Obama's Gamble - Has he just lost Catholic America?

[toxic avenger]

President Obama's Affordable Care Act requires Catholic and other religious institutions such as schools, hospitals, etc., to provide their employees with cover for contraception, abortifaceants, and sterilisation. In essence it is forcing them to go against their conscience, to fund things they find utterly immoral. One in six hospitals in America is Catholic.

A decision has essentially been made to discard the Catholic Church and its orthodox adherents. It has been decided that Obama needs to mobilise the 'progressive liberal' support he has and forget about practising and devout Catholics, many of Irish, Italian, Polish, and Hispanic ethnic origin. Obama has given the Church a year's space to comply, but as Archbishop Dolan of New York, an erstwhile fan of Obama's, has said, that 'The president is giving us a year to figure out how to violate our own consciences'.

Essentially, the new law forces them either to forfeit their most fundamental beliefs or to face prohibitive penalties — or to close hospitals, schools and other charities, with catastrophic consequences for millions who depend them. For perspective, one in six patients in the United States is cared for in a Catholic hospital.
The Obama administration has given Catholics a year to adapt to the new rule, which is a laughably obtuse approach. The Catholic Church is a 2,000-year-old institution that has faced more severe persecutions than a government mandate to provide funding for morning-after pills. But this politically inept and morally fungible step does reveal utter disregard for religious liberty.
The war is on. Nearly 150 bishops (almost 80 percent of dioceses) have spoken out against the Obama mandate. Catholic voters, who helped put Barack Obama in office (54 percent to 45 percent) in 2008, may not be with him this time. Even those who supported his 2009 Notre Dame commencement speech against the protests of other powerful Catholics are protesting now.
These immediate battles may be about abortion or contraception, but ultimately they are about whether we stand firm on our nation’s core beliefs in freedom of conscience and religious liberty. The stakes could not be higher and, though surely political, the endgame shouldn’t be about Republican or Democratic war spoils.

Komen, Catholics and the cost of conscience - The Washington Post

There are a number of issues here - should Catholic institutions be required to pay for things which violate their consciences or else shut down? Practically speaking, if they do have to shut down, what happens to the huge proportion of the education and health sectors now served by Catholic institutions?

And has Obama just lost himself the election? His gamble is that the sort of people who give a toss about such things wouldn't have voted for him anyway, but I know that is not true - there is as huge working class Catholic base of support for the Democrats, and many are going to feel betrayed and outraged by this decision to discard them. I can't help feeling he has just screwed up on an enormous scale, and doesn't even realise it yet.

[Garland Names the Skies]

Hardly. Have you seen the cut of the people he's up against?

[Sync]

Of course it hasn't lost him the election. If you've an issue with a president who's forcing you to provide basic cover for religious reasons, then you've got an issue with a president who's pro-choice and wouldn't have voted for him anyway. As for the "Working class Catholic base", the majority of them will use contraception as well. Which is now more likely to be provided for them.

Obama's future isn't going to rise or fall based on the religious right.

[toxic avenger]

Of course it hasn't lost him the election. If you've an issue with a president who's forcing you to provide basic cover for religious reasons, then you've got an issue with a president who's pro-choice and wouldn't have voted for him anyway. As for the "Working class Catholic base", the majority of them will use contraception as well. Which is now more likely to be provided for them.

Obama's future isn't going to rise or fall based on the religious right.

I think a lot of people have this misconception about Catholics, be they working class or otherwise. I'm a socialist, and would never vote for a right-wing candidate in normal circumstances. If I had lived in America in 2008 I could have voted for Obama. I now find myself looking at a Presdent who would have no trouble forcing me to violate my conscience. Also, yes many Catholics decide to use contraception themselves, but will balk at the abortifaceant requirements. They will also be very culturally aware of the bigger issue - that this is an attack on their right to freedom of conscience by the government.

The Catholic 'Right' is used as a term of abuse for those who accept their faith's tenets in full. That would make me 'Right' too. Yet every political and economic opinion I have is far to the left of most people on this board.

There's another issue too - all religious people in America will look at this and see that their right to their conscience could be discarded in the same way. This has already become a major tool for the Republican candidates in the primaries. I don't think people understand the gravity of what is happening here. I think that this is a gamble that will hurt Obama.

[Garland Names the Skies]

I think a lot of people have this misconception about Catholics, be they working class or otherwise. I'm a socialist, and would never vote for a right-wing candidate in normal circumstances. If I had lived in America in 2008 I could have voted for Obama. I now find myself looking at a Presdent who would have no trouble forcing me to violate my conscience. Also, yes many Catholics decide to use contraception themselves, but will balk at the abortifaceant requirements. They will also be very culturally aware of the bigger issue - that this is an attack on their right to freedom of conscience by the government.

The Catholic 'Right' is used as a term of abuse for those who accept their faith's tenets in full. That would make me 'Right' too. Yet every political and economic opinion I have is far to the left of most people on this board.

There's another issue too - all religious people in America will look at this and see that their right to their conscience could be discarded in the same way. This has already become a major tool for the Republican candidates in the primaries. I don't think people understand the gravity of what is happening here. I think that this is a gamble that will hurt Obama.

Your thesis seems to assume that one might not pay a political price from others if you are seen to toady to people who think they should be exempted from laws that are applied to everyone else. If nobody else gets a veto on laws they don't like being applied to them then they might take a dim view of you if you start giving sweeties to people for doing nothing other than demonstrating their ability to pronounce the word "conscience" as thought they were the first to discover the word

[H.R. Haldeman]

Obama probably knows that most Catholics are far less doctrinaire in exercising their religious beliefs than are Protestant Evangelicals. Catholics can more easily decouple nominally hot-button moral issues from a candidate's wider manifesto, unlike the Evangelicals for whom one single slip on a moral or religious issues poisons a candidate's entire platform.

[neiphin]

I think a lot of people have this misconception about Catholics, be they working class or otherwise. I'm a socialist, and would never vote for a right-wing candidate in normal circumstances. If I had lived in America in 2008 I could have voted for Obama. I now find myself looking at a Presdent who would have no trouble forcing me to violate my conscience. Also, yes many Catholics decide to use contraception themselves, but will balk at the abortifaceant requirements. They will also be very culturally aware of the bigger issue - that this is an attack on their right to freedom of conscience by the government.

The Catholic 'Right' is used as a term of abuse for those who accept their faith's tenets in full. That would make me 'Right' too. Yet every political and economic opinion I have is far to the left of most people on this board.

There's another issue too - all religious people in America will look at this and see that their right to their conscience could be discarded in the same way. This has already become a major tool for the Republican candidates in the primaries. I don't think people understand the gravity of what is happening here. I think that this is a gamble that will hurt Obama.

is he making abortion compulsery ?
i think you are scaremongering or simple minded and fooled by right wing brainwashing

[toxic avenger]

Obama probably knows that most Catholics are far less doctrinaire in exercising their religious beliefs than are Protestant Evangelicals. Catholics can more easily decouple nominally hot-button moral issues from a candidate's wider manifesto, unlike the Evangelicals for whom one single slip on a moral or religious issues poisons a candidate's entire platform.

That seems to be the gamble. I'm not sure it's a good one, but who knows? I am inclined to believe he has gone too far with this judgement.

[owedtojoy]

Obama conceded to the religious by banning a morning-after pill for under-17s, even though the scientific case supported it. In dong so he angered his liberal base.

Obama: Morning-After Pill Decision 'Common Sense'

Is there a prize for the silliest thread about President Obama?

[toxic avenger]

is he making abortion compulsery ?
i think you are scaremongering or simple minded and fooled by right wing brainwashing

Nope, and I didn't say that, but thanks for the insults anyway. He is requiring such institutions to cover employees who want them to pay for artificial contraception and for abortifaceants - which is against everything they stand for. They will have to close down their schools, adoption agencies, hospitals, and all other welfare services they provide if they don't want to do it. Thus there is a chance that the American state will have to spend an awful lot of money stepping in where those services are withdrawn.

And what about the wider consequences? If some of the more rabidly anti-Catholic posters could put their prejudice to one side for a moment - is it right that these people should be put in such a position whereby they have to violate their consciences, particularly in a country that enshrines freedom of religion and conscience in its constitution?