Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Coverage of the contraceptive mandate lawsuit
Get Religion analyzes the media coverage of the lawsuit filed yesterday against HHS by a few dozen Catholic organizations. For example, here's an excerpt from the Tribune News Service:
The Catholic organizations, which filed the suits in federal courts across the country, argue that the federal mandate infringes on their religious freedom because it violates church teachings.
As Get Religion helpfully notes, "[T]he key to the religious liberty claims is not that these new federal rules violate church teachings. The problem is that the mandates require religious institutions to violate their own doctrines, traditions and teachings."
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2012/05/coverage-of-the-contraceptive-mandate-lawsuit.html
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"[T]he key to the religious liberty claims is not that these new federal rules violate church teachings. The problem is that the mandates require religious institutions to violate their own doctrines, traditions and teachings."
This distinction highlights the problematic position that the Catholic Church holds within the confines of liberal America (the small "l"iberalism) which is merely that the Church is just one of many competing viewpoints in civil society with its "own doctrines . . . teachings." Yet the Church does not view itself as merely having its "own teaching" with respect to contraception, but a teaching which is universally true irrespective of competing claims to the contrary. The above statement, in a sense, further plays into the liberal notion that there is a divide between faith and reason.