What does Obama's Catholic miscalculation reveal about us?

From Jeff Munroe

It’s been over a week since the Obama administration blinked and came up with a way out of their self-inflicted fight with the Roman Catholic Church over mandatory birth control coverage.  The administration made a big mistake – they figured that since the great majority of Catholics don’t follow their church’s teaching on contraception (as high as 98% according to a survey cited on NPR), those same Catholics would stand up with the government against their own church. Bad idea. Somehow, the administration forgot that the best way to unite a fractured family is to attack it from the outside while at the same time not considering how united all American Catholics (and, indeed, all Americans) are on the issue of religious liberty.  After all, freedom of religion didn’t just slip into the Bill of Rights, it’s number one.  You think the ranking doesn’t mean anything?  Come on, you know number one is freedom of religion and speech.  You know that number two is the right to bear arms.  But what’s number three?  See what I mean?  I’ll pause while you Google it.

I’m humming the Jeopardy! theme, waiting for you.

Hope you feel better now remembering that soldiers can’t be forced into your home during a time of peace.  Don’t get too cozy. For a supposedly peace-loving nation we’re at war quite a bit.  Like right now.  But I digress . . .   

What I want to write about today isn’t the Bill of Rights or birth control as a political issue.  What fascinates me instead is the gap that I believe the administration initially stumbled over – the gap between what the church teaches on the one hand and the actual belief and behavior of most Catholics on the other. I’ve been wondering if there are similar situations in the RCA and CRC, wondering what gulfs exist between official church policy and the actual beliefs and behavior of the majority.

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