USCCB meeting

In the news - Bishops Open ‘Religious Liberty’ Drive ...

The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops opened a new front in their fight against abortion and same-sex marriage on Monday, recasting their opposition as a struggle for “religious liberty” against a government and a culture that are infringing on the church’s rights.

As I've opined in past posts, the bishops' creative re-definition of the expression 'religious liberty' seems disingenuous - it bears no resemblance to the definition spoken of at Vatican II by those like John Courtney Murray SJ.

While I and many others believe the church's stance on women and gays/lesbians is wrong, in truth there has been no hampering of the church's religious liberty concerning these issues: the church is free to believe and to teach that women shouldn't use contraceptives or have abortions. The church is free to believe and to teach that gays/lesbians are objectively disordered and can't be trusted to marry or adopt. The church is free to run women's health clinics and human trafficking charities that do not even mention, much less give out or perform, contraceptives or abortions. The church is free to refuse to marry gays/lesbians in the church, free to refuse to allow gays/lesbians to adopt children from Catholic agencies. There is just one thing that the church cannot do in reference to these issues -- it cannot take and use US tax dollars to discriminate.

There's a post on the USCCB meeting at dotCommonweal - some of the comments to the post are pretty interesting.