It is good to see the Catholic Church taking a stand on the HHS contraception mandate. From the beginning this has been a case of the government interfering with religion, trying to force the church to go against their moral teachings.
According to a recent article in “The Boston Pilot” catholics are urged to stand up for their religious freedom :
“In an unprecedented way, the federal government will both force religious institutions to facilitate and fund a product contrary to their own moral teaching and purport to define which religious institutions are ‘religious enough’ to merit protection of their religious liberty,” the statement said. “These features of the ‘preventive services’ mandate amount to an unjust law.”
This isn’t a political blog, I write one of those elsewhere, so I won’t go into the political aspects here other than to say this should be a concern to all.
For too long the Catholic Church has stood by and not taken a stand on issues. They are not dictating what people should do, they are only concerned that they should not be forced to go against their moral teachings.
There is an interesting point to be made here however. Matthew 22: 21 reads:
They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”
Here Jesus is saying we should follow the laws of whoever is in charge. The Catechism of the Catholic Church
The citizen is obliged in conscience not to follow the directives of civil authorities when they are contrary to the demands of the moral order, to the fundamental rights of persons or the teachings of the Gospel. Refusing obedience to civil authorities, when their demands are contrary to those of an upright conscience, finds its justification in the distinction between serving God and serving the political community. “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” “We must obey God rather than men”
Whether you are Catholic or some other religion, or even of no religion at all, we need to fight for our religious freedom.
What do you think, should the Church stay out of this?
The Wayward Catholic 