And in more Catholic-bishops-playing-politics news (building here on what I just posted about the Pew Forum report): Marcus Feldman reports at Media Matters yesterday that the conservative media continue trying to spin, spin, spin the politically manufactured face-off between the U.S. Catholic bishops and the Obama administration over contraceptive coverage in health care plans of Catholic institutions. It's all about "Catholics" opposing President Obama, and Obama will slap "Catholics" in the face if he lets HHS implement the guidelines recommended for it by the National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine.
And if Obama fails to dance to the bishops' tune, "Catholics" will take their marbles and go home, and vote Republican, even though a sizable percentage of real Catholics use contraceptives and think that contraceptive benefits should be provided by health care plans. As Feldman's report notes, look at whom National Catholic Reporter "liberal" Democrat Michael Sean Winters now finds himself in bed with, after he recently wrote that "Catholics" won't vote for Mr. Obama if he doesn't do what the bishops want: Winters's meme (one also echoed by another influent centrist Catholic media maven, Margaret Steinfels of Commonweal) has been picked up by Steven Ertelt of the right-wing LifesNews site.
If you wish, after you've read through Mr. Ertelt's article, you can click on a link at the bottom of the page that allows you to "change it back" and join a Facebook group dedicated to seeing that Mr. Obama is not re-elected in 2012. Ertelt, by the way, pushed the totally bogus death-panels story during the health care debates in an attempt to stop health care reform. And he has, in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary, published statements that the Obama administration is permitting taxpayer funded abortion. For more analysis of some of the indefensible positions his site has taken, see this run-down at Right Wing Watch.
Not very admirable company for "liberal" or authentically pro-life Catholics to keep, in my view. When we need to resort to lies to support our "moral" arguments, something is wrong with the moral basis of those arguments. Morality speaks for itself, and doesn't need lies about non-existent death panels and non-existent taxpayer-funded abortion to make its point.
As I said yesterday and have to keep saying--because it's true, and truth demands to be told--if what the Republican party and its shameless faith-based political operatives stand for in their social and economic positions is really pro-life, then I want no part of it. Because I find it impossible to separate pro-life values from questions about employment, health care coverage, civil rights, education, and so forth.
And I certainly don't find it pro-life to attack folks' access to good jobs, basic health care coverage, good educations, and human rights.
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