UNITED STATES
Religion Dispatches
Post by Peter Montgomery
While the Catholic Bishops are ramping up their political campaign to portray marriage equality and requirements that insurance coverage include contraception (among other topics) as dire threats to religious liberty, some priests and parishes are beginning to resist publicly.
In Pittsburgh, four priests met with Bishop David Zubik to tell him that his rhetoric—Zubik accused the Obama administration of telling Catholics to “To Hell with you!”—was angering parishioners. Fr. Neil McCaulley spoke with National Catholic Reporter:
McCaulley, who is retired after serving 46 years as a parish priest in the Pittsburgh area, said the idea for the meeting with Zubik first came as members of his group talked with others and decided “we owed it to the people… of the church to let the bishop know that not everybody out there agrees with the bishops.”
Pointing to a number of studies that show that about 90 percent of Catholics don’t follow the church’s official teaching on birth control, McCaulley said the group thought that since the bishop is “always willing to meet with priests,” they could raise the issue with Zubik and ask him to meet with laypeople, as “we didn’t feel competent to speak on women’s issues.”
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