- "Michael Dukakis does not mince words. He admits to being 'flabbergasted. by the debate between the Catholic hierarchy and the Obama administration over the mandate that requires employers to provide contraception coverage. 'I thought birth control wasn’t an issue anymore,' he told me....
"Nearly 50 years ago, as a state representative from Brookline, Mass., Dukakis was part of a compromise [emphasis added for irony] between opponents and proponents of contraception, a compromise that involved coordination between Planned Parenthood and the church that would be unthinkable now. Dukakis remains convinced that contraception became legal in Massachusetts only with the assistance of the local Catholic leadership.
"Cardinals today do not enjoy the same secular power Boston’s Cardinal Richard Cushing did in the 1960s....
"In the 1960s, it was Cushing who took center stage in a prominent public debate over access to contraception....according to Dukakis, Cushing’s conduct at the time was a 'great act of statesmanship'....
"Two states had very strong anti-contraception laws on the books in 1965. The Supreme Court was considering the constitutionality of Connecticut’s all-out ban on the use of contraception. In Massachusetts, a state legislative panel was holding an open hearing on a proposal submitted by State Representative Dukakis...to remove an 86-year-old bar to the distribution of birth control devices and information....
"In 1948, Cushing...led a public charge against Referendum No. 4, a statewide ballot measure designed to relax the ban on contraception....In the end, 57 percent of voters rejected the referendum.
"Cushing had won, but victory came at a cost. 'Deployment of the Church’s political muscle,' the historian Leslie Tentler argues, offended non-Catholics in and out of the commonwealth....
"It was not until the 1960s that reformers next attempted to amend the state’s birth control restrictions....He [Cushing] clearly had a change of heart on the appropriateness of laws like the state’s birth control restrictions....Two days before a fellow Massachusetts Catholic won the first primary of the 1960 presidential campaign, Cushing argued that a Christian must engage in 'friendly discussion with those whose views of life and its meaning are different than his own.' The times had changed, and so had he....
"Poor health prevented Cushing from appearing before the legislative panel considering the Dukakis bill in March 1965, but he dominated the hearing nonetheless. In a written statement he declared that 'Catholics do not need the support of civil law to be faithful to their own religious convictions and they do not seek to impose by law their moral views on others of society'....He requested that Gov. John Volpe appoint a commission to craft a repeal to 'satisfy the conscientious opinions of the whole community.'
"'Cardinal Relaxes Anti-Birth Law Stand' read the Boston Globe’s banner headline, while an editorial noted that because of Cushing’s new position the birth control issue was 'no longer a rancorous controversy.' Volpe appointed a 21-member committee to draft a revised bill on the same day, as it happened, that the Supreme Court invalidated Connecticut’s ban on the use of birth control. The new bill met Cushing’s concerns about the young by prohibiting pharmacists from furnishing contraception to those who had not 'attained age 21' or lacked a doctor’s prescription. Importantly, however, the cardinal chose not to speak out either in favor of or against the revisions....
"Why did the cardinal remain silent? Certainly, he had privately endorsed the repeal effort following his WEEI statement in 1963. With his blessing, a series of meetings had quietly taken place between lay and clerical Catholics and associates of Planned Parenthood to draft a blueprint for repealing the ban through the Legislature....
[In a particularly dopey manner, the author - at this point - goes on to infer that Vatican II's Declaration on Religious Freedon somehow supported this nonsense.]
"When a bill that would allow physicians to prescribe birth control to 'any married person' was introduced in the next legislative session — a bill otherwise similar to the one House members had rejected 119–97 the year before — Cushing endorsed it publicly by praising its 'safeguards' while reaffirming his position that Catholics did 'not seek to impose by law their moral view on other members of society [Unbelievable!].' This time the bill passed, 136–80. The Senate followed suit, and Volpe signed the amendment to the state’s General Laws on 'Crimes against Chastity, Morality, Decency, and Good Order.'
"Wednesday’s announcement by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops....echoes the foreboding tone and language from Cushing’s bitter campaign against the 1948 reform rather than that of the 1960s effort toward reconciliation [Amen to that!]....
Seth Meehan is a Clough Center Graduate Fellow at Boston College. He is the author of “From Patriotism to Pluralism: How Catholics Initiated the Repeal of Birth Control Restrictions in Massachusetts,” which appeared in the Catholic Historical Review in 2010" (Seth Meehan, Catholics & Contraception: Boston 1965, NY Times, 3/15/12).
- "Considering the human person as the foundation & purpose of the political community means in the first place working to recognize & respect human dignity through defending & promoting fundamental & inalienable human rights....
“Authority must be guided by the moral law ....
"Unjust laws pose dramatic problems of conscience for morally upright people: when they are called to cooperate in morally evil acts they must refuse.[Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Evangelium Vitae, 73: AAS 87 (1995), 486-487.]....Such cooperation in fact can never be justified, not by invoking respect for the freedom of others nor by appealing to the fact that it is foreseen & required by civil law. No one can escape the moral responsibility for actions taken, and all will be judged by God himself based on this responsibility (cf. Rom 2:6; 14:12)"
The Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church
Part One
Chapter 1, God's Plan of Love for Humanity
Chapter 2, The Church's Mission & Social Doctrine
Chapter 3, The Human Person and Human Rights
Chapter 4, Principles of the Church's Social Doctrine
Part Two
Chapter 5, The Family, the Vital Cell of Society
Chapter 6, Human Work
Chapter 7, Economic Life
Chapter 8, Political Community
Chapter 9, The International Community
Chapter 10, Safeguarding the Environment
Chapter 11, The Promotion of Peace
Part Three
Chapter 12, Social Doctrine & Ecclesial Action
Conclusion, For a Civilization of Love
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