It’s My Body

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Those who believe mythology is dead have to look no further than the Supreme Court. Amid pictures of women protesting religious freedom to be told what to do with their bodies, the Court decided that employers may withhold rights to birth control under the rubric of religious belief. The ones who raise the issue, however, biologically never carried a baby to term. One gender making decisions for the other. We all know that the official stance of Roman Catholicism, closely followed by radical Evangelicalism, is that God intended sex only for procreation. Those women who find themselves on the receiving end of unwanted conception are helpless in the eyes of the law, depending on who their employer is. Blind justice indeed. Obamacare is intended to help level the playing field. Too few people have any real control over what medical treatment they can afford. I know more than one fixed-income person who suffers chronic pains due to lack of adequate treatment. I also know people who have used the system for plastic surgery before a trip to the beach. It seems that your employer now has the right to decide—but only if you’re a woman, and only if it involves what might be euphemistically called your “private parts”—what care you deserve.

Legislating morality, we religion majors debated even when I was back in college, cannot be effectively executed. If you presume there is a God, then enforced obedience is no obedience at all. Even conservative undergraduates could see that. Now our “Supreme” Court, with its male majority, has followed the lead of closely held corporations (doublespeak for certain patriarchal, Evangelically based companies) and declared that half the humans in America don’t deserve the same health care as the other half. The reason? Closely held companies don’t want women to have access to birth control. Our courts strike a blow against freedom and justice for private religious interests.

Within days of one Christian denomination declaring that gay marriage will be—should be— sanctioned, our own judiciary sides with the right of upper management in private corporations to discriminate based on gender. At least the owners of Hobby Lobby and Conestoga can sleep better at night knowing that they’ve prevented women from having their basic rights upheld. And metaphorically crawling into bed with closely held corporations are a male majority of supreme court justices who believe one man’s religion (yes, man’s) has the right to overturn the freedom of his employees. With the blessings of a male God. A situation like this prevailed, it seems to me, until 1863, also with the backing of scripture. Only in those days the argument was, I believe, that God is clearly Caucasian.

Looks balanced...

Looks balanced…

Dissing Mother T.

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I pity the fool who challenges a powerful religion. Compelling religion. Tall towers. Tears of regret. The Empire State Building has a famous tower light show. Depending on the occasion, diverse wavelengths of light splash off the iconic skyscraper, and those who have the scorecard can see what’s important. In a city like New York there are countless occasions – holidays, Yankees and Mets games, significant birthdays. New York also houses a significant Catholic population. So it was not a popular decision on the part of the owner of the building to turn down a request to light up the town in honor of Mother Teresa’s centenary. I’m sure it was uttered with the purest of intentions, but the words of Bill Donohue, the president of the Catholic League, made me shiver just a little: “His [the owner’s] decision to double down at this juncture – in the face of massive support for our request – is something he will regret for the rest of his life” (according to the New York Daily News).

Mother Teresa, to many, is the epitome of Christian charity and selflessness. Devoted to helping the poorest members of a cruel world, she lived a life that many religious leaders could stand to emulate. On the front page of the same newspaper carrying this human interest story was the headline of how Seton Hall’s finalist for university president withdrew from the search after requesting a $300 K salary for the job. He is a priest, after all. Beg pardon, a Monsignor. And a professor of Christian ethics. I pity the fool who takes ethics seriously.

Somewhere between a 300,000 dollar salary and abject poverty, many religious believers are boggled by the mixed messages broadcast by their leaders. Most people in western religions are trying hard to avoid hell, complying with the traditions and new demands made by the spiritual CEOs. In a seminary setting someone once said to me that if Mother Teresa had advocated for responsible parenting (that great lumbering demon of birth control) perhaps the roots of the great poverty she daily redressed in Calcutta might have begun to dissipate. But the word from on high had been uttered and was immutable. She would not live to see her name up in lights. From what I’ve read about her, I have a strong feeling that Mother T. is just as happy to stay out of the limelight. I pity the fool who doesn’t understand.

A picture is worth $300,000