Good thing they're infallible

Otherwise, they'd seem ridiculous.

Catholic bishops are way out-of-step with their flock on many issues.  To take merely two of them, they're out-of-step, first of all, on homosexuality and gays.  The most gay-friendly people on earth are Catholic and mainline protestant lay people.  Every poll says so.

They've been out-of-step on contraception since 1968, ever since Pope Paul VI, in a major flinch, refused to endorse the findings of his own papal commission on the subject, and chose to stick with the traditional position on birth control.

The US bishops are now aghast at the idea that federal health insurance regulations require coverage for contraception.  Access to contraception is part of a total health package that enables people better to plan for their families, and also brings down maternal and infant mortality rates.  

The provision applies to Catholic institutions, if they employ non-Catholics.  If they employ only Catholics, they do not need to provide contraception coverage.  

In other words, the church can't impose its teachings on people who aren't Catholic.

Yet, the church frames the issue the other way around, i.e. that it is their religious freedom which is being compromised.  The bishops are no longer able to tell people what to do, in an area in which they have no competence or (it is said) practice, and, in their minds, this constitutes religious persecution.

This in a church where a strong majority of people, on the order of 80-90%, practice birth control.  The bishops would impose on the entire country a practice which their own people overwhelmingly reject.  Is this Bizarro World?

Comments

[Hypatia]

I think the percentage is closer to 98%.They had a chance to take care of this in the Sixties, but they chose to go with the minority report on contraception, and instead of being ahead of the curve they fell way behind.
And they wonder why no one pays attention to church teachings on the matter.

[John Petty]

Yeah, Paul VI flinched.