Fortnight for Freedom, Day 1

Archbishop Lori

Fortnight for Freedom is the name being given to a 14-day campaign that the U.S. Catholic Bishops have organized, starting June 21, 2012, and running through the Fourth of July. Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, my own archdiocese, is the force behind it. It is billed as a campaign for religious freedom or religious liberty. Archbishop Lori and his supporters believe the freedom of the Catholic Church in the U.S. is under assault. Principally, it seems they object to the recent mandate of the Obama administration that agencies of the Church provide access to health coverage for their employees that includes cost-free contraception.

I, in turn, object to the Fortnight for Freedom and the reasoning that has brought it about. I believe the compromise worked out by HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, according to which the insurance companies will pay for contraception coverage and the Church-as-coverage-provider will not, decidedly is enough of a nod toward religious freedom to make Fortnight for Freedom a case of overkill.

More is going on here, though, than just a dispute over health care coverage. I think this is a battle in a renewed, even stepped up, culture war, and I find myself on the opposite side of this conflict from Archbishop Lori and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

For me, it's not just whether women who work for the Church or its institutional subsidiaries should have artificial means of birth control covered in their health plans. It's more about whether the Church is right to oppose using birth control in the first place. I think it's wrong for the Church to oppose it outright.

I also support legalized abortion, same-sex marriage, and a wider ambit of sexual expression than the Church would condone. To me, unmarried sex, homosexual relations, masturbation, and other taboo forms of sexual expression are not necessarily sins.

If I'm right, then the reason is, I think, that the world has changed fundamentally since the Church worked out its teachings. Those teachings were once correct, but for a different world than the one we live in now.

I call the change a fundamental one for this reason: We have in my lifetime experienced a huge revolution in sexual attitudes and behaviors, one which would once have surely put us on the road to social chaos. Indeed, the old teachings were designed for a world in which sexual strictures were absolutely necessary. They were a vital strategy meant to uphold the traditional family as the nucleus of social order. Had Christians not been taught to toe the line sexually, who knows what an abyss of social chaos would have ensued?

But the old taboos have, in effect, been retired by our society today. For example, a great many Catholic women have obtained abortions, and an even greater number have enjoyed sex without the benefit of marriage, have used artificial means of birth control, have secretly masturbated, etc. Catholic men have likewise violated the sexual strictures traditionally placed upon them, and have often done so with great abandon. The same is true of non-Catholic women and men. And the social order has not degenerated into chaos. Repeat, not.

I'm not saying there should be no moral or ethical limits to sexual behavior. I'm just saying that we need, whether Catholics or not, a new framework for Christian sexual ethics. The old framework no longer applies.

That's what I personally believe, but clearly Archbishop Lori and a great many other Catholics inside and outside the Church hierarchy believe quite differently. However, unless we take the stance that the position promulgated by the hierarchy simply is, by definition, what the Church believes, the situation is actually a more complex one than that. If the attitudes and practices of Catholics in general constitute the "belief" of the Church, then (for example) the mandate for contraceptive coverage is not inconsistent with religious freedom in this country as it impinges on the Catholic Church.