Catholic Bishops Issue Prayer for Liberty

From: CNSNews.com

The Catholic bishops of the United States have called for the nation’s Catholics to observe the two week period starting today and running through the Fourth of July as a “Fortnight of Freedom” in which they hope Americans will pray for the preservation of freedom in this country and speak out clearly against the unprecedented attacks on religious liberty that have issued from the federal government.

The bishops have issued a new “Prayer for the Protection of Religious Liberty” that they hope Catholics will use frequently in the coming days. The prayer asks God to keep America “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” for “the sake of our children, our grandchildren, and all who come after us.”

It describes the current time as a “decisive hour in the history of our nation.”

The “Fortnight of Freedom” pointedly begins on the vigil of the Feasts of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More. Fisher and More are both Catholic martyrs beheaded by King Henry VIII in 1535 for refusing to take an oath recognizing Henry as the supreme authority over the church in England. Fisher, a cardinal, was bishop of Rochester. More, a lawyer, had served Henry as Lord Chancellor. Both gave their lives rather than bow to the king’s demand that they act against their consciences.

The most imminent threat to religious liberty—but not the only one—that the Catholic bishops have been protesting and seeking to draw public attention to is a regulation that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued under President Barack Obama’s health care law. The regulation will require virtually all health-care plans in the United States to cover, without any fees or co-pay, sterilizations, artificial contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.

The Catholic Church teaches that sterilization, artificial contraceptives and abortion are morally wrong. Thus, the regulation would force Catholic workers, business owners and institutions to buy and/or provide for things that violate the teachings of their faith.

After the Obama administration finalized the regulation earlier this year, most Catholic bishops around the country published a letter, read from the pulpits in local churches, that said: “We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law.”

This month, the Catholic bishops are distributing an insert in church bulletins around the country pointing to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, and his defense of civil disobedience, noting that King, a Baptist minister, used the arguments of the Catholic Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to justify peaceful resistance to unjust laws. In the bulletin insert, the bishops made clear that civil disobedience may be necessary when freedom of conscience is attacked.

“Some unjust laws impose such injustices on individuals and organizations that disobeying the laws may be justified,” says the bulletin insert. “Every effort must be made to repeal them. When fundamental human goods, such as the right of conscience, are at stake, we may need to witness to the truth by resisting the law and incurring its penalties.”

In a longer statement on religious liberty published in April, the Catholic bishops plainly restated the Catholic teaching: “An unjust law cannot be obeyed.”

“It is a sobering thing to contemplate our government enacting an unjust law,” said the bishops. “An unjust law cannot be obeyed. In the face of an unjust law, an accommodation is not to be sought, especially by resorting to equivocal words and deceptive practices. If we face today the prospect of unjust laws, then Catholics in America, in solidarity with our fellow citizens, must have the courage not to obey them. No American desires this. No Catholic welcomes it. But if it should fall upon us, we must discharge it as a duty of citizenship and an obligation of faith.”

At their biannual meeting in Atlanta last week, the U.S. Catholic bishops unanimously endorsed a statement titled, “United For Religious Freedom.” This statement pointed out that it is not just Catholic institutions or employers whose religious freedom is attacked by the administration’s sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate, but also individual Americans, who in their consciences, object to these things.

Catholic hospitals reject birth control compromise

From: MSNBC

Sharpening an election-year confrontation over religious freedom and government health insurance rules, the nation's Catholic hospitals on Friday rejected President Barack Obama's compromise for providing birth control coverage to their women employees.

The Catholic Health Association was a key ally in Obama's health care overhaul, defying opposition from church bishops to help the president win approval in Congress. But the group said Friday it does not believe church-affiliated employers should have to provide birth control as a free preventive service, as the law now requires.

The hospital group's decision calls into question a compromise offered by the president himself only months ago, under which the cost of providing birth control would be covered by insurance companies and not religious employers. While churches and other places of worship are exempt from the birth control mandate, nonprofits affiliated with a religion, such as hospitals, are not.

In a letter to the federal Health and Human Services department, the hospital group said the compromise initially seemed to be "a good first step" but that examination of the details proved disappointing. The plan would be "unduly cumbersome" to carry out and "unlikely to adequately meet the religious liberty concerns" of all its members, the group said.

While some liberal-leaning religious groups see no problem with the birth control rule, Roman Catholic bishops and conservative-leaning groups are treating it as an affront and calling it an attack on religious freedom. Institutions ranging from the University of Notre Dame to Catholic Charities in several states to the Archdiocese of Washington have sued to block the rule.

With the Catholic Health Association now voicing concerns, opponents gained a powerful endorsement. There was no immediate reaction from the Obama administration.

The association represents about 600 hospitals and hundreds of nursing homes and other health-related organizations, totaling 2,000 members around the country. One of every six patients is cared for in a Catholic hospital.

In its letter, the group said the government should either broaden the exemption for religious employers, or pay directly for the birth control coverage.

Starting next Jan, 1, in most cases, women will have access to birth control at no additional charge through their job-based coverage, as part of a package of preventive services that also includes HIV screening and support for breast-feeding mothers. Some employers, considered to be "grandfathered" in under the health care law, will not have to provide the coverage.

The requirement applies to all birth control approved by the Food and Drug Administration. That includes the pill, intrauterine devices, the so-called morning-after pill, and newer forms of long-acting implantable hormonal contraceptives that are becoming widely used in the rest of the industrialized world.

The morning-after pill is particularly controversial. It has no effect if a woman is already pregnant, but many religious conservatives consider it tantamount to an abortion drug.

As recently as the 1990s, many health insurance plans didn't cover birth control. Protests, court cases, and new state laws led to dramatic changes. Today, almost all plans cover prescription contraceptives — but usually impose copays.

The White House has struggled to find a solution that will satisfy women's rights advocates without offending people who object on grounds of religious freedom. While Catholic church teaching has long opposed artificial means of birth control, polls show the faithful use the pill nonetheless.

Obama in 2008 won the total Catholic vote, 54 percent to Sen. John McCain's 45 percent, but he lost the white Catholic vote, 52 percent to 47 percent, according to exit polls. Once reliably Democratic, Catholics are now swing voters, with white Catholics making up the majority of the group.

A Controversy at Post-Catholic Georgetown

From: Minding the Campus

Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services, is scheduled to speak Friday at a Georgetown University commencement event, setting off protests among Catholics and others who believe the Obamacare mandate violates religious liberty. So far, some 25,000 people have signed petitions asking for the invitation to be withdrawn. On campus, the reaction seems more tepid: only 9 of the 1500-plus faculty members and just 3 of the 55 resident Jesuits are known to have joined the protest.

For President Obama, the speech sets up a likely win-win outcome: dispatching a nominal Catholic to a nominally Catholic university that yearns to be secular (the question, "Is Georgetown still a Catholic university?" has been asked since the mid-60s) either provokes an angry response that would fit the "war against women" scenario, or a trifling one demonstrating that the Catholic bishops have bluster, but few troops behind them, even on a Jesuit campus.

Georgetown reacted to the protests by walking the announcement back a bit. Though Sebelius is listed as one of the commencement speakers at the Georgetown Public Policy Institute, a university email later said she was to speak at an annual "student and faculty awards event."

The Archdiocese of Washington released a statement today (May 15) saying "it is understandable that Catholics across the country would find shocking the choice of Secretary Sebelius, the architect of the mandate, to receive such special recognition at a Catholic university."

Sebelius is an unusually provocative choice by Georgetown. Catholic politicians understand that they cannot rise in the Democratic Party without defying their church on some basic issues, abortion most obviously.

(Senator Robert Casey, Jr. is an exception so far, but he arrived on the national scene running against Rick Santorum.) Of the roster of Catholic pols who have seen the light and converted to the Democratic Party's position on abortion--Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, Joe Biden, et al.--Sebelius has probably been the defector inflicting the most damage since Teddy Kennedy.

Friend and Protector of George Tiller

As governor of Kansas she vetoed four anti-abortion bills and was unusually close to the late partial-birth-abortion specialist George Tiller, assassinated by an anti-abortion zealot in 2009. She protected Tiller from litigation and criminal prosecution and he became one of her major political donors. The Sebelius administration destroyed subpoenaed documents sought for years in criminal proceedings against Planned Parenthood for failure to report large numbers of child rapes. The originals somehow disappeared in 2005 and the copies were "routinely" discarded or destroyed by a Sebelius appointee in 2009. Planned Parenthood is also a large and regular donor to Sebelius.

The bishops (and the Vatican) have grown weary of big-name Catholics who abandon the fundamentals of their faith whenever politics requires it. The Bishops are also wary of Catholic colleges celebrating non-Catholics who oppose the church's basic principles. Their 2004 statement said Catholic colleges should make their values clear: "The Catholic community and Catholic institutions should not honor those who act in defiance of our fundamental moral principles. They should not be given awards, honors or platforms which would suggest support for their actions."

President Obama's appearance at Notre Dame was enormously controversial because of his stance on abortion, but even some opponents were willing to let that one go, rather than reject a sitting president. One who didn't let it pass was Mary Ann Glendon, Harvard Law professor and U.S. ambassador to the Vatican under George W. Bush. She was scheduled to receive a high Catholic honor, the Laetare Medal, on Obama-day at Notre Dame, and quietly declined to appear.

Some Catholic colleges, for their part, are nervous about having the hierarchy telling them what to do. For Georgetown, the most post-Catholic of the nation's prominent Catholic colleges (it pointedly covered up religiously imagery when Obama spoke there), this isn't much of a dilemma.

After the 15 minutes of fame of Sandra Fluke, the single woman who said she needed a $3000 contraception subsidy to get through three years at Georgetown Law school, Georgetown President John DeGioia praised Fluke (her "expression of conscience was in the tradition of the deepest values we share as a people"), while waving off the strong anti-Obamacare statement of the bishops as merely one of many opinions on the issue.

("Many, including the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, have offered important perspectives on this issue.")

But Georgetown can still dust off its fading Catholic values when it has to. Recently 94 faculty members cited Catholic social thought on the duty to the poor. But that was to denounce a visitor to the campus as insufficiently Catholic--not Sebelius of course, but budget-cutting Republican Congressman Paul Ryan.

Obama Admin's Catholic Treatment: Coercion in the Name of Freedom

From: LifeNews.com

The “Freedom From Religion Foundation” has placed a full-page ad in the Washington Post. It urges Catholics to “quit the Catholic Church” over its teachings on sex and procreation, asking: “Will it be reproductive freedom, or back to the Dark Ages?”

Noting Catholic opposition to the Obama Administration’s mandate for covering contraception, sterilization and abortifacient drugs in most private health plans, the ad declares: “The Church that hasn’t persuaded you to shun contraception now wants to use the force of secular law to deny birth control to non-Catholics.”

This is so topsy-turvy a description of what is going on that I guess the Post’s advertising fact-checkers are out sick.  But in case anyone is swayed by such charges, the facts may bear repeating.

It is, of course, the Administration that wants to “use the force of secular law” to deny a freedom Americans have long enjoyed.  Until now, Catholics and non-Catholics alike had the freedom to decide, without federal interference, whether to buy the above-mentioned coverage or not.  A religious organization with a moral objection could exclude the coverage from the health plan it subsidizes; an individual who wanted those drugs and procedures could choose to work for an organization that subsidizes them, or use his or her own money to buy them.

Under the Administration’s mandate, by contrast, there is no free choice – for employers, or for individual women.  Almost everyone must have coverage for the full range of anti-pregnancy technologies aimed at women, from surgical sterilizations to the injectable and implantable drugs often used by overzealous population control programs in the Third World.  (Interestingly, male methods such as condoms and vasectomies are excluded.)   An extremely narrow “religious employer” exemption will let some churches and houses of worship opt out – if they focus on “inculcation of religious values,” and don’t hire or serve people of other faiths.

The Administration will delay enforcing its mandate for one year for a wider class of religious employers – those which educate, heal and serve the public.  But once this year is up, the coverage will be provided “automatically” to these organizations’ employees, whether the employees want it or not – and to their “beneficiaries” such as teenage children, with guarantees of “privacy.”

This acts out a script that Planned Parenthood and its allies wrote many years ago.  In 1995 PP’s former research arm, the Guttmacher Institute, issued a position paper titled “Uneven and Unequal” that urged comprehensive “access” to “reproductive health” services as part of health care reform.  It insisted on covering these procedures for enrollees’ children “confidentially,” so parents need not be aware what others are encouraging their children to do about pregnancy prevention.  The Institute said such coverage should be available without co-pays or other out-of-pocket expenses – not only to maximize access, but to ensure “confidential care” (that is, teens can obtain the services without telling Mom why they need twenty dollars).

So this dispute is about religious freedom, and other freedoms as well.  As part of its human rights stand on population policy, the Church has long insisted that government should not be encouraging or dictating the specific methods by which parents decide the size of their families.  The Church has also supported the freedom of parents to be primary educators and guides for their children, including on matters of sexuality.

Those freedoms are forfeited when the federal government can reach into every family in America to ensure that children are counseled and given drugs, implants or surgeries to prevent pregnancy behind their parents’ backs.  To justify that agenda, you need a broader slogan than just “Freedom from Religion.”  Maybe “Freedom from Freedom” will catch on.

Michael Ramirez Cartoon On Obama Mandate

Figure That 98% of Catholic Women Use Birth Control Debunked

From: LifeNews.com

Abortion advocates and the White House are using a misleading figure to defend the new mandate the Obama administration put in place that requires insurance companies to offer birth control drugs that may cause abortions at no cost.


Both Obama administration officials and pro-abortion advocates like Planned Parenthood and NARAL are telling their members that 98% of Catholic women use contraception, a myth based on a misreading of a study published by the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute, a former Planned Parenthood affiliate.

Lydia McGrew has published a lengthy refutation of the figure that is drawing praise for its insight and accuracy.

“The survey was limited to women between 15-44. Ah, well, that explains how we weren’t including the elderly, but it also means that the silly “percent of all Catholic women” thing should be chucked out right from the beginning,” she notes.

McGrew indicates the Guttmacher study also “excluded any women who were a) not sexually active, where that is defined as having had sexual intercourse in the past three months (there go all the nuns), b) postpartum, c) pregnant, or d) trying to get pregnant. In other words, the study was specifically designed (as the prose discussion on p. 8 makes explicit, in bold print) to include only women for whom a pregnancy would be unintended and who are “at risk” of becoming pregnant.”

She continues: “Whether or not it included women who considered themselves neither trying nor not trying to get pregnant (there are some such women in the world) is unclear. It’s also unclear whether it included women who have had their reproductive organs removed because of some medical problem. Presumably the study was intended to exclude women in both of these categories, as neither would count as a woman “at risk of an unintended pregnancy.”

McGrew writes: “Now, consider what all of this means as far as the representativeness of the sample for Catholic women. Surely there are a fair number of Catholic women between 15-44 who are not “at risk of an unintended pregnancy” for various reasons. It is plausible that this number is higher among Catholics than among non-Catholics. For one thing, a faithful Catholic woman in this age category who is not married is supposed to be remaining celibate. Hence she won’t fall into the “at-risk” category, and by the same token she won’t have any use for the “services” that the Obama administration is mandating be provided. Similarly, married Catholic women are probably more likely not to be attempting to avoid pregnancy, even using Natural Family Planning, than non-Catholic women. One would think they are also more likely to be pregnant or postpartum. And so on and so forth. In short, the deliberate design of the study to cover only women who, at the time of the study, were having sexual intercourse while regarding a pregnancy as unintended would be likely to make it unrepresentative of Catholics and particularly unrepresentative of devout Catholics. Yet the study is now being cited to show the percentage of Catholic women generally who are not following the teaching of the Catholic Church in this area! What is wrong with this picture?”

Tom Hoopes of CatholicVote reviewed both McGrew’s numbers and the initial study Guttmacher conducted.
“The results are even more skewed if you ask people at the top of a survey what religion they are. People who have never darkened the door of a Catholic Church will happily mark “Catholic” on such a survey. The behavior they report will count for or against Catholics the same regardless of their actual contact with Catholicism,” he writes. “This particular survey even admits that less than a third of its “Catholic” respondents even go to Mass once a week.”

“So, what do we know from the start: We aren’t dealing with practicing Catholics. In fact, a two-thirds majority of the Catholics in the survey are not eligible to receive communion, according to the U.S. bishops (see page 9), since they skip their Sunday obligation,” Hoopes continues.

“The most shocking news, though, is that the White House is spreading false information about Catholicism in order to provide cover as it removes religious liberties for Catholic organizations,” he concludes. “White House: Retract this statement and correct the record. Stop misinforming the public about my religion for your purposes.”

Archbishop Chaput: Obama HHS Mandate "Insulting, Dangerous"

From: LifeNews.com

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia is one of the most highly regarded Catholic bishops because of his ability to passionately defend the pro-life position. A new statement he released about President Barack Obama’s pro-abortion, anti-conscience mandate is drawing rave reviews.

Chaput’s statement follows in its entirety:

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services refused on Jan. 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 such as 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 including 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 million annually on services to the community. About 4,000 employees make up our secretariat’s workforce. Catholic Social Services is the largest social-service agency in Pennsylvania and the largest residential care/social-service subcontractor 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 eight million meals a year to schoolchildren, summer programs, and child-care centers. It also provides 2 million pounds of nonperishable 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, is 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 staffs 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.

Video: Archbishop Cardinal Wuerl denounces contraception accommodation on America’s Newsroom

An American Catholic's Rebuttal to Supporters of the Mandate

This is likely to be the first of many commentaries on this matter, but I feel compelled to address specific points that have been made to support President Obama's unconstitutional mandate upon Catholic affiliated institutions.

Firstly, supporters of the mandate defend the proposition because as they say most Catholics do not agree with the Church on the matter of artificial birth control. Jehmu Green, on Fox News no less cited polling that 98% of Catholics oppose the Church and have used contraception. Juan Williams, also on FOX, cited a FOX NEWS poll that showed 61% of all Americans agreed with the Presidents' mandate.The Green and Williams position is that if a majority of the faithful do not adhere to the precepts of their faith, then the government is justly empowered to enforce that majority opinion upon the entire faith.

Let us suppose that these polling numbers are accurate and not skewed by faulty inquiry. If it really is 98% that oppose the Church and a mere 2% that abide by its teaching I am compelled to ask: SO WHAT? This argument in defense of the mandate is pathetic precisely because it seeks to delegitimize faith if it does not conform to majority will. If I am part of the 98% am I justified in marginalizing the 2%? Are those 2% who comply with the Church's teachings to be denied protection under the First Amendment? Are we now to extend the protections of that First Amendment exclusively to those whose lives are in contravention to the tenets of their faith? That is the logical conclusion to draw by those who cite polls to justify intruding upon religious liberty. It is however the citation of the outcome of public polling to defend this unconscionable act that is more profoundly disturbing because it undermines the heart of the First Amendment. Freedom to Worship and by extension the conscience of one's faith as outlined in the First Amendment does not exist to serve the will or conscience of a 98% majority, it is there expressly to serve and protect the minority from the will of the majority. This historic reality is absent among those who recite polls to defend the President and is therefore wholly invalid in its construction. Catholics and only Catholics are free to debate and seek to alter the precepts of their faith. Many liberal Catholics have pleaded with the Church to change its policy. It is an example of Dialogue among the faithful and in the United States of America the government is not justly empowered to take up the cause of a faction in an internal debate amongst the flock. Catholics make the rules for Catholicism and no one else. It is true of all faiths and the faithful in America.

The second defense of the mandate goes like this: Because Catholic affiliated schools and hospitals hire non Catholics, those non Catholics are not bound to the teachings of the Catholic Church and therefore any affiliated institutions depriving them of health care plans without contraception are effectively coercing them to compromise their health and principles. It is therefore held by this defense that government is justified in compelling those institutions to compromise its faith and provide such services. This is absurd.

First of all if you are a person of one or no faith working at an institution run by a contrary faith it then stands as common sense that your faith as the employee does not dictate itself to your employer. If your values are so offended by the tenets of the Catholic Institution that employs you then you are free to pursue employment with any alternative enterprise that meets your values. For that matter, as an American Catholic if you are so profoundly dissented with the faith, you are free to find peace amidst a new flock that matches your values. Simply put: The Door is open and you are free to leave.

As to the issue of coercion of non Catholic employees. Let us imagine for the moment that I am the President of the University of Notre Dame, the most prestigious Catholic University in America. In that capacity I publicly declare that we will only consider Catholic applicants for employment and furthermore be discharging all present non Catholic employees and shall only take applications from Catholics and thereby exclude non Catholics from employment in this new hiring practice. If such an action were taken the Justice Department would seek to prosecute the University for violation of federal anti discrimination laws. I use this example to illustrate how this defense is a "Catch-22". On the one hand Catholic institutions like Notre Dame are obligated by law to consider all qualified applicants and cannot prohibit by practice the employment of non Catholics. This legal reality undoes the "coercion" defense. Because the Church abides the law regarding employment, they are now compelled to violate its conscience as a result of its compliance? On the one hand the institution cannot discriminate and because it cannot by law discriminate, they are now compelled by the mandate as the employer to conform to the values of the non Catholic employee as defined by Kathleen Sebellius, that Quisling residing at Health and Human Services. What a fine legal mechanism that erodes religious liberty. 

The third defense is worthless but needs mentioning. They argue "it's about women's health,not religious liberty". This is just plain dishonest. First of all, health care as a whole, women's needs or otherwise is not a right as defined by the Constitution. Freedom of Worship is. How can something that is not a right, trump the very first amendment ratified by the thirteen original states? This defense is merely a facade, given the abundance of evidence however anecdotal that Rick Perry was right when he said there was a "war on religion". There is a clear and definable segment of American society represented in this crisis of faith that are intent upon subordinating all people of faith to what they deem to be the greater moral authority, that of course being an all knowing, all powerful, wiser and beneficent federal government. They seek as evidenced in this matter, however subtle and incremental to compel people of ancient faiths to worship their newly constructed Golden Calf, an altar to honor their secular God as they seek to consign the Faith of Our Fathers with an eye towards oblivion.

I am by temperament inclined to believe that people are well intentioned in their dissent on issues of substance. On this matter I cannot bear as the evidence mounts to extend such a presumption. The assault on religious liberty in this mandate is unprecedented. It is just the beginning and the most notable chapter in a litany of lesser known efforts to diminish individual fidelity to faith. Whatever one's faith or values, this mandate is a direct assault on faith, but indirectly its greatest victim is the "Spirit of America" itself, a spirit that cherishes individuality and the freedom to define our lives on our terms as dictated by our conscience whether inspired by the divine or a choice to ignore his voice in the conducting of our life.

DEFEND YOUR FAITH
FIGHT FOR THE CONSTITUTION
PRESERVE THE "SPIRIT OF AMERICA"

Religious Liberty Homily.mp4

Southern Baptist leader: If Obama mandate isn’t changed, Christians will go to jail

From: LifeSiteNews.com

One of the most influential evangelical leaders in the United States says Christians should go to jail rather than comply with the Obama administration’s mandate to provide all contraception, including abortion-inducing drugs, in their health care plans.

Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), told LifeSiteNews.com "we will not comply" with the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring religious institutions to cover abortifacient products such as Plan B, Ella, and the IUD.

"We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write our letters from the Nashville jail, just like Dr. King wrote his from the Birmingham jail," Dr. Land said.

Dr. Land wrote an op-ed on Tuesday with Barrett Duke, vice president for public policy and research at ERLC, calling his fellow Southern Baptists and evangelical Christians throughout America to oppose any infringement on the First Amendment.

"The Obama administration has declared war on religion and freedom of conscience," they wrote. "We consider this callous requirement by the Obama administration to be a clear violation of our nation's commitment to liberty of conscience and a flagrant violation of our constitutional protection to freedom of religion."

Dr. Land told LifeSiteNews he hopes Baptist ministers will "preach from the pulpit just how serious and dangerous this initiative by the Obama administration is," and "encourage their parishioners to contact their congressmen and their senators and the president and let them know how deeply unhappy they are with this decision, and they want…legislation guaranteeing that it won’t happen again."

"It is now in the providence of God," Dr. Land said. "Our responsibility is to stand and say, ‘We will not comply with this. We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write our letters from the Nashville jail, just like Dr. King wrote his from the Birmingham jail.’ We will not comply."

Dr. Land, who earned a Doctorate of Philosophy from Oxford University, has been named by Time magazine as one of .The Twenty-five Most Influential Evangelicals in America."
 
President Obama’s recess appointment of Chai Feldblum to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) provided an insight to the president’s views, Dr. Land said. Feldblum has said whenever religious rights come into conflict with sexual rights, that sexual rights must prevail. .That’s exactly what’s happening in the Health and Human Services contraceptive and abortifacient directive,. he said. .They are saying that a woman’s right to have free contraceptive services and free abortifacients trumps the deeply held religious convictions of Catholics and Baptists and others. That’s a war on religion..

Several of the Obama administration’s actions have convinced observers the president harbors an aversion to Christian values. "I do know hostility to religious conviction in the public square when I see it, and I see it in the Hosanna case," in which the Obama administration attempted to narrowly define the ministerial exemption in hiring, Dr. Land told LifeSiteNews.com. He called the Obama administration .radically secularist. on his weekly radio program.

The op-ed he co-authored came exactly one week after Dr. Albert Mohler, president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said evangelical Christians may be required to face imprisonment over the issue. Dr. Mohler said in his daily podcast, "You at least have to admire the courage of the Roman Catholic bishops in saying they are willing to go to jail rather than to comply with this. How many evangelical presidents and pastors and leaders would be willing to do the same?."

"We're going to find out in coming months," he warned.

He said despite media coverage portraying the new regulation as a Catholic issue, "evangelicals need to stand back and . in our own terms, on our own doctrine . understand that our religious liberty is being similarly subverted and attacked."

Government encroachments on religion have long concerned Dr. Land. Last December, he joined 59 other non-Catholic religious leaders in signing a letter to Barack Obama stating, "religious organizations beyond the Catholic community have deep moral objections to a requirement that their health insurance plans must cover abortifacients."

Dr. Land and Duke noted in their op-ed that the government protects other Christians from violating their consciences by exempting pacifists from serving in the military, but "the administration is refusing to allow those who believe that abortion is the deliberate killing of an innocent human being to follow faithfully the dictates of his or her conscience on a matter as grave as the death of an unborn child."

"A person who is not free to follow the dictates of his or her moral conscience is not free," they wrote. "Our Baptist forebears died and went to prison to secure these freedoms."

In the upcoming presidential election, Dr. Land hoped faithful voters would consider the importance of religious liberty. "This is a very serious and defining moment in American society," he said.

The Southern Baptist Convention is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States, with more than16 million members and 45,000 churches in the United States.

Boehner: Rescind Contraception Mandate Entirely So Catholic Individuals—as Well as Institutions—Are Not Forced to Act Against Faith

From: CNSnews.com

House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday told CNSNews.com through his spokesman that it is his position that the Obama administration’s regulation ordering that all health-care plans must cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions, should be rescinded in its entirety so that neither Catholic individuals, nor Catholic business owners, nor Catholic insurers, nor Catholic institutions will be forced by the federal government to act against the teachings of the Catholic faith.

Boehner also specifically indicated he is leaving "on the table" the option of inserting language into future federal spending bills to prohibit the administration from using any money to implement the regulation.

Much of the press coverage on the controversy over the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate has erroneously presented it as a conflict between America’s Catholic bishops and the administration over the question of whether the administration will expand the “religious-employer” exemption in the current version of the regulation so that the exemption will apply to Catholic institutions such as hospitals, universities and charitable organizations.

For example, citing aides to President Barack Obama, a Wednesday New York Times article presented the issue this way.

“As the Republican presidential candidates and conservative leaders sought to frame the rule as showing President Obama's insensitivity to religious beliefs, Mr. Obama's aides promised to explore ways to make it more palatable to religious-affiliated institutions,” the Times reported.

''We certainly don't want to abridge anyone's religious freedoms, so we're going to look for a way to move forward that both provides women with the preventative care that they need and respects the prerogatives of religious institutions,'' the Times quoted Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod as telling MSNBC.

But the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and lay Catholic leaders have repeatedly made clear that the regulation violates the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion not only of Catholic institutions but also of individuals, employers and insurers--Catholic or otherwise--who have a religious objection to sterilization, contraception, or abortion.

“Finally, as applied to individuals and organizations with a religious objection to contraceptives, sterilization, and related counseling and education, the HHS mandate violates various protections under the Religion Clauses and Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”) and the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”),” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told HHS in comments on the regulation submitted last August.

“The exemption provides no protection at all for individuals or insurers with a moral or religious objection to contraceptives or sterilization, who will experience burdens to conscience under this new mandate,” said the bishops. “Instead, it provides protection only to employers with similar objections, and even then to a very small subset of religious employers.”

“By failing to protect insurers, individuals, most employers, or any other stakeholders with a religious objection to such items and procedures, the HHS exemption, like the mandate itself, violates the First Amendment and the APA,” the bishops said.

“In sum, we urge HHS to rescind the mandate in its entirety,” they said. “Only rescission will eliminate all of the serious moral problems the mandate creates.”

On Wednesday, House Speaker Boehner gave a speech on the House floor saying that Congress “must” act to counter the administration’s regulation and that the matter was going to be taken up by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has oversight over the Health and Human Services Department. In his speech, however, Boehner spoke of the regulation only insofar as it effects “faith-based employers.”

“This rule would require faith-based employers--including Catholic charities, schools, universities, and hospitals-- to provide services they believe are immoral,” Boehner said. “Those services include sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs and devices, and contraception.”

Following the speech, CNSNews.com sent Boehner Spokesman Michael Steel two questions to clarify whether the speaker’s position was that Congress should act to protect only faith-based employers from this regulation, or also individuals, private businessmen, and insurers. Also, CNSNews.com asked if the speaker believed that the House should put language in future spending bills prohibiting the administration from using federal money to implement the regulation.

Spokesman Steel said the answer to the first question was “yes.” To the second question, Steel said “all options are on the table.”

Specifically, CNSNews.com asked: “Is it your position, Mr. Speaker, that the House should pass legislation before Aug. 1 that in keeping with the position of the U.S. Catholic bishops entirely rescinds the HHS sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation so that not only Catholic institutions (such as hospitals, universities and charitable organizations) are protected from being forced by the government to act against the teachings of the Catholic faith, but that Catholic individuals, business owners and insurers are also protected from being forced by the government to act against the teachings of their faith?

Spokesman Steel responded: “Yes, it is the position of the speaker to act to rescind this rule that violates religious freedom before Aug 1.”

Then, CNSNews.com asked: “Is it your position, Mr. Speaker, that if the House Republicans fail to persuade the Senate and President Obama to enact legislation this year entirely rescinding the HHS sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation, that the House should put language in the appropriate fiscal 2013 funding bills prohibiting the administration from implementing this regulation?”

Steel responded: “All options are on the table whether it be stand alone legislation, amendments or limitation of funds provisions.”

Adrienne's Corner: It's time for the Catholic bishops to make public ...

This blog posting at Adrienne's Corner represents me as well. Thought I'd share.

From: Adrienne's Corner

By Judie Brown

In these times of attack on our faith and beliefs, Catholics must have strong leaders — leaders who will stand up for what the Church teaches. Yet this is not something that is uniformly seen throughout the hierarchy of the Church. In today's commentary, we read about some of the atrocities occurring right now in our country. Read on for Judie Brown's insights.

There is something intriguing and, at the same time, troubling about the upheaval being created by the Obama administration's dictate regarding religious institutions and the right of conscience.

Cardinal-Designate Timothy Dolan: President Barack Obama Needs To Stop 'Intruding Into Internal Life Of Church'

From: CBS New York

There was a sharp rebuke Wednesday from Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan that put even more pressure on the president to calm a widening election year uproar. The issue at hand was the president’s insistence that Catholic institutions provide free birth control to their employees.

Dolan came to the South Bronx to bless a library, but he had no blessings — just harsh words — for President Barack Obama, who wants Catholic institutions to pay for birth control, the morning after pill and other services for people who work for them.

“The federal government should do what it’s traditionally done since July 4, 1776, namely back out of intruding into the internal life of a church,” Dolan told CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.

The leader of the New York Archdiocese picked up support from Speaker John Boehner, who said either Obama reverses the policy or the House will.

“The federal government has drifted dangerously beyond its constitutional boundaries. This attack by the federal government on religious freedom in our country must not stand and will not stand,” Boehner said.

The attacks left the White House foundering. It wants to find some way to calm Catholic opposition, but will not back down on the policy, itself.

“I want to be clear today that the commitment to insuring the women have access to these important health care services remains very strong,” Press Secretary Jay Carney said.

It has been suggested that one avenue of compromise could include granting leeway for a church-related organization not to cover birth control, but refer employees to another insurer that will provide the coverage.

Dolan would not comment on that proposal but said, “I would welcome the fact that officials of the government are saying we need to rethink that.”


The Catholic Church is still developing its strategy on how to deal with the issue. Dolan met Wednesday with members of the Catholic League and other organizations. Sources told Kramer a massive march on Washington is one of the possibilities.

The issue has also exploded on the campaign trail. Carney made the unusual move of calling Mitt Romney by name, charging it is “ironic” for him to be against the policy, since as Massachusetts governor he presided over a similar one.

George Will Skewers Planned Parenthood

First, They Came for the Catholics.......

From: Michele Malkin, CNSnews.com

President Obama and his radical feminist enforcers have had it in for Catholic medical providers from the get-go. It's about time all people of faith fought back against this unprecedented encroachment on religious liberty. First, they came for the Catholics. Who's next?

This weekend, Catholic bishops informed parishioners of the recent White House edict forcing religious hospitals, schools, charities and other health and social service providers to provide "free" abortifacient pills, sterilizations and contraception on demand in their insurance plans — even if it violates their moral consciences and the teachings of their churches.

NARAL, NOW, Ms. Magazine and the Feminist Majority Foundation all cheered the administration's abuse of the Obamacare law to ram abortion down pro-life medical professionals' throats. Femme dinosaur Eleanor Smeal gloated over the news that the administration had rejected church officials' pleas for compromises: "At last," she exulted, the left's goal of "no-cost birth control" for all had been achieved.

As always, tolerance is a one-way street in the Age of Obama. "Choice" is in the eye (and iron fist) of the First Amendment usurper.

Like the rising number of states who have revolted against the individual health care mandate at the ballot box and in the courts, targeted Catholics have risen up against the Obamacare regime. Arlington (Va.) Bishop Paul Loverde didn't mince words, calling the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services order "a direct attack against religious liberty. This ill-considered policy comprises a truly radical break with the liberties that have underpinned our nation since its founding." Several bishops vowed publicly to fight the mandate.

Bishop Alexander Sample of Marquette, Mich., asserted plainly: "We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law."

It's not just rabid right-wing politicos defying the Obama machine. Pro-life Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania denounced the "wrong decision." Left-leaning Bishop Robert Lynch threatened "civil disobedience" in St. Petersburg, Fla., over the power grab. Lefty Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote that Obama "botched" the controversy and "threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus" by refusing to "balance the competing liberty interests here."

White House press secretary Jay Carney blithely denied on Tuesday that "there are any constitutional rights issues" involved in the brewing battle. Yet, the Shut Up and Hand Out Abortion Pills order undermines a unanimous Supreme Court ruling issued just last week upholding a religious employer's right to determine whom to hire and fire. And two private colleges have filed federal suits against the government to overturn the unconstitutional abortion coverage decree.

Hannah Smith, senior counsel at the nonprofit law firm The Becket Fund, which is representing the schools, boiled it down for Bloomberg News: "This is not really about access to contraception. The mandate is about forcing these religious groups to pay for it against their beliefs."

How did we get here? The first salvo came in December 2010, when the American Civil Liberties Union pushed HHS and its Planned Parenthood-championing secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions in violation of their core moral commitment to protecting the lives of the unborn.

The ACLU called for a litigious fishing expedition against Catholic hospitals nationwide that refuse to provide "emergency" contraception and abortions to women. In their sights: Devout Phoenix Catholic Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who revoked the Catholic status of a rogue hospital that performed several direct abortions, provided birth control pills and presided over sterilizations against the church's ethical and religious directives for health care.

The ACLU and the feminists have joined with Obama to threaten and sabotage the First Amendment rights of religious-based health care entities. The agenda is not increased "access" to health care services. The ultimate goal is to shut down health care providers — Catholic health care institutions employ about 540,000 full-time workers and 240,000 part-time workers — whose religious views cannot be tolerated by secular zealots and radical social engineers.

Is it any surprise their counterparts in the "Occupy" movement have moved from protesting "Wall Street" to harassing pro-life marchers in Washington, D.C., and hurling condoms at Catholic school girls in Rhode Island? Birds of a lawless, bigoted feather bully together.

Birth control plan: Conscience vs. special interests

From: Washington Examiner

President Obama this week used his health care law to hand a lucrative special favor to two industries that have ardently supported his party: Planned Parenthood and the drug industry.
 
The largesse came in the form of a rule proposed by the Department of Health and Human Services that would require all new insurance plans to cover the entire cost of all forms of prescription contraception -- including those that also act as abortion drugs.

This free-pills-for-all proposal embodies two dark themes of the Obama era: cronyism and trampling on the freedom of conscience.

Once again, Obama, who pretends to be battling the special interests, is rewarding powerful lobbies that support him. Even worse, the federal rule, which would effectively force everyone to purchase insurance that covers abortifacient contraceptives, also reveals the true shape of the Culture War in America: The Left uses the brutal tool of the government to impose its morality on everyone, forcing religious conservatives to act against conscience, all the while howling about imminent "theocracy."

Pharmaceuticals are the quintessential "special interest." Drugmakers have spent $2.2 billion on lobbying since 1998, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, more than any other industry. In the Obama era, the drug industry's $635 million lobbying tab exceeds that of Wall Street and the oil and gas industry, combined.

For the 2010 election, as a reward for passing Obamacare, Big Pharma spent millions in ads boosting vulnerable Democratic senators including Harry Reid. Obamacare subsidized the drug companies in many ways, but it's hard to get better than this "free contraception" rule. Obamacare requires individuals to carry insurance and forces large employers to insure their workers. It also prohibits insurance companies from turning down applicants, and subsidizes more people's insurance.

Finally, Obamacare will force all insurers to fully cover all prescription contraceptives and not charge a co-pay. So everyone has to buy insurance, and everyone's insurance has to cover contraception. Government has become a magical money machine for drugmakers.

Planned Parenthood, intimately tied to the Democratic Party's money machine, is another prime beneficiary of Obama's proposed rule. Planned Parenthood has in the past set up special profitable arrangements with drugmakers such as Barr Pharmaceuticals, which sold the Plan B morning-after pill (an abortifacient).

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has a long and lucrative relationship with the drug industry. As governor of Kansas, she supported subsidies for embryo research and, in turn, received more than $400,000 in backing from a biotech industry group.

But more troubling than the special-interest collusion with government is the assault on economic freedom and freedom of conscience.

The rule would force folks who don't want contraception insurance to pay for contraception. Acting of their own free will, infertile couples, gay people, celibate people or postmenopausal women would not buy contraception insurance. Obama's mandate -- like similar mandates in 28 states -- unnecessarily drives up these people's health insurance.

But with prescription contraception, conscience enters the picture.

First, there is the (admittedly small) minority of observant Catholics who follow Rome's teaching that contraception subverts the procreative nature of marital sex. While most health care plans cover contraception, Obamacare's rules and proposed rules would basically make it illegal for someone to not pay for contraception.

But the proposed rule, promulgated under Obamacare's mandate for "free" preventive care, doesn't just cover the Pill, it also covers "morning-after" contraceptives that sometimes work by killing a fertilized egg that has already begun cell division. In other words, these are also abortion pills.

Plan B's manufacturers admitted the drug could "prevent pregnancy" by stopping a zygote from implanting on its mother's uterus (once implanted, the zygote is called an embryo).

The new "morning-after" pill being promoted by Planned Parenthood, called "Ella" is closer to the avowed abortion pill, RU-486, than to Plan B. While Ella can delay ovulation, and thus prevent fertilization, it also can prevent a zygote from implanting, or -- to use the FDA's word -- "affect" implantation. What does that mean? "Ella starves an implanted embryo to death," Anna Franzonello, attorney for Americans United for Life, tells me. The drug, like RU-486, blocks progesterone, the chemical the uterus needs in order to host an embryo.

The administration's proposed rule has a conscience exception for religious institutions, but "religious institution" is defined so narrowly that it wouldn't include a Catholic school -- though a seminary would probably be protected.