I may just be more sensitive than others, but it seems to me that the Catholic Church is under attack from all sides. Consider:
The National Girl Scouts have reportedly removed God from the Girl Scout promise (they have not), and apparently support planned parenthood and other abortion providers, as well as being a proponent of the gay-lesbian movement. Researchers provide evidence most often in the form of a who's-who on the Girl Scout Board of Directors. I do not know with any certainty if any of these reports are true, but the simple questioning of these issues raises criticism of the Church. When a Catholic organization (which sponsors a Girl Scout troop) questioned where the profits of the annual cookie sales go, that church was condemned for abusing children in a new way. One blogger commented "how many other ways will the Catholics abuse children?"
Last week, it made national news that a Catholic School teacher lost her job when she made it publicly known that she was undergoing IVF. Without any comment on the morality of IVF, or why the Catholic Church strongly opposes these procedures, the news media condemned the Church as being "anti-family." (By the way, even a casual reading of the 1987 Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith instruction RESPECT FOR HUMAN LIFE reveals a document based on respect for life, love, and very much pro-family.)
Today I heard on the news that a Catholic High School apparently denied a high school junior from attending her class prom because she did not have a date. The reason for this school's policy was not mentioned (I'd like to know). But again, the "Church" is now anti-singles.
And of course, there is that big elephant in the room: the current US Administration's apparent attack on religious freedom in the form of a health insurance mandate to cover abortion drugs and contraception, called by some as a shredding of the First Amendment of the Constitution. And, being truly slick politicians, the administration (and the media) reports this Federal Regulation as a win for women's reproductive rights. Their strategy seems to be to keep it on the news as being against contraception, therefore "anti-woman", keeping the religious freedom question out of the picture. Once again, they say, the Church is over reacting and against women. Why else, some have said, doesn't the Church permit women priests?
I'm just being over sensitive. But, even in 1968 Pope Paul VI commented on the secular society's criticism of the Church:
18. It is to be anticipated that perhaps not everyone will easily accept this particular teaching. There is too much clamorous outcry against the voice of the Church, and this is intensified by modern means of communication. But it comes as no surprise to the Church that she, no less than her divine Founder, is destined to be a "sign of contradiction." She does not, because of this, evade the duty imposed on her of proclaiming humbly but firmly the entire moral law, both natural and evangelical. (HUMANAE VITAE)
What do you think?
