Full-page ad in NYT proclaims: It’s Time to Consider Quitting the Catholic Church

Full-page ad in NYT proclaims: It’s Time to Consider Quitting the Catholic Church   -  FFRF

"  The Freedom From Religion Foundation placed an open letter via a full-page ad in today’s New York Times (page 10, front section) urging liberal and nominal Roman Catholics to “quit” their church over its war against contraception. Beginning “It’s your moment of truth,” the ad asks: “Do you choose women and their rights, or Bishops and their wrongs? You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop.”

“As a member of the ‘flock’ of an avowedly antidemocratic Old Boys Club, isn’t it time you vote with your feet? Please, exit en Mass,” requests the ad, signed by FFRF Co-Presidents Annie Laurie Gaylor and Dan Barker.  The ad features a cartoon by Steve Benson depicting an angry bishop, with a woman next to a birth control pill telling him: “All the outrage over something this small is a bit hard to swallow.”

The Times required FFRF to alter its punchy headline, ‘It’s Time to Quit the Catholic Church,’ to ‘It’s Time to Consider Quitting the Catholic Church.’ Barker called that decision “disappointing” and “a sign of the Catholic Church’s inordinate power to intimidate and muzzle criticism.”

The ad blasts the church’s “pernicious doctrine that birth control is a sin” and the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act” introduced into Congress to impose church dogma on employees. FFRF warns the liberal Catholic that the church is “launching a ruthless political Inquisition in your name.”