The Catholic church’s relationship with the Obama administration reached a new low when the administration  ruled that employers had to offer birth control without co-pay as part of the new health reform law.  “Obama threatens religious freedom,” thunder the bishops. Religious liberty is under attack at home and abroad, they claim.

How does one answer these political prelates?  Let’s try two observations, and see if a loyal Catholic reader can demolish them.  (From a non-Caholic point of view, the Church hierarchy is becoming so appalling it is hard to understand why the laity tolerates it.  Please – SOMEONE EXPLAIN!)

I understand that the Church stand on birth control is based on the sanctity of life.  If God made the world and everything in it, then a slaughtered turkey at Thanksgiving and a hamburger at Macdonalds are  contrary to the law of God, since both involve killing God’s creation.   But I’m sure some silver-tongued gentleman, no doubt now a saint, has long ago tackled this inconsistency.

In 1515 the Medici Pope Leo X ordained that all manuscripts of books written throughout the known world had to by scrutinized, and if they were found to be in contradiction to the teachings of the church, the printers would be fined or excommunicated and the books  burned. Later, in 1564, after the Council of Trent, authors themselves were to be treated likewise.  The works of Luther were prohibited altogether, then and in the future.   Only in our own lifetime were these appalling attacks on religious liberty and human rights reversed.

But the reversal is itself under sustained attack by right-wing Catholics who want to put the clock back a century (or more?).  Most liberal bishops have now been replaced by people who agree with the Pope, and women religious have been told to resume their subservient roles.  Will censorship follow?

And the bishops talk about liberty?

Epicureans stand for freedom, free speech (as long as it is polite and non-violent), equality of men and women, and tolerance for the views of others.