Obama 'insults intelligence'

Revised contraceptive mandate prompts reaction from Catholic groups

U.S. President Barack Obama makes a statement at the White House in Washington Feb. 10 about the federal mandate on contraceptive coverage. Standing next to Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, Obama outlined a plan that would allow religious employers not to offer such services to their employees but would compel the insurance companies who provide their plans to do so.

Is it perhaps time to dump the idea that Catholics must always argue issues from a secular perspective, as though their faith isn't what drives their actions? Is this perhaps an issue on which to start making the argument that separation of church and state means that the state must stop interfering in moral pronouncements (such as that artificial contraception is not immoral), because they are the legitimate domain of the church?

A former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican and the president of The Catholic University of America were among 300 signers of a letter who called U.S. President Barack Obama's revision to a federal contraceptive mandate "unacceptable" and said it remains a "grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand."
Questions have been raised over how the revision announced by the president will pertain to the many dioceses and Catholic organizations that are self-insured and whether it could still force entities morally opposed to contraception to pay for such services.

The letter signed by former Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard and Catholic University's John Garvey, along with professors and other academics, and Catholic and other religious leaders, said it was "an insult to the intelligence of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other people of faith and conscience to imagine that they will accept an assault on their religious liberty if only it is covered up by a cheap accounting trick."

For full story see The B.C. Catholic website.