At his Esquire blog, Pierce writes:
[P]lease shut the fk up about birth control, abortion, and this neverending madness about what ladies do with their lady parts without the pope’s permission. At the very least, please stop going on my television set and telling me what “the Catholic position” is on the fact that the president has told various Catholic institutions — and told them quite gently, too — that, yes, if they want all those nice juicy tax advantages, they must abide by the federal law and, in their capacities as employers, make contraceptives available to their employees under the new Affordable Care Act. There is no “Catholic position” on this issue. There are the opinions of the clerical bureaucrats, accessories after the fact, and the members of the Clan of The Red Beanie, and then there is the opinion of the overwhelming majority of Catholic laypeople, who stopped listening to anything the Vatican said on the matter of birth control back in 1965. (And recall that the Second Vatican Council emphasized that the Church consisted of the entire people of God, which means the opinion of the overwhelming majority of Catholic people, acting out of their own conscience on this issue, matters as much or more than the opinion held by the temporary holders of clerical offices not mentioned in any of the Gospels.) For that matter, there is no real “Catholic vote” out there to be mined, either. A breakdown of how American Catholics vote on one particular issue or another pretty much tracks with how the country in general breaks down.
You should really read the entire thing; Pierce eviscerates the burgeoning conventional wisdom that Catholics are uniformly as outraged as the Bishops, and that this trumped-up claim of infringement of religious freedom will cost Obama his reelection campaign. And he delves into Catholic theology while he’s at it.
Bonus observation: in the most recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, conducted February 1-4, respondents were asked, “How much does it matter to you that a candidate for president shares your religious beliefs – does it matter a great deal, somewhat, not so much, or not at all?”
A great deal: 18%
Somewhat: 20%
Not so much: 16%
Not at all: 46%
