Feminist Looking Glass

I’ve had a lot of negative things to say about the Catholic Church–my latest being this.  And Emily wrote earlier today about the church’s political heavy-handedness in the health care legislation and quoted Katha Pollitt for the church’s violation of the ” spirit of the ban on electoral meddling by tax-exempt religious institutions.”  She also pointed out the church’s threat to withhold social services in Washington, D.C., if the city goes through with its plan to allow same-sex marriage.

And now we have the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops putting out a “pastoral letter” “affirming” that the Catholic church defines marriage between one man and one woman, “sex is meant for procreation,” and “redefining marriage to allow same-sex unions would damage the common good and would ignore the proper role of husbands and wives.”  (The proper role of husbands and wives????)

But here’s a religious person who has reasonable things to say about the issues and how the Catholic Church is failing to consider the “moral imperative” of providing adequate health care to all people.  Appearing on Countdown with Keith Olbermann, Rev. Welton Gaddy, president of the Interfaith Alliance, talks about how the Catholic Church fails to meet the “moral imperative” when it says that it will not support a health care bill if there is any provision for abortion.  (Here is the video.)

Olbermann rightly points out that abortion is discussed in terms of morality, but health care is not.  Gaddy makes a lot of good points.  He says that “the United States Congress is commissioned not to legislate sectarian morality but to legislate policies that are good for the whole nation.”  He also says that anyone who says they are “pro-life” has an obligation to consider the lives of adults as well as of a fetus and that the health care legislation is “pro-life” in that respect.  Abortion should not be “the moral issue that trumps all other moral issues.”

When asked how the Catholic threat to stop all services in Washington, D.C., if a same-sex marriage bill is passed “makes sense” from a moral perspective, Gaddy says that it doesn’t make any sense.  He ends by saying that “within the Christian community, healing is a priority and efforts to establish healing are in the best interests of all people.”

So, it’s nice to know that there are some religious figures who have moral positions that are not plowed under by the issues of abortion and same-sex marriage.  If only the Catholic church would pay attention to the needs of all Americans.