They lead a church that claims to stand on the side of the sick and the poor, the meek who shall inherit the earth. But in the course of a single week, the bishops of the Roman Catholic Church proclaimed themselves willing to see health-care denied to millions of uninsured Americans, and to yank the social-service rug out from under the feet of tens of thousands of urban poor in the nation's capital -- all to serve the bishops' obsession with the sex lives and reproductive organs of others.
The church's week of shame began with the bishops' role in creating the monster that is the Stupak amendment to the health-care reform bill passed last weekend by the House of Representatives, when the bishops refused to bless a compromise made between pro-choice and anti-abortion Democrats in the language of the bill. (Without the bishops' blessing, anti-choice Democrats vowed to vote against the bill, so Speaker Nancy Pelosi was strong-armed into allowing Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., to bring an anti-choice amendment to the floor.) Finishing off the week with a brutal bang, the church threatened to sever its social service contracts with the District of Columbia if the city council of Washington, D.C., passes a measure legalizing same-sex marriage -- a move that would throw services to 68,000 of the poorest and most vulnerable citizens of the nation's capital into chaos.
This week in the life of the church, says Frances Kissling, the long-time Catholic feminist activist and current visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania Center for Bioethics, demonstrated the church's "willingness to just be a bully."
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Catholic Church Threatens to Withhold Critical Social Services to Win Cultural Debate
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Catholic Bishops Put Sex Obsession Ahead of Mission to the Sick and the Poor
By Adele M. Stan
AlterNet, November 16, 2009
Straight to the Source
