The culture war: Obama vs. the Catholic church

Some compromise, said The Wall Street Journal in an editorial. In response to a huge backlash, the White House said last week it would amend its outrageous ruling that Catholic-affiliated schools, hospitals, and charities must provide health insurance that covers contraception, which the Catholic Church considers immoral. But then came the details. Catholic institutions that serve the general public will be allowed to opt out of paying for birth control coverage, Obama said, but their insurance companies will be required to provide contraceptive coverage to the church’s employees free of charge. Huh? As Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York pointed out, this phony “accommodation” is a shell game, in which the church’s insurers will quietly fold the cost of “free” contraceptives into their policies. The issue here is “religious freedom,” said David French in NationalReview.com. The liberal technocrats of the Obama administration are essentially telling the church “it can’t live its own values,” and must accede to “compulsory participation in the sexual revolution.”

“Nonsense,” said Bill Press in the Chicago Tribune. The church has freely chosen to operate organizations in the secular world, like colleges and hospitals, employing and serving many non-Catholics. There, the rules of our society must apply. In the real world, contraception is used by 99 percent of women of child-bearing age, and preventing unplanned pregnancies is vital to their health. Obama’s “priority is to protect women’s health, not to enforce some outdated, anachronistic, and unrealistic policy of an out-of-touch, celibate Catholic hierarchy.” The bishops seem to care about only one thing—sex, and trying to stop women from engaging in it, said Joan Walsh in Salon.com. Why doesn’t the church hierarchy ever go to war with Republican politicians who ignore its teachings on the death penalty, war, or social-justice issues like aiding the poor? Besides, the church has no legal basis for its medieval crusade against women and contraception: The Supreme Court has ruled that Native Americans and the Amish cannot claim religious exemptions from the law. “We have never held that an individual’s religious beliefs excuse him from compliance with an otherwise valid law,” conservative Justice Antonin Scalia has written.

Still, Obama’s clumsy handling of this issue could “threaten his entire re-election,” said Keith Koffler in Politico.com. While most Catholics do use birth control, they also resent the federal government telling their church how to manage its affairs, and if Obama alienates Catholics he’s electoral toast. Obama won the Catholic vote, 54 percent to 45 percent, in 2008. If he loses substantial Catholic support, Obama is a one-term president. Non-Catholics don’t like what Obama’s doing either, said Jonathan Tobin in CommentaryMagazine.com. By “attempting to ram this measure down the throat of the church, he has reminded the country that his signature health-care legislation involves a tyrannical expansion of government power.”

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In the long run, this brouhaha could work to Obama’s advantage, said Andrew Sullivan in Newsweek. His “utterly sensible compromise” has shown moderates, once again, that he’s reasonable and pragmatic, while leaving the Right with nothing to attack but contraception itself. In turning this into a culture-war issue, my fellow Republicans are making a dangerous choice, said David Frum in TheDailyBeast.com. When all the shouting is over, most voters will perceive this as a debate about the morality of contraception. “Everybody quite sure that’s a wise debate to have?”