Archbishop: Obama Needs To Stop 'Intruding Into Internal Life Of Church'

[iloveangels]

What I want to see is a personal exemption that any baptised Catholic can claim on his own group insurance policy from his employer that exempts him from having to pay for these things.

Obama should be glad we’re not chasing him over that. It may get there at some point. I certainly hope so. I like to see cats chase dogs. We need to turn this whole thing 180 degrees.

 

[jwinch2]

The tenth amendment gets overlooked a great deal, but it is very important.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

 

[jwinch2]

hancaquam.blogspot.com/2012/02/deep-distrust-of-religious-faith.html

A deep distrust of religious faith. . .
Archbishop Chaput nails it:

Despite all of its public apprehension about “culture warriors” on the political right in the past, the current administration has created an HHS mandate that is the embodiment of culture war. At its heart is a seemingly deep distrust of the formative role religious faith has on personal and social conduct, and a deep distaste for religion’s moral influence on public affairs. To say that this view is contrary to the Founders’ thinking and the record of American history would be an understatement.

The Left sees itself as the only true advocate for and protector of the poor and oppressed. For decades, they were content to leave the Church to do her charitable work in peace. But now that the Left has become radicalized by a militant strain of purist secularism, it is no longer acceptable to have Religious Neanderthals getting the credit for feeding the hungry and healing the sick. We must be prevented from offering free healthcare to millions every year b/c we refuse to bow to the Sublime Truth that pregnancy is an injury and fertility a disease. We must be prevented from helping victims of modern day slavery b/c we will not send these people to be victimized again at Planned Parenthood abortion mills. We must be prevented from placing orphaned children with intact families b/c we will not give moral credibility to same sex “marriage.” And most importantly, we must be made to bend the neck and confess our sins against the great revelations of feminist “tolerance.”

As Archbishop Chaput notes in his takedown of B.O.'s mandate, this latest episode in the culture war was not a bone-headed mistake made by a political amateur. . .it was just the next step.

Bold emphasis mine.

Its nice to see that some of our bishops seem to be realizing that this is completely intentional on President Obama’s part.

 

[maximus]

The only problem with that scenario, Max, is that he’s violated the Bill of Rights and there are lawsuits already as far as the eye can see and more coming. If that’s what he’s doing, he’s sure doing it the hard way. And a way guaranteed to get him opposition not just from Catholics and not even just from religious people, but from people all over–a lot of it. Not only is Obamacare going to go before the Supreme Court, but now probably these religious freedom cases will certainly go to the court and may come before the Supreme Court as well.

I rather you be right rather than myself. I just see that the number of the true faithful is small compared to those who are luke warm and those Catholics that are ardent supporter of Obama and his principles. I think the people who are against the Church don’t about the methods to get rid of it even if it means going against our country’s law and the human rights of devout Catholics. Liberals seem not care about or respect our constitutuion, we heard just Justice Ginsburg put down the constitution she is supposed to protect because it is not progress enough for her.

Tomorrow when I go to mass I need to not take for granted the freedom of worship that I as an citizens of the US have enjoyed thus far.

God Bless,

 

[jwinch2]

Here is the full text of the article from Archbishop Chaput.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) refused on January 20 to broaden the exception to its mandate that nearly all Catholic employers must cover contraception, abortifacients and sterilization in their health care plans.

An “accommodation” offered Friday by the White House did not solve the problem. Instead, it triggered withering criticism from legal scholars like Notre Dame’s Carter Snead, Harvard’s Mary Ann Glendon, Princeton’s Robert George and Catholic University of America president John Garvey, along with non-Catholic scholars like Yuval Levin, the religious liberty law firm The Becket Fund and numerous Catholic and other organizations.

Many Catholics are confused and angry. They should be.

Quite a few Catholics supported President Obama in the last election, so the ironies here are bitter. Many feel betrayed. They’re baffled that the Obama administration would seek to coerce Catholic employers, private and corporate, to violate their religious convictions.

But it’s clear that such actions are developing into a pattern. Whether it was the administration’s early shift toward the anemic language of “freedom of worship” instead of the more historically grounded and robust concept of “freedom of religion” in key diplomatic discussions; or its troubling effort to regulate religious ministers recently rejected 9-0 by the Supreme Court in the Hosanna Tabor case; or the revocation of the U.S. bishops’ conference human trafficking grant for refusing to refer rape victims to abortion clinics, it seems obvious that this administration is – to put it generously – tone deaf to people of faith.

Philadelphians may wish to reflect on the following facts. The Archdiocesan Secretariat for Catholic Human Services spends $278,000,000 annually on services to the community. About 4,000 employees comprise our Secretariat’s work force. Catholic Social Services is the largest social service agency in Pennsylvania and the largest residential care/social service sub-contractor with the Department of Human Services of the City of Philadelphia.

There’s more. Archdiocesan Catholic Health Care Services is the largest faith-based provider of long-term-care services to the poor and elderly in the five-county area, and the seventh-largest nationally. And our Nutritional Development Services ministry serves more than 8 million meals a year to school children, summer programs and child care centers. It also provides 2 million pounds of non-perishable food to needy families and the elderly through its Community Food Program.

Much of the money used by these ministries comes from public funding. But of course, the reason these ministries are trusted with public funding is that they do an excellent job. The service relationship works well without compromising the integrity of either the government or the Church. In fact, in a practical sense, government often benefits more than the Church.

It’s also important to note that many millions of the dollars disbursed are resources directly donated by faithful Catholics to carry out their Gospel mission to serve the needy. For the Church, this makes perfect sense: As a believing community, we share our resources freely and gladly. We’ll cooperate with anyone in service to the common good, so long as we are not forced to compromise our religious beliefs.

But the HHS mandate, including its latest variant, are belligerent, unnecessary and deeply offensive to the content of Catholic belief. Any such mandate would make it morally compromising for us to provide health care benefits to the staffing of our public service ministries. Moreover, we cannot afford to be fooled – yet again – by evasive and misleading allusions to the administration’s alleged “flexibility” on such issues. The HHS mandate needs to be rescinded.

Many critics are focusing on the details of this or that particular version of the HHS regulation – the narrowness of the religious exemption, the breadth of the mandate, the hollowness of the grace period. As useful as this approach may be, it risks wandering into the weeds. The White House response on these points is ambiguous and weak. The true magnitude of the issue is getting lost as just another debate about details.

In reality, no similarly aggressive attack on religious freedom in our country has occurred in recent memory.

The current administration prides itself on being measured and deliberate. The current HHS mandate needs to be understood as exactly that. Commentators are using words like “gaffe,” “ill conceived,” and “mistake” to describe the mandate. They’re wrong. It’s impossible to see this regulation as some happenstance policy. It has been too long in the making.

Despite all of its public apprehension about “culture warriors” on the political right in the past, the current administration has created an HHS mandate that is the embodiment of culture war. At its heart is a seemingly deep distrust of the formative role religious faith has on personal and social conduct, and a deep distaste for religion’s moral influence on public affairs. To say that this view is contrary to the Founders’ thinking and the record of American history would be an understatement.

Critics may characterize my words here as partisan or political. These are my personal views, and of course people are free to disagree. But it is this administration – not Catholic ministries or institutions or bishops – that chose the timing and nature of the fight. The onus is entirely on the White House, which also has the power to remove the issue from public conflict. Catholics should not be misled into accepting feeble compromises on issues of principle. The HHS mandate is bad law; and not merely bad, but dangerous and insulting. It needs to be withdrawn – now

.

 

[FooFee]

Amen sister, you tell it like it is!

 

[_Abyssinia]

Interfaith leaders stand with Catholics against administration

Evangelical and Jewish leaders declared their solidarity with Catholics on Feb. 10, as the Obama administration sought to quell controversy over its policy on contraception and religious ministries.

“Stories involving a Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew typically end with a punch line,” wrote Cardinal Donald W. Wuerl of Washington, D.C., Prison Fellowship founder Charles Colson, and Manhattan-based Orthodox Rabbi Meir Soloveichik in a Wall Street Journal editorial.

“We wish that were the case here, but what brings us together is no laughing matter: the threat now posed by government policy to that basic human freedom, religious liberty.”

catholicnewsagency.com/news/interfaith-leaders-stand-with-catholics-against-administration/

 

[_Abyssinia]

Immaculate Contraception: An ‘accommodation’ that makes the birth-control mandate worse

Here’s a conundrum: The White House wants to impose its birth-control ideology on all Americans, including those for whom sponsoring or subsidizing such services violates their moral conscience. The White House also wants to avoid a political backlash from this blow to religious freedom. These goals are irreconcilable.

So you almost have to admire the absurdity of the new plan President Obama floated yesterday: The government will now write a rule that says the best things in life are “free,” including contraception. Thus a political mandate will be compounded by an uneconomic one—in other words, behold the soul of ObamaCare.

Under the original Health and Human Services regulation, all religious institutions except for houses of worship would be required to cover birth control, including hospitals, schools and charities. Under the new rule, which the White House stresses is “an accommodation” and not a compromise, nonprofit religious organizations won’t have to directly cover birth control and can opt out. But the insurers they hire to cover their employees can’t opt out. If that sounds like a distinction without a difference, odds are you’re a rational person.

Say Notre Dame decides that its health plan won’t cover birth control on moral grounds. A faculty member wants such coverage, so Notre Dame’s insurer will then be required to offer the benefit as an add-on rider anyway, at no out-of-pocket cost to her, or to any other worker or in higher premiums for the larger group.

But wait. Supposedly the original rule was necessary to ensure “access” to contraceptives, which can cost up to $600 a year as Democratic Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray wrote in these pages this week. The true number is far less, but where does that $600 or whatever come from, if not from Notre Dame and not the professor?

Insurance companies won’t be making donations. Drug makers will still charge for the pill. Doctors will still bill for reproductive treatment. The reality, as with all mandated benefits, is that these costs will be borne eventually via higher premiums. The balloon may be squeezed differently over time, and insurers may amortize the cost differently over time, but eventually prices will find an equilibrium. Notre Dame will still pay for birth control, even if it is nominally carried by a third-party corporation.

online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577215150068215494.html

 

[baylee]

Interfaith leaders stand with Catholics against administration

catholicnewsagency.com/news/interfaith-leaders-stand-with-catholics-against-administration/

This is awesome.

 

[InLight247]

Father Frank Pavone is having a webcast on Feb. 15:
priestsforlife.org/webcast/

Joining me will be Congressman Chris Smith, who, as you know, is a heroic pro-life leader in the US Congress, Doug Johnson, the Federal Legislative Director for the National Right to Life Committee, David N. O’Steen, Ph.D., Executive Director of National Right to Life, and Charles S. LiMandri, APC, the attorney who is filing the federal lawsuit on behalf of Priests for Life.

Join us for an inspiring call to action this Wednesday night, and please spread the word to as many others as you can.

Worth to watch and get action ideas.

 

[Tigg]

I understand the need to rant against one person, but I would caution that there is a very powerful cadre and movement responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves. One individual is not capable of destruction of the Bill of Rights; the organized enemies of this Constitutional Republic have been around for much longer than the current POTUS. They have chosen and trained our opposition carefully, and we are seeing unprecedented corruption and evil at every level. But he, like the others, have their marching orders and the agenda is being incrementally advanced.

 

[PTL]

Actually it is not a rant against one person, rather, it is a life and death war against the ideology that one person leads with power and the groups support this ideology behind him. It is a social and cultural war, a war of value, and a war for freedom.

It is not only about Catholic Church, it is about mankind.

Seriously, if we lose on this mandate of contraception, the persecution of all other issues will follow. There will be law of mandate for clergy to perform same sex marriage, there will be law of mandate for doctors to perform end of life help, there will be law of mandate to scientists for stem cell research on human cloning. And if the clergy, the doctor, the scientist do not comply, they go to jail.

Don’t think this is not possible, it has been happening already, we are on the way of total destruction. If we, you and I, all who has a right conscience, don’t do something to stop this, we will all be gravely affected and suffer.

 

[Tigg]

Actually it is not a rant against one person, rather, it is a life and death war against the ideology that one person leads with power and the groups support this ideology behind him. It is a social and cultural war, a war of value, and a war for freedom.

It is not only about Catholic Church, it is about mankind.

Seriously, if we lose on this mandate of contraception, the persecution of all other issues will follow. There will be law of mandate for clergy to perform same sex marriage, there will be law of mandate for doctors to perform end of life help, there will be law of mandate to scientists for stem cell research on human cloning. And if the clergy, the doctor, the scientist do not comply, they go to jail.

Don’t think this is not possible, it has been happening already, we are on the way of total destruction. If we, you and I, all who has a right conscience, don’t do something to stop this, we will all be gravely affected and suffer.

I don’t disagree in any way; merely saying that even Obama is a player on the field marching to the beat of a drummer in a league intent on the destruction of our liberties.

 

[PTL]

I don’t disagree in any way; merely saying that even Obama is a player on the field marching to the beat of a drummer in a league intent on the destruction of our liberties.

Absolutely!

 

[_Abyssinia]

Ryan: Obama revised birth-control rule an 'accounting trick’

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) blasted President Obama’s changes to an administration ruling forcing religiously affiliated organizations to cover contraceptives in their health plans as a “trick.”

“It’s a distinction without a difference. It’s really an accounting trick,” said the Republican lawmaker on ABC’s This Week on Sunday.

“It forces the insurance company that they have to pay to do the coverage. So instead of making the institution itself, it reinforces the insurer,” Ryan said. “And a lot of these Catholic institutions are self-insured, and all insurers under this rule must provide these mandated benefits.”

“It’s not a compromise. The president’s doubled down,” he added.

thehill.com/blogs/healthwatch/health-reform-implementation/210145-ryan-obama-revised-birth-control-rule-an-accounting-trick

 

[estesbob]

Unacceptable — former Vatican Ambassador, Prof. Robert George, others respond

UPDATE: Over 118 national leaders (and counting), including university, college, seminary presidents, deans and board members, along with notable journalists, scholars and activists. Updated letter can be found here.]
The following letter was signed by former Vatican Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, Princeton Prof. Robert George, Notre Dame Law Prof. Carter Snead, Catholic University of America President John Garvey, and EPPC Fellow Yuval Levin.

---

catholicvote.org/discuss/index.php?p=26523

 

[Catholic_Opinion]

When considering the Presidents attack on the 1st Amendment, and the resistance of the bishops, we have to remember another point.

The bishops supported Obamacare in principle. They thought they wanted to support an Obamacare without things that the Church objects to. They thought they wanted a top down healthcare much as what Vatican City State and Roman Curia employees get.

The problem with buying into top down health care is that, once you permit it to take over, you won’t be able to stop whatever its adminstrators want to impose.

I have been listening to White House shills and surrogates hammer away that “preventive health” is a “right”. Remember the adage: make the lie big, keep the lie simple, and repeat the lie until everyone believes it.

Today I also heard a story about a women who wanted to be a man, and who went through some transgendering surgical mutlilation to simulate that aspiration. Apparently “he” just gave birth… as a “man”. *That’s going to be a “right”, mark my words.

Think about what is down the pike, folks. Even if the bishops win this battle over “exemptions”, Catholic institutions will be forced to acquies to any “right” the government begins to tout as a right.

Think about how complicated things will get when the administrators of top-down health care start determining matters of brain death and when organs can be transplanted.

Think about how end of life issues will be determined and who will be involved.

The US Bishops put their foot wrong on the first rung of the ladder into the tarpit.

We are probably going to have to get out of hospitals or lose our identity.

None of this means that we should stop fighting the Obama Administration’s attack on the 1st Amendment. We must not comply with what they want to do to us as Americans and as Catholics. But let’s not be naive about how we got here in the first place.

Full entry…

 

[NYCATHOLICGIRL]

I understand the need to rant against one person, but I would caution that there is a very powerful cadre and movement responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves. One individual is not capable of destruction of the Bill of Rights; the organized enemies of this Constitutional Republic have been around for much longer than the current POTUS. They have chosen and trained our opposition carefully, and we are seeing unprecedented corruption and evil at every level. But he, like the others, have their marching orders and the agenda is being incrementally advanced.

:clapping:

AMEN! That is what I have trying to say. It is NOT about Obama, its about the planned downfall of the USA.
This evil that befalls us is the same evil that we see in the OT. We must be vigilant in our faith because we are in for a rocky ride.

 

[cybercorrespond]

A Frightening thought. If Obama wins a second term, we will surely find out what his plan really is. youtu.be/8qHmXMMCrlI

 

[Bubba_Switzler]

The bishops supported Obamacare in principle. They thought they wanted to support an Obamacare without things that the Church objects to. They thought they wanted a top down healthcare much as what Vatican City State and Roman Curia employees get.

Indeed, many of us have pointed this out to catcalls and worse.

However, I am beginning to get the impression that there may have been a significant change of heart on the part of the bishops. I don’t expect them to put aside their infatuation for the welfare state anytime soon but they do not appear to be rushing to compromise and brush this under the rug.

Whether by choice or by circumstances forced upon them, they are beginning to take a stand. Some critics of the bishops have even gone so far as to claim that the bishops lured the administration into this fight. I don’t believe that but I do believe that they now recognize the significance of their response to it.

Let us give them the support they need and encourage them to stay in this fight until all men of conscience, not just Catholic institutions, are free of this immoral coercion.