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Dolan On Contraceptive Fight: "It's A Freedom Of Religion Battle"
By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 4, 2012
Modified Mar 4, 2012
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By
Ben Yakas
Published Mar 4, 2012
Modified Mar 4, 2012
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In January, Cardinal Timothy Dolan spoke on behalf of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops when he castigated the Obama administration for forcing American citizens "to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their healthcare" in the debate over whether employers and health insurance companies had the right to deny contraception if they have moral or religious objections. The Senate has already voted to shoot down that GOP-led anti-contraception effort, but Dolan spoke out again yesterday, refusing to back down: “It is a freedom of religion battle,” he said. “It is not about contraception. It is not about women’s health.”
The new remarks came in front of over thousand people at Holy Trinity Diocesan High Sschool in Hicksville, in advance of the church’s annual lobbying day in Albany on March 13. Dolan, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, encouraged Catholics to become "very active, very informed and very involved in politics.” He described the Obama administrations contraception compromise as "an unwarranted, unprecedented, radical intrusion” into “a church’s ability to teach, serve and sanctify on its own.”
He mocked a secular culture that “seems to discover new rights every day...“Now we hear there’s a right to sterilization, abortion and chemical contraceptives. I suppose there might be a doctor who would say to a man who’s suffering some type of sexual dysfunction, ‘You ought to visit a prostitute to help you.’ ” Dolan also quoted President Lyndon B. Johnson to bring his point home: “President Johnson said, ‘As an American I look to the church—I look to religion as a beehive. If you leave them alone they’re going to give you tons of their honey. But if you stick your head in there, you’re going to get stung bad.’”
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birth control
cardinal dolan
contraception
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religion
timothy dolan
Ben Yakas
Ben Yakas is a former Gothamist reporter.
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