Voris: HHS v. Church crisis due to 40 years of clerical complicity with contraception

Obama's calculated gamble against the American Catholic hierarchy assumes that US Catholics won't vote with their bishops when push comes to shove:

• Public Religion Research Institute: a MAJORITY of Catholics support the Obama Administration's HHS mandate demanding coverage of contraception and abortion, in opposition to their bishops.
• In fact, the percentage of Catholic support for the Administration's plan offering free birth control for everybody is actually greater than among the general population of Americans.
• Catholic Health Association President, Sister Carol Keehan, says that CHS remains committed to working with the Administration ... to fully implement the Affordable Care Act." [Source]
• The Church hierarchy and Catholic priests have said next-to-nothing about the issue of Catholic birth control for the past 40 years [with rare exceptions like Fr. Acervo's homily of 8/7/11].

What is needed now, according to Voris? A purification of US Church must that must begin our bishops, with a publicized public apology. He suggests that they:

• Publicly admit complicity
• Confess their negligence in exercising their proper authority
• Acknowledge the grave disaster they have allowed to be rained down on the Church, down to the loss of hundreds of millions of souls from the Faith
• Make amends in tangible, practical ways, firing dissident theologians, dismissing defiant institutions, purging chanceries of "professional" [nominal] Catholics and disciplining priests and religious who lead publicly immoral lives.

It was, after all, Catholic laity across the country who in overwhelming numbers put Obama in the White House, because of lack of proper instruction in the Faith, which our bishops are entrusted with the safeguarding. Thus saith Voris.

The opportunity that could be seized amidst this current battle over "religious liberty" is for the bishops to clarify the intrinsic evil of contraception, which many Catholics still do not understand and which is the real issue that shouldn't be evaded here. The situation offers a perfect "teaching moment" that ought not be missed for all the easy talk about "rights of conscience" and the like.