Question of the Day: Religion and Birth Control
Should religious schools and hospitals be forced to provide employees with free contraceptives?
Catholic leaders across the country and in New Jersey are condemning the Obama administraton's new birth control policy that would force religious schools and hospitals to provide their employees with free contraceptives.
Opponents of the policy, scheduled to take effect Aug. 1, 2013, say it's an attack on religious freedom and some Catholic officials are threatening to drop their employees' healthcare coverage to avoid violating their own beliefs on contraception, according to a Star-Ledger report.
Bishop David M. O'Connell of the Diocese of Trenton released a video this week on the diocese's website bashing the policy, claiming it considered "abortion-inducing" drugs as preventative services.
O'Connell said that despite many appeals by the U.S. Bishops and outraged Catholics, the federal government has refused to broaden the policy's religious exemptions.
"Such an affront to religious liberty constitutes an unprecedented assault on the consciences of Catholics -- 25 percent of the United State population," O'Connell said.
Should religious institutions such as Catholic schools and hopsitals be forced to provide their employees with free contraception? Let us know by voting in the poll and/or in the comments.
Frank Burns
5:47 am on Friday, February 10, 2012
My own religious conviction is that God punishes us with disease and rewards us with good health, and that it is a sin to ever try to intervene in his will medically.
I'm therefore stripping practically everything out of my employees' policies. If I can't, I won't be able to sleep nights, because I would have a guilty conscience imagining to what unnatural ends they might choose to apply their insurance, and of course I can't be stopped from stripping out those policies, because my Republican friends are backing me on this, since it is a matter of my own religious freedom.
Plus, I save a lot on the health premiums I pay to cover my work force, since their pay package basically only includes chiropractic care and homeopathy, which don't offend my religious scruples because I deem them entirely ineffective.
Donald L Schenck
6:16 am on Friday, February 10, 2012
Dear Friend:
I am writing to you because the dignity of the human person is not being respected by our federal government, and I believe you might have the desire to help change things for the better. As a Nation, we have long understood that the human person, because of his dignity, made in the image of God, has the right to “life.” But this dignity has further implications. The human person is made in the image AND the likeness of God. This is the source of our God-given right to “liberty and the pursuit of happiness:” God, Who is Truth and Love, and is perfectly happy in Himself, acts neither arbitrarily nor under constraint, but freely and generously shares his own divine life and happiness with the human person. Although this likeness to God, this true freedom and happiness, was lost through its abuse, it is offered back to us through Jesus Christ and His Church. Because this is so fundamentally part of human dignity, the government must respect the right of each person to “seek God sincerely and strive to fulfill His will” (CCC 1281), in Freedom of Religion and Liberty of Conscience. In the last analysis, acting according to one’s conscience is the only authentic way to pursue happiness.
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