I want to ask a simple question of the bishops of the American Catholic Church:
Why is it acceptable for Federal agents to fondle the breasts of American women, probe the genital regions of American children, and publicly remove the diapers of incontinent elderly Americans but beyond the moral pale to force those violated Americans to pay for birth-control and sterilizations? (At least, it’s beyond the moral pale if those violated Americans happen to be Catholics.)
I don’t ask this with a bias toward one or the other abuses of government power since I consider both to be just that — abuses of government power. I do think it particularly despicable to be violating the bodily privacy of human beings, especially women and children, but I seem to be somewhat alone on that issue amongst American Catholics. And I do suspect the agents of a growing police-state are a greater threat to this country and its religious freedoms than an additional tax, however disguised, imposed by a bloated government which already collects lots of money to pay for activities which are criminal or simply dumb.
Maybe religious freedom remains standing when a little boy’s penis is manipulated by a federal agent or a little girl’s rectum is penetrated by a gloved finger, but — if so — what would it matter? At best, that would be a religious freedom compromised by a tight connection to evil. In fact, while this airport security regime would be bad if imposed upon us, it’s a true moral horror, a shame to us in the deepest sense, just because we’ve so readily accepted it.
Bluntly speaking, the bishops, and their Protestant and Jewish colleagues, long ago showed they were willing to give up a large measure of freedom in return for Federal money or the satisfaction of endorsing programs which will surely end all those problems which the Bible tells us will always be with us. We have a bloated and non-workable welfare-warfare state partly because the leaders of the American Catholic Church, not just bishops, thought they’d found an easy way to feel good about themselves and to pretend to bring Heaven on Earth. Thus, there was no time and energy to spare to figure out if these feel-good programs were good for the American people, as individuals or as members of communities. Time was a’wastin’. A New Deal was needed so that everyone could have 2 Potted Chickens in the Nude World Order. Or something equally as intelligent as that.
American politicians have already measured the level of moral integrity and moral courage of the American Christian leaders and now they’re just negotiating the price of their cooperation and a few contractual details before inflicting the next humiliation upon the citizens of the United States, or inflicting far bloodier humiliations on the inhabitants of Southwestern Asia. Or maybe it’ll be Mexico or India or Angola next — there are growing rumors of the evil resident in those countries and our leaders are devoted to rooting out evil throughout the world. And the bishops will interrupt their battle for religious freedom long enough to pray for the success of another invasion or two. Your Excellencies, as an American Catholic, I plead with you to learn the meaning of the term `just-cause’ and to learn how to evaluate the flimsy excuses offered by warmongering and war-profiteering politicians. Those excuses have proven to be lies in all the recent wars and police actions of the American government.
While we’re at it, I might ask the Catholic bishops if they’d noticed that American invasions have recently been very effective at destroying ancient Christian communities? Is the strangely constrained religious freedom beloved by the American Catholic bishops of infinite value and the very existence of ancient Christian communities in Asia of no value at all? I fear that Americans, including Obama and the Catholic bishops, are the result of a people having more money than brains, more power than moral character.
We Americans wish to spread our freedoms and our goodness around the world and there’s nothing like a demolished fresh-water system or a city reduced to rubble and collateral corpses to teach the world how to live like us good Americans. Just so long as the American government doesn’t impose a health insurance plan on the Iranians that forces Iranian Catholics, if any survive, to pay for birth-control. Just promise us you won’t do that, President Obama, and we American Catholics are ready to go to Tehran with you. Or at least to sit in our living-rooms and watch young American soldiers kill and be killed for our viewing pleasure.
American politicians will tolerate an ill-tempered spasm on the part of American bishops because the politicians hold all the cards those bishops and their predecessors passed to them during the decades when works of charity and of social care, including the care of retired workers, came to be considered the responsibility of central governments primarily and the responsibility of subservient contracting agencies only secondarily. The American Catholic bishops, helped train the members of their flocks to become dependent upon the Federal government and to assume the leaders of that government are speaking truly when they say we need to invade another country that allegedly threatens us or to expand the not-yet implemented health-care plan to include needs or rights claimed by some substantial minority. Of course, the wrong sort of expansion leads to screams of moral outrage on the part of our Pandoras. “I didn’t mean to release that particular critter.”
I’m not claiming the American Catholic bishops are more cowardly or more hypocritical than the rest of us. Along with the other American Christian leaders, these bishops are little different from other American men. In general, we fail to protect our women and children and elderly against our governments, though we’ll support the murder of hundreds of thousands in other countries because of some ghostly criminals in the mountains of Afghanistan. Manly, aren’t we? We remind ourselves of John Wayne playing Davey Crockett. I’ll bet we’re impressing the other peoples of this small planet with our sheer, bare-chested manliness. I’ll bet we’re really impressing the God of Jesus Christ who told us to kill ragheads and gooks by the thousands, let government perverts violate women and children and elderly, and — above all — refuse to pay for birth-control and sterilizations.