This evening, I saw on my Facebook page that President Obama and HHS Secretary Sebelius had announced religious exemptions to the HHS mandate for insurance companies to cover birth control. There had been a petition on the White House website (which was a pain to login to and sign) asking for the mandate to be rescinded and there were lawsuits from Belmont Abbey and Colorado Christian College. In response to those, the administration threw religious organizations a bone and announced the exemptions.

Apparently, this isn’t enough for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. They’ve issued a statement nitpicking the announcement from the White House. I found this out after one of the people on Quick Takes (who is remaining nameless because I’d rather pull my fingernails out than give her or her minions blog traffic) left the following snippy comment on my blog:

I don’t know why you’ve been going around to Catholic blogs and posting false information, but the religious exemption in the HHS mandate is worthless.

Um yeah… way to be civil, princess. It’s the kind of thing (coupled with the fact that you’ve proven yourself incapable of actually having a civil discussion on your blog) that gets you I.P. banned. *sigh* I’ve really missed playing with my *.htaccess file lately.

For the record, the exemptions to the mandate are not worthless — they’re on par with the religious exemptions provided for military service and social security. Quakers are conscientious objectors and yet they still pay taxes that support the U.S. military. Some Anabaptist groups consider Social Security to be akin to gambling (no, I am not making this up) and they can opt out of contributing to it even though their taxes are paying other peoples’ Social Security.

I’m sorry but the Roman Catholic Church is not that special. If we are to provide healthcare to everyone (which they should really be in favor of doing considering their history of charity), Catholics are going to have to bite the bullet on this one and pay. As it stands as of today, churches do not have to pay their insurers to cover contraception. For example, I’m a pastor’s wife and my denomination has the right not to pay our insurer to cover my birth control pills. (Oh yeah… gonna get hate mail for that one.) I know that it doesn’t exempt Catholic hospitals but it would exempt Catholic colleges if all their staff members are Catholic. For Evangelical schools, it works because all staff and professors have to sign a faith statement.

And for the love of all things holy, would people please stop acting like this is a Catholic pogrom? Nobody is being jailed, beaten, executed, or thrown to the lions over this issue. If you want to talk about persecution, talk to Christians in places like China, Iran, Pakistan, Nigeria, Egypt, and Malaysia. You guys aren’t losing your 501(c)3 funding for telling your members not to vote a certain way by denying them the Eucharist (which is a violation of that particular I.R.S. statute). You get to keep the seal of Confession — every other clergy person has to report it if someone tells us that they’ve harmed themselves or others. In other words, you have a lot of religious freedoms that others don’t get to have. Going off about how this is a Catholic persecution gives the impression that y’all are whiny and will not play ball unless things are exactly YOUR way. I can tell you straight up that it does not leave a good taste in peoples’ mouths.

Oh yeah, comments are disabled on this post and any comments placed on other posts referencing this one will be deleted. This is one of those things that is my opinion and is not negotiable.