Here’s the answer of one Catholic to Ceci Humphreys’ Feb. 5 question, “Do you agree with your church on matters of reproductive freedom?”
Of course. The church teaches we all enjoy free will. If we abuse that gift, we suffer the natural consequences. How is that “harmful doctrine?”
Ceci exaggerates the influence of the church. Last I looked, American Catholic women’s views on contraception differed from those of the general population by about 0.2%. So much for controlling women.
The 21st-century church has very little real power in the US. Millions of Catholics are leaving the church and few of those who remain bother to go to church each Sunday. In my experience, those who remain engage in what I call “rutamirpmi” — imprimatur spelled backwards. Bishops rarely tell us what to do. Nowadays, we tell the bishops to change church teaching to conform to our secular political agendas.
If we Catholics had all that power Ceci claims, why did we let the federal government tax us to finance murders of an estimated mostly Catholic 75,000 Salvadorans, 200,000 Guatemalans and 35,000 to 80,000 Nicaraguans? How did we let the Catholic-educated Secretary of State explain the rapes and murders of four U.S. church women by suggesting the four may have been in gunfights with Salvadoran death squads? (How many nuns do you know that pack heat?) How did we let the federal government violate at least three of the four tenets of Catholic Just War Doctrine by invading Iraq? If our church is so powerful, why do we send billions of dollars to Israel, which offers free abortions?
Since I became a legal adult, the number of church officials telling me what to do is zero. That’s one fewer than what Ceci Humphreys did Feb. 5.
— Geoff Kennedy
Anchorage
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