The American Catholic Council has drafted a Bill of Rights which is more relevant today, especially in this politically manipulated firestorm over contraception, than when they were first formulated in 2011.
This is not your Rick Santorum's or Newt Gingrich's form of Catholicism which wants to force women to go without contraception. This is a very thoughtful CATHOLIC group that is seeking reform from within. Catholics and Non-Catholics would benefit in this current political firestorm from hearing/reading this Bill of Rights.
This Bill of Rights addresses the co-existence between civil and religious rights. The primary and first 'right' listed is 'freedom of conscience' for its members. By extension, I would argue, that just as the Church has no moral authority to impose its clerical view about women's rights to contraception on its own members, it has no right to impose those rigid views on the non-member public at large.
Anthony Padavano reads these rights
Transcript of Bill of Rights:
In light of these principles and precepts, we, mindful of our baptism, eager to be fully citizens of the United States and thoroughly Catholic, articulate this Catholic Bill of Rights and Responsibilities.
1. Primacy of Conscience. Every Catholic has the right and responsibility to develop an informed conscience and to act in accord with it.
2. Community. Every Catholic has the right and responsibility to participate in a Eucharistic community and the right to responsible pastoral care.
3. Universal Ministry. Every Catholic has the right and responsibility to proclaim the Gospel and to respond to the community’s call to ministerial leadership.
4. Freedom of Expression. Every Catholic has the right to freedom of expression and the freedom to dissent.
5. Sacraments. Every Catholic has the right and responsibility to participate in the fullness of the liturgical and sacramental life of the Church.
6. Reputation. Every Catholic has the right to a good name and to due process.
7. Governance. Every Catholic and every Catholic community has the right to a meaningful participation in decision making, including the selection of leaders.
8. Participation. Every Catholic has the right and responsibility to share in the interpretation of the Gospel and Church tradition.
9. Councils. Every Catholic has the right to convene and speak in assemblies where diverse voices can be heard.
10. Social Justice. Every Catholic has the right and the responsibility to promote social justice in the world at large as well as within the structures of the Church.
(Link to full transcript and downloadable pdf of
Catholic Bill of Rights and Responsibilities
To understand more about the background of this organization, this excerpt from their 'mission statement" explains:
In our January 2012 Newsletter, we published a draft of the new ACC Mission Statement …
We are a grassroots movement of faithful Catholics, grounded in prayer and informed by the proceedings of the inaugural convening of the American Catholic Council on Pentecost Weekend in June 2011. We are dedicated to exercising our baptismal rights and responsibilities as full participants in the mission and governance of the Church, in order to make it more just, inclusive, collegial and compassionate. To that end, we provide action-oriented educational, communication and project resources.
This group furthermore has done some serious soul searching into the 'ills' that currently exist in the church and how they seek to remedy those ills.
We do this because the Signs of the Times reveal a serious deterioration in the life of the Catholic Church in our country: We see:
Closed parishes, broken communities, and unavailable sacraments.
Sexually-abused children and young people and ineffective clerical response to correct this institutional sin.
Dwindling financial support and widespread fiscal mismanagement.
Paternalistic, monarchical leadership that is often unresponsive, repressive, and ineffective.
A seriously compromised social justice mission–because internal institutional justice is lacking.
Catholics abandoning the Church with demoralizing frequency.
A community starved for a spirituality that fits our modern lives, consistent with our maturity, experience and education.
We acknowledge co-responsibility for these conditions–for no community can be governed without its implicit or explicit consent. We “consent” with financial and personal support, with participation, or, often, with passivity.
By soundly rejecting the hierarchy representing itself as THE CHURCH and by soundly rejecting the demand of the hierarchy that all Catholics must obey their FIRST COMMANDMENT: OBEY THE HIERARCHY, it seeks to work against the repression that has resulted from the monarchical hierarchy. A monarchical hierarchy that now is so drunk on its power that it is trying to sway voting blocs in this coming election to its narrow, rigid, medieval perspective of women.
"Drunk with power!" Oh, that's an exaggeration you say. Well, when what the Catholic bishops really want is to make it possible for any Catholic to refuse to give contraception coverage to his/her employee, regardless of their business:
The White House is “all talk, no action” on moving toward compromise, said Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “There has been a lot of talk in the last couple days about compromise, but it sounds to us like a way to turn down the heat, to placate people without doing anything in particular,” Picarello said. “We’re not going to do anything until this is fixed.”
That means removing the provision from the health care law altogether, he said, not simply changing it for Catholic employers and their insurers. He cited the problem that would create for “good Catholic business people who can’t in good conscience cooperate with this.”
“If I quit this job and opened a Taco Bell, I’d be covered by the mandate,” Picarello said.
Think Progress
If that isn't legislating their medieval repressive code on those who are not even members of their religion, I don't know what it is. THAT IS AN ATTEMPT AT THEOCRACY. Where their so-called 'religious tenets' are FORCED on the public at large. This is very serious stuff, because they are very serious about it.
So, it becomes all the more important to realize that not all Catholics want a theocracy or even want their church run this way. It is very important as we undergo this firestorm of a debate to be equipped with dissenting voices from within the Catholic Church who are not content 'just to do their master's bidding' as children, but seek an adult form of membership.
So, regardless of what Chris "Opus Dei" Matthews may present as the "Catholic Position" in his soapbox, be informed that not all Catholics are sheep who are waiting for their bishops to herd them back to the feudal times. But rather there are thinking, adult men and women of conscience who are profoundly disagreeing with the current hierarchy's attempt at imposition of a medieval form of Catholicism.
The American Catholic Council is a great resource in debates at this time.