Catholic Hospitals: We're Okay With Health-Care Compromise
So this could be an important break in this impasse - assuming the Vatican doesn't get involved, that is. Completely aside from the still-stunning concept that some theologies are enshrined in legislation controlling women, that is:
WASHINGTON — In an apparent split with Roman Catholic bishops over the abortion-financing provisions of the proposed health care overhaul, the nation’s Catholic hospitals have signaled that they back the Senate’s compromise on the issue, raising hopes of breaking an impasse in Congress and stirring controversy within the church.
The Senate bill, approved Thursday morning, allows any state to bar the use of federal subsidies for insurance plans that cover abortion and requires insurers in other states to divide subsidy money into separate accounts so that only dollars from private premiums would be used to pay for abortions.
Just days before the bill passed, the Catholic Health Association, which represents hundreds of Catholic hospitals across the country, said in a statement that it was “encouraged” and “increasingly confident” that such a compromise “can achieve the objective of no federal funding for abortion.” An umbrella group for nuns followed its lead.
The same day, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops called the proposed compromise “morally unacceptable.”
I find the Bishops, the churches and most of the religious “morally unacceptable.”
The fantasical nature of religious belief is not grown up enough to concern itself with medical issues.
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow
man, and I hate people like that! " ~ Tom Lehrer (1928 - )
One of the best quotes I've read in our local paper: "Freedom of religion also means I have freedom from YOUR religion." The very idea of the VATICAN having any say whatsoever regarding OUR health care reform totally pisses me off.
Organized religion has resulted in more death and violence in the history of the human race than any other cause.
Yeah, totally!
Why should the leaders of Roman Catholicism have any say whatsoever about the activities at a Roman Catholic hospital?! That's ridiculous!
Don't they have some alter boys to bugger?
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
This is a subject that needs to be discussed openly about when a child is born he has an opportunity to grow up and be one of those young boys.
made me laugh out loud.
As is always the case....the Catholic Church is against something...UNLESS it can make money at it. Then..it focuses on gay marriage or some other "trivial matter."
to 3/5ths status and curtails abortions.
This isn't 1410.
If the church was in charge of medicine - they'd be still charging for an exorcism to treat epilepsy.
A fever would be a sure sign of the devil and if you're so sick you might die - they'd be willing to prey on you and your family.
Can you feel the love?
"I know that there are people who do not love their fellow
man, and I hate people like that! " ~ Tom Lehrer (1928 - )
prayer therapy?
Pretty sure that got yanked or rejected. That was something Christian Science people (an example of a religious group that doesn't even get past its own name before becoming an oxymoron) pushed for, but I'm pretty sure some amount of reason prevailed on this.
nice. I just hadn't heard the latest on this.
is that this is quite possible with a convoluted health care bill. Government is power, not logic. In a thousand-plus page bill there are so many fine details dictating how money can be applied, and of course misapplied, that it's probably well within the realm of possibility that a pressure group could arrange it so the money be spent on exorcisms. Who can say? Sort of like the way publicly funded art ends up being jesus painted in urine or a guy with a bullwhip in his backside. I bet when they passed the bill to fund the arts, they believed they were helping to fund potential American DaVincis. And look how it turned out. Once the mechanism is in place to to extract money and control from private parties, that money and control is up for grabs. That's just how it works.
The purpose of Crooks and Liars is to keep small-minded individuals thinking in terms of the left vs. right garbage they've been trained to respond to.
This is why the bill needs to be longer. Every little niggling thing needs to be clarified.
Why should Catholic Bishops have so much say in what happens to people's lives, particularly women's? If we obey the Catholic Bishops so much, are we going to give the same importance to Muslim mullahs and Hindu priests, Jewish rabbis' and Buddhist monks' beliefs?
Why so much importance to one religion? Don't we have some rules about separation of church and state?
if it isn't obvious.
10 years ago people would have laughed if asked "will we see a day when Religion has more influence in Government then the people themselves?"
sigh. why did we need to comprise with them? what would happen if they just said no to them?
on your Doctor to make sure he's not a Palin and Beck supporter.
LOL . . "school of guilt and shame".
How bout them Catholic hospitals where they have a model of Jesus nailed to the cross hung up in your room.
Nothing like a positive message to pep up your spirits.
since they are doing Gods work?
Gods now wearing a grey suit with a jaunty Hermès tie with little red bicycles on it.
(.)
Corruption favors the wealthy.
So wait, the Federal gov't is supposed to fund religiously affiliated hospitals, even though they don't perform the tasks the gov't says are legal and necissary as conditions for payment? And this is a problem? In that case, why doesn't the fed gov't pay people every time a driveway is laid on private property? It's road work, the gov't pays for road work. So what if it doesn't serve the public good.
the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops hypocritical and “morally unacceptable.”
I was about to post, word for word, the same thing.
I just want the Bishops or any religious figures to STAY OUT OF MY LIFE.
...I knew someone else's religion was dictating my health care choices.
After all, why should you or I be allowed to base our health care choices on rational medical science, when those choices could be governed by the whims of superstitious cretins who believe that an old guy with a beard would prefer that people die prematurely rather than have socialized medicine sully their eternal souls with Pink Medicine? Don't we want the Baby Jeebus running the show so that private insurance companies can simultaneously deny people care while rewarding their CEOs with huge bonuses. After all, which is the greater good, saved lives or corporate lords using their bonuses to buy secord, third, or even fourth homes. No brainer!
As far as you and I and most of the people who read this blog are concerned, the separation of church and state is so obvious and complete, that we don't even see why most Catholic countries have historically mostly insisted on at least a veto on who gets to be a bishop within their borders.
Well, maybe we begin to see the wisdom of this arrangement, when, no matter what you or I or most readers of this blog take for granted, the One, True and Universal Church does not acknowledge any separation of church and state. Catholic culture in this country may be such that, of course even the Catholic hospitals have no objection to the compromise on abortion, which is tilted rightward. But the bishops aren't representative of American Catholicism. They're the Pope's men. And we're on our second reactionary Pope in a row, with no end in sight, since the Cardinals who will choose the next Pope are also the appointees of these two reactionary Popes.
Time for a concordat that lets the US govt veto Rome's choices for bishop and cardinal in this country. Oh my God, you say, we can't politicize religion in this country! Well, like class warfare, it's being done already, just entirely from the other side. Time for our side to at least defend itself.
... for alter boys.
(oh snap!)
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