Wow, you are so right. And that is exactly how I feel about other ways we are harming and killing people, such as through anthropogenic climate change. Despite the vast majority of climate scientists, two popes, many bishops, and sincere/concerned people like me (who have studied the issue closely for decades) saying it is real and harmful, and it’s everyone’s responsibility to mitigate it, about a third of Catholics refuse to listen and accept…they seek out other disreputable people to listen to, who say it is not a problem, while ignoring the legitimate people calling for prudence (mitigating, even if we are not completely convinced it is happening).
An elderly man in my parish, who had once studied to be a priest, told about how a good number of Catholic clergy tend to focus almost exclusively on sexually-related sins (immoral sex, abortion, birth control). One of his priest-teachers told the class something like, “If the woman [considering abortion or birth control] had the pleasure [of sex], then she should be punished by bearing and rearing the child.” It was statements like that that finally made him leave the seminary; but he went on to lead a life of self-sacrifice and exemplary good works until his death last year.
I guess it’s like this for many: sex alone equals sin. I would agree that immoral sex (and related behaviors, such as birth control and abortion) = sin, but only suggest that there are other non-sex-related sins as well, other ways in which we are harming and killing people. We shouldn’t be blinded to these (esp sins we may be culpable of ourselves) in our zeal to stamp our sex-related sins (which we may not personally be culpable of). I know it is easier to see other people’s sins than our own, but it is good now and then to look at ourselves and strive for perfection wit God’s grace. Only then, I think, will we come across legitimately to others and hope to gain their attention. That would also go for this issue in which we are striving to make others understand that forcing Catholic institutions to pay for insurance coverage for birth control really would amount to a sin for those institutions, thereby violating their 1st amendment rights.
It’s not that the Church is nit-picky about sex-related sins, such as contraception, but that it is nit-picky about all behaviors that harm people’s lives and souls, and rightly so.
