Bishops press religious-freedom fight with gov’t

Aux­il­iary Bishop at Arch­dio­cese of Mil­wau­kee Don­ald Hying joins a prayer dur­ing the U.S. Con­fer­ence of Catholic Bish­ops’ bian­nual meet­ing Wednes­day in Atlanta. (Asso­ci­ated Press | David Goldman)

RACHEL ZOLL

AP Reli­gion Writer

ATLANTA — The nation’s Roman Catholic bish­ops on Wednes­day promised stead­fast oppo­si­tion to Pres­i­dent Barack Obama’s man­date that birth con­trol be cov­ered by health insur­ance, say­ing it is one of many threats to reli­gious free­dom in government.

Bish­ops insisted repeat­edly that they had no par­ti­san agenda. They said they were forced into action by state and fed­eral poli­cies that they say would require them to vio­late their beliefs in order to main­tain the vast public-service net­work the church has built over a cen­tury or longer.

“It is not about par­ties, can­di­dates or elec­tions as oth­ers have sug­gested,” said Bal­ti­more Arch­bishop William Lori, chair­man of the bish­ops’ religious-liberty com­mit­tee. “The gov­ern­ment chose to pick a fight with us.”

The meet­ing of the U.S. Con­fer­ence of Catholic Bish­ops in Atlanta is its first since dio­ce­ses, uni­ver­si­ties and Catholic char­i­ties filed a dozen fed­eral law­suits over Obama’s rule that employ­ers pro­vide health insur­ance cov­er­ing birth control.

The pro­vi­sion, part of the White House health care over­haul, gen­er­ally exempts houses of wor­ship, but faith-affiliated employ­ers would have to comply.

Fed­eral offi­cials have said the rule is crit­i­cal to pre­serv­ing women’s health by help­ing them space out their pregnancies.

Still, Obama has offered to soften the rule for reli­gious employ­ers by requir­ing insur­ance com­pa­nies to cover the cost instead of faith groups. The admin­is­tra­tion is tak­ing pub­lic com­ment through next week while work­ing out the details, but bish­ops have said that the changes pro­posed so far do not put enough moral dis­tance between the church and arti­fi­cial contraception.

The bish­ops are orga­niz­ing a “Fort­night for Free­dom,” two weeks of ral­lies and prayer ser­vices on reli­gious free­dom lead­ing up to July Fourth. Arch­bishop Carlo Vigano, the pope’s ambas­sador to the United States, told the bish­ops that the advo­cacy effort “has my full support.”

Vigano noted that the religious-freedom push required a “del­i­cate” approach in the con­text of a pres­i­den­tial elec­tion. But, quot­ing from a pre­vi­ous talk by Pope Bene­dict XVI about Catholics speak­ing out on pub­lic pol­icy, the ambas­sador said the con­cerns were so wor­ri­some that bish­ops had to act. Church lead­ers gave Vigano a stand­ing ovation.

“It goes with­out say­ing that the Catholic Church in the United States is liv­ing in a par­tic­u­larly chal­leng­ing period of its his­tory,” Vigano told the conference.

Many Catholics across the polit­i­cal spec­trum have said they agree a broader reli­gious exemp­tion is needed for the man­date, but have still raised ques­tions about the church’s strat­egy of law­suits and rallies.

“Most bish­ops don’t want to be the Repub­li­can party at prayer, but their alarmist rhetoric and con­sis­tent antag­o­nism toward the Obama admin­is­tra­tion often con­vey that impres­sion,” said John Gehring, of the lib­eral advo­cacy group Faith in Pub­lic Life.

Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Spring­field, Ill., a mem­ber of the bish­ops’ religious-liberty com­mit­tee, said he had sug­gested the “Fort­night for Free­dom” in Novem­ber to coin­cide with litur­gi­cal feasts of mar­tyred defend­ers of the faith includ­ing Thomas More.

“My inten­tion was think­ing of liturgy events, and that it was a time of prayer and edu­ca­tion, not that it’s a time for a polit­i­cal rally,” Paprocki said.

Chicago Car­di­nal Fran­cis George said the bish­ops had “every rea­son to hope and pray” that the Obama admin­is­tra­tion would respond to their con­cerns on the birth con­trol man­date. But he said they needed to con­sider whether they should close their char­i­ties or take other action if no such accom­mo­da­tion is made. The bish­ops planned more dis­cus­sion of the issue in pri­vate ses­sions through­out the week.

The bish­ops repeat­edly empha­sized that they were united in their agenda. Recently, Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stock­ton, Calif., expressed con­cern in an inter­view with Amer­ica, the national Jesuit mag­a­zine, that the tim­ing of the law­suits could be seen as overly political.

Crit­ics of the law­suits seized on the remarks as evi­dence the bish­ops were divided. In Atlanta, how­ever, Blaire spoke out force­fully against the birth con­trol mandate.

“We have to get the gov­ern­ment out of defin­ing the church,” he said. “We have an enor­mous bat­tle ahead of us.”

In addi­tion to the religious-freedom issue, the Vat­i­can is engaged in a pub­lic dis­pute with the Lead­er­ship Con­fer­ence of Women Reli­gious, the largest umbrella group for U.S. nuns.

In April, the Vatican’s ortho­doxy watch­dog, the Con­gre­ga­tion for the Doc­trine of the Faith, said the nuns’ orga­ni­za­tion had strayed far from Catholic doc­trine and gave three Amer­i­can bish­ops the author­ity to over­haul the group.

A few dozen peo­ple protested in sup­port of the nuns out­side the meet­ing and deliv­ered peti­tions signed by more than 57,000 peo­ple — one sig­na­ture for each reli­gious sis­ter in the United States —con­demn­ing the Vat­i­can inquiry.

Sep­a­rately, the bish­ops marked the 10th anniver­sary of the child-safety pol­icy they adopted in response to the clergy sex-abuse crisis.

The bish­ops have spent tens of mil­lions of dol­lars on back­ground checks for work­ers, assis­tance pro­grams for vic­tims, and train­ing for chil­dren and teach­ers on iden­ti­fy­ing abuse. As part of their reforms, the bish­ops also pledged to remove all accused priests from any pub­lic church work.

Advo­cates for abuse vic­tims, how­ever, con­tend that dio­ce­ses have kept some accused clergy on assign­ment. A Philadel­phia jury is cur­rently delib­er­at­ing in the child-endangerment trial of a mon­signor who had super­vised abu­sive priests.

In Mis­souri, Bishop Robert Finn of the Dio­cese of Kansas City-St. Joseph is set to be tried on mis­de­meanor fail­ure to report sus­pected child abuse.

Bish­ops con­tend any vio­la­tions are iso­lated and the vast major­ity of dio­ce­ses are com­ply­ing with the dis­ci­pline plan.

Posted by AP News on Jun 14 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.