The American culture wars are never far from the surface but on Friday they moved to a new level with the publication of a full-page advertisement in the New York Times that blames the Catholic Church for most of the world’s ills.
It is titled: “It’s Time To Consider Quitting the Catholic Church.”
The ad features a cartoon of an insane bishop, screaming at the top of his lungs over the issue of birth control pills.
To the right is a disgusted looking woman with her arms crossed saying, “It’s hard to swallow.”
The tag line at the bottom of the page says: “Please, Exit En Mass.”
The ad was taken out by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, an American atheist group, which, according to their site, is a home for freethinkers, atheists, agnostics and other skeptics.”
It is a direct response to the reaction of mainly Catholic and orthodox Protestants to the Obama contraception mandate that will force religious universities and hospitals to provide free birth control pills, morning after pills and sterilization services even if it goes the tenets of the faith.
Particularly vocal on the issue has been Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York and head of the powerful United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
It is also the American Catholic Church that has the preponderance of universities and hospitals in the United States.
They have protested loudly and are in the midst of trying to get the Congress to stop what they call an assault on their religious liberty.
At the moment there are at least seven states attorneys general that have taken the federal government to court over the issue and the Becket Fund For Religious Liberty is representing both Catholic and evangelical schools that are opposed to the mandate.
The group that placed the ad may have a fight with the Church over mandatory contraception service for its employees but it goes much further:
* The ad asks, among other things, why “liberal” and “nominal” Catholics are “aiding and abetting a church that has repeatedly engaged in a crusade to ban contraception?
Really? The Church and allied Protestant groups are asking that religious institutions not be forced to provide services that go against their faith. They are not calling for a nationwide ban on contraception.
* It accuses the Church of creating acute misery, poverty, needless suffering, unwanted pregnancies, overpopulation, social evils and deaths.
Really? The Catholic Church in the U.S. feeds for free half its hungry citizens. Go into most major cities and North America and there will Catholic outreach for the sick and the homeless. In Africa, the Church has provided medicine, hospitals, schools and compassion. I could be wrong but I doubt if the Freedom from Religion Foundation has set up a hospital in Africa.
* It then adds that the “church hysterically claims that secular medical policy is on religious liberty.”
If the writers of this ad read their own Constitution they would find out it is an assault on religious freedom. Even Barack Obama has promised to look at a way to let religious institutions off the hook — though many doubt his sincerity.
* It then goes on to say, “Why put up with an institution that discriminates against half of humanity?”
They are referring to the roughly 600 million women who make up about half the Church. But women in the Church are there because they want to be and they serve as missionaries, nurses, doctors, theologians and teachers — among other roles.
Bill Donohue, head of the U.S. Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, has often been known to use his own hyperbole.
But in this case, Mr. Donohue is dead right:
“Never has there been a more vicious anti-Catholic advertisement in a prominent American newspaper than the one in today’s New York Times by Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF). The demonization of Catholicism is palpable.”
Just imagine if this ad appeared about any other identifiable group.
We would never hear the end of it.
But Catholics, it seems, are fair game.