SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — If you don’t believe in the law, do you have to follow it?
That’s the question before courts in New York and California, which are being asked to exempt branches of the Catholic Church from state laws requiring contraceptives be included in employee prescription drug plans. Under church doctrine, contraception is a sin.
“The Catholic Church explicitly teaches that artificial contraception is morally unacceptable and, if knowingly and freely engaged in, sinful,” Catholic Charities of Sacramento attorney James Sweeney said.
After California’s law was enacted in 2000, the group unsuccessfully sought a court ruling to bar the law from being enforced on the church’s charity outreach programs. A state appeals court also denied the church relief. Now the California Supreme Court is set to hear the case Dec. 2
… An attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union argued that siding with the Catholics would, in essence, impose the church’s doctrine on thousands of non-Catholic women who work at the church’s hospitals or social-service agencies.
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But I guess it is okay by the ACLU to enforce a secular doctrine on thousands of Catholics working in Catholic Charities and other Catholic organizations. I am glad to see Catholic Charities fighting this unjust law. I had wondered when they first passed the law whether they would respond.
