Posted on 10/20/2006 6:40:09 AM PDT by presidio9
Catholic and other religious social service groups must provide contraceptive coverage to their employees even if they consider contraception a sin, according to yesterday's ruling by the state's highest court.
The 6-0 decision by the state Court of Appeals hinged on defining Catholic Charities and the other nine religious groups suing the state to be social service agencies, rather than only operating as churches.
The organizations "believe contraception to be sinful," the decision states. "We must weigh against [their] interests in adhering to the tenets of their faith the state's substantial interest in fostering equality between the sexes, and in providing women with better health care."
The New York Catholic Conference is considering an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"We think this has never really been about contraception, we think it was to target the church and open the door for coverage of abortion," said Dennis Poust, spokesman for the Catholic conference.
The court said the fact that the organizations hire employees outside their faith is a critical factor and they deserve the rights sought under the law.
"That ought to be offensive to anyone of faith," Poust said.
"I think it reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of Catholicism, which teaches that to be saved, Catholics must perform works of mercy," Poust said. "Faith alone is not enough . . . and the way the church performs its works of mercy is through its Catholic Charities, its schools and its hospitals -
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
This is happening in Minneapolis...not New York.
It's about LIFE.....contraceptives stop LIFE....the Catholic Church knows that LIFE is God's gift to us and we should do nothing unnatural to stop it. Now do you understand.
Why would they do that?
To avoid discrimination claims. And to hire the most qualified people for positions that are not directly involved in propagating the faith.
The accountant or secretary for the Catholic Charities adoption agency does not need to be Catholic. It's a question of job function.
SD
Your sister should run the numbers. If the new plan qualifies her for a health savings accounts the savings can be substantial.
If you don't like it, put us in jail.
I think it is not jail that is an issue. It is keepin' that government money flowing into the programs.
Good point and reason why 'Retainer Fee Medicine' should be embraced.
http://www.ocmetro.com/NEW_SITE/current_issue/feature_story.php
You will see alot of criticism of retainer medicine aka 'concierge medicine' that it is only for the rich, but that is due to having started in the high dollar world of professional sports.
Now however, retainer medicine is being discovered by many many MDs as a way to rid their business of the middleman as they find that better patient care can be more affordably delivered by eliminating mountains of paperwork and phonetime arguing for insurance coverage.
Retainer fee medicine coupled with catastrophic insurance is the way to go. Please read up on it and spread the word. But caution that there is a huge ongoing fight as powerful monied interests seek to discredit it.
And as this article illustrates and as you pointed out, the unintended consequence is no health insurance.
One more tidbit worth knowing: the unholy alliance between health insurer<->employer and employee started in WWII when wages were frozen. To atract and retain employees, employers responded by offering an expanded benefits package to include paid visits to the doctor. Insurers found it profitable as employers naturally selected for hire only healthy persons, the 'healthy demographic'. The unemployed population was ignored until the senior citizen demographic was pandered to in the late 1960s with the passage of Medicare. Bob Dole opposed the establishment of Medicare and offered a more sensible 'Eldercare' as he rightly predicted that Medicare would render the Federal Government insolvent.
Now the fight is over another 'healthy demographic', the 40 million waitresses, the busboys, the hairdressers etc., persons that don't currently pay for health insurance because they are young, healthy, have no need to pay. Universal Healthcare is a ploy to create a revenue stream from these 40 million young folks with the intention of relieving General Motors, Ford and many others of their unrealistic and unfunded employee health care plans.
That is why I offered to help her understand it.
Low cost pills are available on the internet
http://www.birthcontrol.com/product_display.aspx?productid=2
These are offered at about 20.00 a month. If one truly needs BC pills for medical reasons other than contraception, buy them if one works for the church.
As for the church having to buy them, it's just plain wrong. In my parish there are many women being treated for excessive bleeding and painful periods by NFP doctors. No BC pills.
When I was having periods that looked more like the floodgates were openned, I told my GYN no BC pills. It can be done if one is Catholic and follows the laws of the church.
Grave Consequences of Methods of Artificial Birth Control
From THe CAtholic Encyclopedia
17. Upright men can even better convince themselves of the solid grounds on which the teaching of the Church in this field is based, if they care to reflect upon the consequences of methods of artificial birth control. Let them consider, first of all, how wide and easy a road would thus be opened up towards conjugal infidelity and the general lowering of morality. Not much experience is needed in order to know human weakness, and to understand that men -- especially the young, who are so vulnerable on this point -- have need of encouragement to be faithful to the moral law, so that they must not be offered some easy means of eluding its observance. It is also to be feared that the man, growing used to the employment of anti-conceptive practices, may finally lose respect for the woman and, no longer caring for her physical and psychological equilibrium, may come to the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment, and no longer his respected and beloved companion.
Let it be considered also that a dangerous weapon would thus be placed in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies. Who could blame a government for applying to the solution of the problems of the community those means acknowledged to be licit for married couples in the solution of a family problem? Who will stop rulers from favoring, from even imposing upon their peoples, if they were to consider it necessary, the method of contraception which they judge to be more efficacious? In such a way men, wishing to avoid individual, family, or social difficulties encountered in the observance of the divine law, would reach the point of placing at the mercy of the intervention of public authorities the most personal and most reserved sector of conjugal intimacy.
Consequently, if the mission of generating life is not to be exposed to the arbitrary will of men, one must necessarily recognize insurmountable limits to the possibility of man's domination over his own body and its functions; limits which no man, whether a private individual or one invested with authority, may licitly surpass. And such limits cannot be determined otherwise than by the respect due to the integrity of the human organism and its functions, according to the principles recalled earlier, and also according to the correct understanding of the "principle of totality" illustrated by our predecessor Pope Pius XII [21].
Post #87 has a link showing the way forward.
Trust me on this one:
The drivers in Minneapolis will eventally realize that this practice is taking food off of their table and abandon it like they did in NY. Exceptionally devout muslims do not leave Sandland for the Great Satan.
C'mon. That's never going to happen.
SD
TMI
/sarcasm?
This is obscene.
There is no way that the Catholic Church should violate God's orders to them.
This is "render unto God the things that are God's."
Let the judges go to hell.....literally.
most of those social benefits come from adhering to beliefs promoted by the church.
If I ran a church and the government tried to nose its way in this way, that's exactly what I would do. Of course I'd also make sure there was a disaster / catastrophic fund available for church workers as well.
Regardless of the reason for taking birth control pills, the person using them should be fully advised about what the pill--depending on how it is compounded--really does.
--it sterilizes on a cyclical basis, meaning that it suppresses ovulation and that the "period" which comes after the cyclical cessation of the pill is a false period, and is technically called "break-through bleeding".
--depending on the particular pill taken, it can be a multi-spectrum type--a)suppress ovulation, failing to do that, b)prevent a conception from adhering to the uterine wall and surviving, c) expelling the "products" (so-called)of conception.. in short, it acts as an abortifacient.
--the patient should be given the full pharmaceutical read-out of the possible consequences of taking the particular pill they have been prescribed.
--the pill is nature-changing. To change the naure (natural state) of the human body is not a trivial matter.
In today's world of alternative medicine and daily increasing knowledge of new ways to treat physical problems, there are many answers to such problems as excessive periods. And there are many legitimate websites to give information and assistance.
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