? They are too.
