{"id":623,"date":"2012-02-07T19:38:42","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T00:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.nd.edu\/thecc\/?p=623"},"modified":"2012-05-31T09:21:29","modified_gmt":"2012-05-31T13:21:29","slug":"why-are-liberal-catholics-so-upset-with-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/2012\/02\/07\/why-are-liberal-catholics-so-upset-with-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Why are (liberal) Catholics so upset with Obama?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Why did Obama anger Catholics?\u00a0 A straightforward response to this question has been provided by E.J.\u00a0Dionne<\/a>\u2014the Obama administration\u2019s failure to acknowledge Catholic universities\u2019 and Catholic hospitals\u2019 unique circumstances and exempt them from requirements related to contraceptive coverage was viewed as a betrayal.<\/p>\n

In this post, however, I want to present this question as a puzzle. \u00a0In hindsight, as with most historical events, it may seem obvious that the issue would blow up the way it did.\u00a0 After all, it IS what actually happened.\u00a0 But I want to problematize that view by exploring why Obama MIGHT have thought that Catholics in general and, at the very least, liberal Catholics would have let this particular issue slide.
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\nFirst of all, on the issue of contraception, Catholics in the US (and especially liberal Catholics) overwhelmingly side with Obama, and not the Church hierarchy, on whether it is morally acceptable to use contraception.\u00a0 According to Bill D\u2019Antonio\u2019s recent reading of polls<\/a>, 95% of all Catholics in the US say they have used contraceptives and 89% say the decision to use them should be theirs, not the Church\u2019s. \u00a0Of course, reality may be more nuanced than these numbers suggest.\u00a0 In my previous in-depth interviews with Catholics, I found the issue of contraception was a moral decision with which traditional and moderate Catholics\u00a0often struggled and about which they sometimes experienced feelings of guilt.\u00a0 Still, most Catholics tend to support the availability of contraception.<\/p>\n

Digging deeper, Catholics do make a distinction between individual moral decision making and provision of health care coverage, but a majority still appears to fall on the side of providing availability. \u00a0For instance, when the issue is specifically about whether insurance policies should cover contraception, such as the birth control pill, Media Matters<\/a>\u00a0cites a 2009 poll \u00a0in which 63% of all Catholics respondents argued that insurance policies (both private and public) should cover contraceptives such as the birth control pill.\u00a0 Note, however, that this support declined to 39% for the morning after pill, even when it is defined as \u201cemergency contraception.\u201d<\/p>\n

And the Obama administration seems to be aware of this latter distinction.\u00a0 Recently, Secretary Kathleen Sebellius overruled the FDA<\/a>, for the first time ever, refusing to allow the morning after pill to be sold over the counter to young teenagers.\u00a0 So, perhaps the Obama administration felt that it was \u201cthreading the needle\u201d by overruling the FDA for OTC access to the morning after pill for teenage girls, but then mandating contraceptive coverage in health plans. \u00a0But instead of finding mixed reviews among Catholics, the Obama administration received a seemingly monolithic negative response at the level of elite Catholic opinion.\u00a0 Why didn\u2019t their approach work?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s first recognize that the potential for this controversy is not new.\u00a0 In 2005, David Yamane\u2019s book<\/a> on 34 state-level Catholic Bishops Conferences highlighted their generally liberal political advocacy on economic issues and the expansion of health care coverage, but also noted how recent health care issues had served to divide these groups from Democratic policy preferences over time because of an overlap with contraception and especially life issues. \u00a0Suffice it to say that health care has been a fault line along which Catholics and Democrats have been splintering over the past decade or two.<\/p>\n

With that backdrop, it is worth noting what Obama did to minimize this splintering in the passage of the Affordable Care Act.\u00a0 First of all, Nancy Pelosi allowed an up or down vote on an amendment put forward by Bart Stupak and a number of pro-life Democrats in the House (the amendment ensured that current law–the Hyde amendment–would remain in place and would not need to be voted on each year), and the ACA also mandated that corresponding no-abortion and abortion coverage policies be made available to individuals in the state-created health care exchanges.\u00a0 Second, when senate Republicans balked at providing support for this same pro-life amendment to the already passed bill (in the hopes that their lack of support would torpedo the full bill), President Obama agreed to an executive order stipulating that the Hyde amendment guidelines be followed by his administration\u00a0in implementing the ACA .<\/p>\n

As Dionne notes, Obama still received grief from pro-life Republicans (and from many in the U.S. Bishop\u2019s Conference) after the ACA passed, but not from liberal Catholics<\/strong>. \u00a0With this decision on contraception, however, Obama angered Catholics across the board. \u00a0So, for this post, I am going to focus specifically on liberal Catholics\u2014the group that would seemingly be most supportive of Obama\u2019s policy.\u00a0 Why did so many liberal Catholics feel betrayed by the administration\u2019s decision?<\/p>\n

It is NOT because liberal Catholics tend to support the Church\u2019s position on contraception.\u00a0 While traditional and moderate Catholics views on this issue may not be as monolithic as the above statistics indicate, liberal Catholics ARE very nearly monolithic in their disagreement with the Church regarding contraception.\u00a0 In fact, disagreement with the Church\u2019s stance on contraception might be the sine qua non for identifying as a liberal Catholic. Having said that, I want to acknowledge nuances in this disagreement.\u00a0 Especially among the highly committed, liberal Catholics sometimes make careful distinctions between potential abortifacients and other forms of contraception in outlining their moral reasoning on contraception, but such distinctions are not usually at the forefront of their mind when talking about the issue. \u00a0And I don\u2019t believe they are at the forefront of this current controversy either. \u00a0In my previous in-depth interviews with self-identified liberal Catholics, Katie (pseudonym) was typical when she noted her dissatisfaction with the hierarchy\u2019s position, \u201cthe contraception issue doesn\u2019t match reality. What is it, like 93 to 97 percent of Catholics use contraceptives? So, obviously something is wrong if that many Catholics aren\u2019t following church teachings.\u201d\u00a0 In Dionne\u2019s article, he puts it this way, \u201cSpeaking as a Catholic, I wish the Church would be more open on the contraception question.\u201d<\/p>\n

So, what gives?\u00a0 Why are liberal Catholics upset? \u00a0This is the puzzle. \u00a0What do you think?<\/p>\n

Or perhaps you disagree with my supposition completely–after all, I don’t have any survey data to empirically verify that liberal Catholics have responded negatively to the Obama administration’s handling of this controversy. \u00a0Of course, I have my own preliminary answer to this puzzle, which I will share in due course, but I would love to hear your answers as well. \u00a0Or disagreements.<\/p>\n

——-<\/p>\n

Update: \u00a0Here<\/a> is my preliminary answer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Why did Obama anger Catholics?\u00a0 A straightforward response to this question has been provided by E.J.\u00a0Dionne\u2014the Obama administration\u2019s failure to acknowledge Catholic universities\u2019 and Catholic hospitals\u2019 unique circumstances and exempt them from requirements related to contraceptive coverage was viewed as … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":411,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/411"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1319,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions\/1319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/thecc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}