Sunday, July 27, 2014

Contraception and Conscience


The recent Supreme Court decision regarding Hobby Lobby has sparked relief and anger, depending upon which side of the issue people stand. Basically our highest court respected the religious conscience of certain sized small businesses to refuse obtaining health insurance which included contraceptive and abortifacient prescriptions for their employees. Whether the same kind of decision will be applied to larger organizations, such as EWTN, is yet to be seen. Hopefully it will go favorably and permit freedom of conscience in all cases.

Why is this a problem? The opponents claim that the decision was one against women. On the contrary it is for women. First of all, no one is forced to work for a company that does not provide contraceptive coverage in its health insurance. Secondly, there are a host of negative effects of artificial contraception. Moreover, has anyone considered how much the availability of contraceptive devises has engendered disrespect for women, that is, seeing them merely as sex objects?

The artificial prevention of birth and abortion make billions of dollars for those in this business as well as for their stock holders. Anything that threatens to reduce their profits is not tolerated. We need a reality check here. We need to have true concern for each other as persons and not as profit makers.

Each person has a right to follow his or her religion as long as it does not hold principles harmful to others, This is freedom of religion which involves freedom of conscience. We need to respect others and their faiths.

Over the next few weeks I will offer what I wrote concerning this issue a few years ago. Hopefully, we will see why the Church has consistently remained the only church to proscribe the use of artificial means of contraception.

Father Stanley




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