Birth Control Defeat

TRANSCRIPT

As we continue plowing through the comments made by various Catholic GOP contenders for U.S. president with a Catholic eye, we continue to see problems — for example, Florida's U.S. senator Marco Rubio on the issue of birth control and contraception.

He supported efforts to get rid of mandated contraception coverage in Obamacare, but his reason was not theological. In an interview with a local Miami TV station, he was first asked if he thought contraception was wrong. Here’s his answer:

Of course not, Who says it is? You’re going to get into this whole argument about contraception. No one has ever said that contraception should be illegal, that contraception should be discouraged, that people should be looked down upon for using it. The only argument that there ever has been about this issue isn’t even about contraception, it’s about religious liberty.

Now before we get into the rationale there, let's remember another comment made which sounds very similar: Cardinal Timothy Dolan once said, "We have to be very vigorous in insisting this is not about contraception. It's about religious freedom."

Is it any wonder why the Church and her members are so lost? The particular issue they are each speaking about is the Obamacare contraception mandate and how to handle it politically. But at the end of the day, so what?

Contraception is evil, and Catholics have an obligation to say so out loud. But see, contemporary Catholics, today's Catholics need to realize that there has been a birth control defeat for the Church at the hands of clergy, and what has happened is the laity have simply followed suit. 

This stupefying idea emanating from from the episcopal ranks that the topic of contraception is a loser and so we shouldn't talk about it is incredibly anti-biblical and anti-Catholic. Saint Paul says, "Preach the truth in season and out of season" — not to mention the Son of God as well. "If you deny me before men, I will deny you before my Heavenly Father."

But as one bishop shared with us, too many bishops today are like politicians, always angling for the strategic sweet spot, and rationalizing their gaming the system by saying they are doing it for a good reason. The problem is the victim in such an approach is the fullness of the truth. Maybe that’s why so many bishops today sound like politicians and why so many politicians sound like bishops.