Throw Out All of Obamacare Because of Contraception?

Chad Blair/Civil Beat

“People are suffering. All over the place, people are suffering.” —Sr. Margaret Farley, professor emerita, Yale Divinity School

According to the National Catholic Reporter story, a keen awareness of people’s suffering is what drives the Mercy sister and celebrated theologian to question whether power should determine questions of truth. Should we not, she asks, be prepared to modify, maybe even let go, of conclusions we may have drawn from prior levels of understanding as we learn more about ourselves and the world around us? Instead, Farley was publicly rebuked by the Vatican for views that supposedly run counter to Church teaching in her book, Just Love: A Framework for Christian Sexual Ethics.

The questions Farley asks came to mind as I read Chad Blair’s thoughtful commentary on the so-called Rally for Religious Liberty held recently at the State Capitol. It is deeply disquieting, as a practicing Catholic, to see those who have official power in my church stand with people from TFP carrying banners proclaiming “God’s Law Comes First: Repeal Socialist Obamacare.”

Thirty million people covered under Obamacare would suffer greatly if the law were repealed. But for TFP, the group dedicated to the defense of “tradition, family, property,” 30 million people without health insurance is perhaps “not the issue,” as U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell recently asserted in a Fox interview.

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