Archdiocese Pays for Health Plan That Covers Birth Control | Later On

It looks as though the Catholic church simply doesn?t like Obama and are using the contraception provisions of Obamacare to attack him, when the Church has been paying for contraception for years. Sharon Otterman writes in the NY Times:

As the nation?s leading Roman Catholic bishop, Cardinal?Timothy M. Dolan?of New York has been spearheading the fight against a provision of the new?health care law?that requires employers, including some that are religiously affiliated, to cover?birth control?in employee health plans.

But even as?Cardinal Dolan insists?that requiring some religiously affiliated employers to pay for?contraception?services would be an unprecedented, and intolerable, government intrusion on religious liberty, the archdiocese he heads has quietly been paying for such coverage, albeit reluctantly and indirectly, for thousands of its unionized employees for over a decade.

The Archdiocese of New York?has previously acknowledged?that some local Catholic institutions offer health insurance plans that include contraceptive drugs to comply with state law; now, it is also acknowledging that the archdiocese?s own money is used to pay for a union health plan that covers contraception and even abortion?for workers at its affiliated?nursing homes?and clinics.

?We provide the services under protest,? said Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the Archdiocese of New York.

As president of the United States Council of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal Dolan has consistently rejected similar arm?s-length compromises offered by the Obama administration, which has agreed to exempt many religious institutions from the provision, but not religiously affiliated employers like schools and hospitals that employ people of many faiths and do not exist primarily to inculcate religious values.

In February, the bishops opposed a proposal that would have allowed employees of those nonexempt religious institutions to receive contraceptive coverage through policies paid for directly by insurance companies. The New York Archdiocese is also suing the federal government to stop the mandate.

?There remains the possibility that ministries may yet be forced to fund and facilitate such morally illicit activities,? Cardinal Dolan said at the time. . .

Continue reading. I truly detest how the Catholic church has always tried to force non-believers to follow the same church teachings that believers obey. It?s arrogant beyond belief. Especially since the Catholic church does not itself follow its teachings, unless the rape of children is considered good form. (I realize that the pedophiles were outliers?but those who protected and enabled the pedophiles were not: they were following Church beliefs and policies.)

The Catholic church is not an organization that should be involved in making decisions for others. Their track record is abysmal.

Source: http://leisureguy.wordpress.com/2013/05/27/archdiocese-pays-for-health-plan-that-covers-birth-control/

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