Little Sisters Versus Big Brother

Sick and sad.



Obamacare is so wrong. Every part of it.

Real Catholic Political Analysis

As a palate cleanser for Liz Scalia's rather unanchored piece mentioned by Kathleen, I invite you to read George Weigel's recent discussion of real serious abuses in American Catholicism being promulgated by the liberal Catholic dissenters. Excerpt from his conclusion:

This new form of Catholicism Lite, a not-so-phantom hash of ideas that poses real problems for the integrity of the Church and its evangelical mission, breathes deeply of two winds that have long blown through American Christianity: the ancient Pelagian wind, with its emphasis on the righteousness of our works and how they will win our salvation; and the Congregationalist wind, with its deep suspicion that Catholic authority is incompatible with American democracy. As for the older Americanist controversy, I think the classic historiographers of U.S. Catholicism were largely right: The "Americanism" of which Leo XIII warned in Testem Benevolentiae was far more a phantom concocted by fevered, ancien-régime European minds than a heresy that threatened Catholic faith in the United States. But the problems that Leo flagged are very much with us over a century later. They are at the root of the internal Catholic culture war that has intensified as religious freedom has come under concerted assault, and as the new Americanists, who form a coherent party in a way that Isaac Hecker and his friends never did, have either denied that assault -- or abetted it.

If Catholics can't recognize and identify the political ideology from which 99.9% of the disobedience and dissent from the Magisterium is coming, then they are engaging in large-scale moral equivalency and willful denial. But they will see it as freedom from the shackles of lock-step conformity and the chains of ideological purity to continue confusing the beam and the mote.

Reap the Wuerlwind

Here's an update on what Cardinal Wuerl is doing and saying. I have to say I'm totally impressed at the way he is coming out swinging against the HHS Mandate and the Obama machine. Excerpt:

“This lawsuit isn't about contraception,” said Cardinal Wuerl. “It is about religious freedom. Embedded in the mandate is a radically new definition of what institutes a religious community, what constitutes religious ministry--brand new and never fortified in the federal level. That's what we are arguing about.”

“The lawsuit said we have every right to serve in this community as we have served for decades and decades,” he continued. “The new definition says you are not really religious if you serve people other than your own and if you hire people other than your own. That wipes out all of the things that we have been doing, all the things that we contribute to the common good--our schools, our health care services, our Catholic charity and even parish soup kitchens and pantries.”

Criticizing the Obama administration’s “accommodation,” Cardinal Wuerl said that “so many of our institutions, certainly the archdiocese, is self insured. We are the insurer. So, when you say, don't worry, we changed this and only the insurer has to pay. And we are the insurer, there is no accommodation.”

The other part of the interview which I saw somewhere else is about how the mainstream media does NOT want to report anything about this lawsuit. They are scared. They should be scared. Catholics are pissed.

Weigel on Obama's chutzpa

Read the whole thing. Here's a grabber:

As for the White House complaint that the bishops' conference has been politicizing this argument, well, Leo Rosten, call your office. It takes a certain kind of chutzpa (which the great popular lexicographer of Yiddish defined as "gall, brazen nerve, effrontery, presumption-plus-arrogance") for the administration to accuse men who have been calmly and intelligently defending a classic understanding of the First Amendment's free-exercise clause of playing politics. For the administration has been playing politics 24/7, assiduously trying to turn the entire debate into a bogus referendum on "women's health" while deploying Senate henchmen such as Frank Lautenberg to imply that the bishops, as supporters of the recently defeated Blunt Amendment (which would have restored the religious exemptions contained in Hillarycare), are misogynists determined to send the women of America back to "the Dark Ages . . . when women were property that you could easily control, even trade if you wanted to."

True that.

Hat tip goes to Commentarius de Prognosticis.

Baptists, Evangelicals and Thomas Jefferson all condemn HHS Mandate

Thomas Jefferson said this kind of thing is "sinful and tyrannical" and we all agree.

The Family Research Council has announced that 2,500 pastors and other evangelical leaders have signed a letter condemning the Obama administration’s contraception mandate. The signatories said:

The contraceptive mandate with the requirement that there will be no co-pay to the patient means millions of Americans will incur the additional cost for these drugs and devices. Forcing religious entities to do the same, despite objections of good conscience, is a severe blow to our religious liberty. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1779, which passed in 1786, and set the stage for the First Amendment. In it, Jefferson states: "to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical." Consequently, we ask that you would reverse this decision and protect the conscience rights of those who have biblically-based opposition to funding or providing contraceptives and abortifacients.

“What our forefathers protected is freedom of conscience, freedom of religion. That is -- the freedom to propagate our faith, to take our faith outside the walls of our home, outside the walls of our church and to have Catholic and Baptist charities, and Catholic and Baptist hospitals, and Catholic and Baptist schools that seek to educate within a worldview that is Catholic or Baptist or Lutheran or whatever,” added Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “And we are not going to sit by and allow our God-given rights -- which are acknowledged, recognized and protected by the Constitution -- to be atrophied and to be neutered and to be confined and restricted by the Obama administration.”

Sebellius is a LIAR

This from Bill Donahue, filed under the title Obama Mandate Never Scrutinized.

Following her testimony yesterday before the Senate Finance Committee, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius was asked whether she spoke to the bishops about the controversial mandate she is pushing. She admitted she did not. Then she said, “I know that the president has spoken to the bishops on several occasions.”

Sebelius is wrong. Bishop William Lori, who heads the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, said this week that administration officials should have sat down with the bishops. “That certainly did not happen,” he said. Archbishop Timothy Dolan, who heads the bishops’ conference, met once with the president, and that was three months ago; the two phone calls he has had since were to inform him that the bishops’ religious liberty concerns would not be honored.

Under questioning from Sen. Orrin Hatch, Sebelius further admitted that HHS never subjected the religious liberty issues to a legal analysis, as requested by 27 senators. She also admitted that she never asked the Justice Department to consider this issue.

It gets worse. Today’s New York Times reports today that the administration announced the Obama mandate “before it had figured out how to address one conspicuous point: Like most large employers, many religiously affiliated organizations choose to insure themselves rather than hire an outside company to assume the risk.” As the Times points out, this is not a slight issue: 60 percent of all workers with health insurance are covered by a self-funded plan, and the figure jumps to 82 percent for large companies. And no one bothered to address this?

So they refused to consult with the bishops; they refused to weigh the First Amendment religious liberty concerns; and they refused to study how the mandate might impact self-insured companies. In other words, with characteristic arrogance, they just “winged it.” Wait until the Supreme Court hears all of this.

OK, all well and good. But for God’s sake don’t say “Wait until the Supreme Court hears all of this.” I hope they shoot it down if it comes to that, but I hope it doesn’t come to that. It’s a gamble to hope the SCOTUS bails out religious liberty, even though it would be awesome to see a big victory there, I mean 6-3 or better.

Also, I don't think Sebellius is wrong, I think she's lying when she says "I know that the president has spoken to the bishops...." Either that or Obama lied to her, but why should he? She's his Catholic bitch and always does whatever he wants.

Obama delenda est.

Time for Formal Excommunications?

I just Googled 'hhs mandate formal excommunications' and really smart Catholic guy Dr. Jeff Mirus was the top hit. The piece has a lot of good links in it near the top; here's an excerpt from his analysis:

The debate over whether pro-abortion Catholic political leaders should be refused communion or even formally excommunicated has been going on for years. The bishops have been divided in theory on this question and, in practice, no modern bishop has been willing to excommunicate in the war against Catholic participation in the culture of death. But the HHS mandate changes the debate in at least two ways.

First, the HHS mandate takes its Catholic proponents from encouraging grave moral evil to enforcing participation by other Catholics in that evil. In other words, the offense has shifted from personal involvement in evil to a direct assault on the Church. Moreover, there is more than one point of assault. There is one assault against the moral dignity of Catholics and another assault against the clear directives of the bishops who govern the Church.

Second, the bishops have chosen to make the HHS mandate a sort of tipping point. Why they have been so confused and ineffective in their response to the steady erosion of moral values by the American legal system over the past two generations is a matter for historical study. But for whatever combination of reasons now—one of which is certainly this crossing of the thin line between encouragement to participate in evil and actual force—the bishops have decided that they have been pushed as far as they are willing to be pushed, and they have decided to push back.

This seems to be true. The pastor of my parish mentioned the Obama administration by name in a meeting, not from the pulpit, but in a homily he went on for 20 minutes about how unconscionable this action is. And he is fairly moderate most of the time, perhaps to a fault.

Here's Dr. Mirus's conclusion:

Right now, I think we may say that the bishops have taken the glove off. I use the singular advisedly. But there is another glove to be removed. If we have really reached the tipping point, then many things ought to change. To be sure, Bishops ought to be enlisting the hosts of heaven in this conflict, giving it the spiritual focus it deserves. But as the Incarnation demonstrates, God prefers to work through nature rather than in place of nature. Both politically and spiritually, the most potent natural tool a bishop possesses is his disciplinary authority. Therefore discipline has to reach its tipping point, too. Only then can it slide rapidly into place.

Steps to Fight the Obamacare HHS Mandate

Here's an email from my friend about things you can do to fight Obama and the HHS Mandate. I plan to do all these things, in addition to voting for someone in the primary who can actually beat Obama in the general.

My Friends,

You may have heard the news about new rules resulting from the new Healthcare Act. Under the new rules Catholic institutions and other Catholic employers are required to provide services which are in direct conflict with their consciences.

If you believe that the services involved; contraceptive services, sterilizations, and drugs which cause abortions, are not morally objectionable, you may be dismayed by firestorm which has resulted from these new rules. Imagine for a moment, though, that the rules require you to do something that you find morally objectionable. That is exactly what these new rules do.

This is a serious breach of the religious liberty which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.

I believe that this is a brazen act by our government. If you agree, then I ask you to educate yourself on this issue. We all need to explain to others how drastic these new rules are.

One example of what will happen if these rules go into effect is that Catholic Relief Services, which provides needed food and medicine to poor and starving people throughout the world, will be required to pay massive punitive fines amounting to $140,000,000 per year. As you might imagine, this will have a severe impact on their ability to fulfill their mission. Other entities which will be affected by this ae Catholic and other Christian Schools, Hospitals, non profits, and other charities.

I ask you to do four things:

1. Pray for our country. A novena prayer about this issue is located here: http://www.priestsforlife.org/novenas/hhs-mandate.htm

2. Read the talking points provided by Priests for Life. They are located here: http://www.priestsforlife.org/hhsmandate/talking-points.pdf

3. Write to your legislators using the following link. Priests for life will hand deliver your message to your legislators.
http://www.priestsforlife.org/freedom-of-conscience/index.htm

4. Listen to the webcast or simply look at the links to resources listed here:
http://instantteleseminar.com/?eventid=26593149

May God Bless You and May He protect our country!

Fight, fight, fight using all means at your disposal. Obama delenda est.