<p>Unfortunately, many employers, including the federal government, do not provide paid maternity leave to employees. Have you contacted the Archdiocese to discuss the rationale for its lack of paid leave? And would you support your employer if it decided, say, to increase tuition at diocesan schools (or reduce financial aid) to make it possible to provide paid leave to new mothers? I would be curious to see the rationale for this policy, but I’m guessing that it’s largely a matter of money, or lack thereof, but perhaps there is another reason.</p>
<p>“Is this an undue burden…should I ask for a mandate that ALL pharmacies are required to participate?”</p>
<p>You can ask for any mandate you like. And if the benefit isn’t required by law, you can use your employee power with your insurance company or your employer, or your political power with your legislators. That’s the way it works. </p>
<p>“Mini: simply put, your point of view is that a religious belief has no place in healthcare.”</p>
<p>No. This is not MY point of view. This is the law. My personal view is that I get to decide what health care I should or should not avail myself of based on my beliefs, religious or otherwise. And if I want the law to be changed to allow for a religious exception, I can use the power at my disposal to work for it. </p>
<p>The clear majority of Catholics - and everyone else - believe that preventive health services, including contraception, should be mandated. If the elderly men in dresses want to convince their flock otherwise, they have plenty of opportunity to do so. They can also work to change the situation whereby Catholics have abortions out of proportion to their share of the population. I wish them luck - official pronouncements don’t seem to have done the trick.</p>
<p>You ask me about MY religious belief in health care? Well, put that way, I think it is absolutely immoral, a betrayal of my fundamental religious beliefs, against the core testimonies of my denomination - in Peace, Equality, Integrity, Community, and Stewardship - that people go without access to health care. And so I work to change the law so that they are.</p>
<p>I’ll add that my religious beliefs dictate that women be informed and have access to make their own choices, across the board. </p>
<p>I’m not surprised that an archdiocese would not offer paid maternity leave. There is a world of difference between being pro-woman/child and being pro-forced pregnancy/birth.</p>
<p>Source, please? Or does the ‘fact’ folks are users necessarily mean that they want a legal mandate?</p>
<p>btw: the more users there are, it makes such a policy more actuarially unsound. For example, if 100% of the population were users, does it then make sense to raise everyone’s insurance premiums by the amount of the usage, and add on top a processing fee to the insurance companies? It’s just shuffling money around, with the carriers taking a piece of the action. (Which is one reason why vision care - eye exams and glasses – is poor investment.)</p>
<p>Mini-You have mentioned in quite a few posts that “Catholics have abortions out of proportion…” I assume this was a self-reported stat. Do you have statistics on the percentage of abortions obtained by practicing Catholics in relation to their share of the population?</p>
<p>I was reared Methodist and married a Catholic. I ask the above question because, in my experience, people who were born Catholic, even if they haven’t attended Mass since early elementary age, will identify as “Catholic” decades later. I don’t see this with Protestant denominations.</p>
<p>Also, I think the 98% of Catholics practicing birth control seems to keep getting thrown out as the % that believe it should be mandated. Practicing bc does not mean someone believes it should be mandated. You can do one without the other. Don’t mean to be snarky, but it seems as if they are getting co-mingled.</p>
<p>"A majority (55%) of Americans agree that “employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception and birth control at no cost.” Four-in-ten (40%) disagree with this requirement.</p>
<p>“Roughly 6-in-10 Catholics (58%) believe that employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception.”</p>
<p>“Mini-You have mentioned in quite a few posts that “Catholics have abortions out of proportion…” I assume this was a self-reported stat. Do you have statistics on the percentage of abortions obtained by practicing Catholics in relation to their share of the population?”</p>
<p>Catholics are 22% of the population, and according to the latest survey I could find from the Guttamacher Institute, represent 31% of all abortions. As to their “practicing” status, I wouldn’t know. The Catholic Church makes no distinction between “practicing” and some other kind, so I certainly wouldn’t dare to.</p>
<p>Latest poll I saw (Pew, I think) had 61% of Catholics (including 71% of Catholic women) favoring the legal mandate. No idea about their “practice” status. I think the more telling number is about these large Catholic health systems, such as the one my wife works for, with all-Catholic Boards, including priests and etc., and heavy financial backers of the Church, choosing (according to Claremarie) to provide contraceptive services to hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of covered employees, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. </p>
<p>Being a Quaker, I have no idea of what a “practicing” v. “non-practicing” one would be. Having been brought up Jewish, I knew Jews who kept no customs, celebrated no holidays, never went to synagogues, ate ham and lobsters, who would be shocked by the idea that they shouldn’t be considered fully Jewish. And I have relatives, very orthodox Jews who wouldn’t consider conservative Jews who go to synagogues weekly “really Jewish”.</p>
<p>I’m okay with not requiring the Catholic Church/colleges to pay for contraception. I abhor hypocrisy. I won’t pay for my kids to go to a Catholic school or college because I don’t want my money to support their beliefs/teachings on contraception, among other things. I would never work for a Catholic institution. Cliche, I know, but vote with your feet and don’t work there if you don’t like their policies. Medical coverage is still a “benefit” of your employment at a particular place, at least today.</p>
<p>Very true, although I suspect that most of those employers do not teach that birth control is immoral. </p>
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<p>Yes, more than once. The last time I raised the issue at an Archdiocesan-wide meeting, I was told by the Director of Human Resources that “We can’t afford to be as generous as we’d like.” I see that as a weak defense, given that the Church has, by necessity, found ways to pay for quite a few legal claims over the past several years.</p>
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<p>In a heartbeat. I’ve put all my children through Catholic schools and tuition has been raised for many a worse reason.</p>
<p>Those who brightly state that one should just not work for a Catholic institution are, I think, underestimating how hard that would be. About 12% of American hospitals are Catholic. Some of those hospitals are in rural areas where they are the only hospital. </p>
<p>Some people have careers that involve working in hospitals: a neonatal intensive care nurse, or a burn unit nurse, for example. Are you saying that a nurse should give up her career because the only local hospital is Catholic? If she has a good job in a nonsectarian hospital, but then that hospital merges with a Catholic hospital and becomes Catholic itself (mergers between Catholic and non-Catholic institutions are common) she should quit? Sorry, nurse, no job for you?</p>
<p>No. A hospital is a business. It has to obey the law, just like any other business. It certainly can’t discriminate in hiring by hiring only Catholics-- that is absolutely against black letter law. And it must provide the employment conditions that every business is required to provide.</p>
<p>post #333
What about the orthodox Jewish Rabbi performing a marraige ceremony… I have never heard it questioned as to the expectation that he should perform a same sex marraige. Most religions will not perform said ceremony. I doubt that will ever change even if all members of the religion believe that it should. Some things will never change and isn’t that somewhat reassuring that man can not change what has been law in any religion. The interview with Oprah last night (on Oprah network) with Hasidic Jews was interesting. When the women were asked “what they would do if one of their children were gay” the women looked confused and there was momentary silence before one of the woman said that they had never heard of that happening. I assume what she really meant to say was that it would never be discussed or out in the open. So are orthodox Jews wrong?..No… because they follow the Jewish law to the word. They do not believe in any way other than what has been taught to them. We can’t change or expect to change that which is bigger than us and I think that is the core of any doctrine.</p>
<p>People and times are not what they were hundreds or thousands of years ago but changes in the fundamental beliefs of a religion are not for us to decide. If we don’t like it or agree then we have choices to either leave the religion or to make ajustments in our own lives for what we could live with or not live with. </p>
<p>Most Catholics today will practice birth control but most also understand that their religion has a right to dictate what we as followers are supposed to abide by. This is the same in any religion which is why in Judism there are ulta orthodox, orthodox, conservative, and reformed. Each understand what the core belief system is but whether they choose to follow in such a strict manner is up to the individual.</p>
<p>“Are you saying that a nurse should give up her career because the only local hospital is Catholic?”</p>
<p>Shockingly, yes. If she objects to Church teachings that affect her employment conditions, that answer is a no-brainer. No one is forced to be a nurse, or to decide to live in a community served only by a Catholic hospital. If she lacks the gumption to move, or to choose a different career, that is, frankly, her problem, and not the problem of the Catholic hospital.</p>
<p>I’m confused. That woman was wrong, there are gay and lesbian Orthodox Jews. There is a very good documentary about this very subject called Trembling before G-d.</p>
<p>Of course a nurse should not give up her career. That’s absurd. And considering the variety of people that Catholic hospitals hire, and then bill patients on behalf of, the hospitals themselves clearly don’t have a problem with it either.</p>
<p>“The last time I raised the issue at an Archdiocesan-wide meeting, I was told by the Director of Human Resources that We cant afford to be as generous as wed like. I see that as a weak defense,” </p>
<p>The Archdiocese would appear to be in good company. According to the Families and Work Institute, only 16% of US employers provide full paid leave to new mothers. [Families</a> and Work Institute](<a href=“Families and Work Institute”>Families and Work Institute)</p>
<p>That includes Fortune 500 companies and federal/state/local governments, all of which would seem to be in a better financial position than Catholic dioceses to provide such benefits. And yet, they don’t.</p>
<p>I"m not aware of any Fortune 500 companies, or American government agencies, that actively encourage people to abstain from birth control and accept all pregnancies as “God’s will.” The Archdiocese does, which makes their maternity leave policy much, much worse. </p>
<p>But, as I said, there is a huge gap between being pro-woman/child and pro-forced pregnancy/birth.</p>
<p>No, she is free to work there if she doesn’t mind the no-contraception policy. Otherwise, she is free to move somewhere else. There is no law mandating that employers exist in every town to suit its inhabitants’ needs.</p>
<p>pugmadkate…I don’t know about orthodox Jews but the ultra orthodox Jews will not perform same sex marraiges. Birth control is not used either which of course is not the same as family planning. Given it is not permitted I am sure they would not cover birth control for their employees either. I don’t know this for sure but I’m sure one of the other posters could enlighten us.</p>
<p>“Catholics are 22% of the population, and according to the latest survey I could find from the Guttamacher Institute, represent 31% of all abortions. As to their “practicing” status, I wouldn’t know. The Catholic Church makes no distinction between “practicing” and some other kind, so I certainly wouldn’t dare to.”</p>
<p>Again, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. The Church sets forth five “precepts” that establish the bare minimum expected from a practicing Catholic: weekly Mass attendance, annual confession, annual reception of the Eucharist, observance of fast and abstinence restrictions, and material support of the Church. Based on regular Mass attendance – the most easily measured of these precepts – only about a third of self-described Catholics are “practicing.” And practicing Catholics poll very differently from self-described Catholics on most every issue, including support for/participation in abortions. </p>
<p>As an interesting aside, contrary to what many believe, Mass attendance is greater among Catholics with college degrees than those who did not attend college. </p>