As Good A Time As Any?

It's time to consider quitting the Catholic Church...

According to the Freedom From Religion Foundation's Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker now is the time for women who read the New York Times to vote with their feet and leave church en masse.  Annie Laurie is a lifelong atheist and Barker is a recovering evangelical preacher.  These co-presidents of FFRF, activist podcasters, and radio personalities do a lot a good good work supporting those who wish to be free of unlawful religious interference in our secular society.  Now they're reaching out to a different demographic.

Of course, the rabid Rottweiler of American Catholicism, Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League, has weighed in against this "frontal assault on Catholicism."  Even when I have no opinion on a topic, if Bill is pitching a hissy against it my default position is to be strongly in favor of it.

I lapsed from my Catholic upbringing many decades ago having never once taken seriously the idea that contraception was a sin (though I had yet to put theory to practice by the time we parted ways), but I do have some questions for the millions of American women who profess my former creed.  The Magisterium is many things, but inconsistent in its opinion of birth control is not one of them.  The Church forbids the use of birth control, yet the majority of Catholic women in America use it (Not 98% as some claim, but 68% or so).  Since the Roman Catholic Church insists it is not to be regarded as a doctrinal buffet are its avowed female members who use contraception engaged in hypocrisy?  If they don't believe in the Church's, the Pope's, or the Bishop's authority in this matter, why do they bother to grant them authority in any other area of religious life?  Will they heed the FFRF's call to internal consistency?

PS: Those of you who have read my earlier posts about my podcast listening know I used to listen to to the FFRF's Freethought Radio podcast, but I had to give it up. Annie Laurie's gratingly unpleasant tendency to step all over the comments of their on air guests (especially sympathetic interview subjects) made me grind my teeth and I need to cut back on that.