The Boston Globe published a doozey written by Joan Vennochi.
Here's the Reader's Digest: The Catholic Church is being unfair. The Bishops have hired people to carry out the mission of the Catholic Church who are not Catholic. Recent polls show Obama losing the support of Catholic voters. This hoo-ha could evolve into a big problem for Obama. Obama is not trying to undermine Catholicism. Oh no. Why, that would be preposterous. He's just trying to tell the Catholic Church they can't regulate the beliefs of other faiths. That is fitting in a world that admires religious freedom and values separation of church and state.
Dear Joan:
Let me start by sharing our common ground: I think it's safe to say that neither one of us would ever characterize Catholic Bishops as being the sharpest tools in the shed.
Hiring people to carry out the mission of the Catholic Church who are not Catholic is about as dumb as hiring a Spanish translator who only speaks English. But that's a subject for another day.
I read your piece and it came across to me as though you don't understand what a conscience protection is and why we write them into laws.
A democracy is a political system governed by the majority. Like your refrigerator, a political system is a thing without an intellect, ethics, morals, empathy. It's all based upon the majority of opinions. If the morality and ethics of the people in a political system are not good, things like slavery and murder can be written as legal rights of the people or the government.
In a democracy, if somebody could get enough people to like the idea that journalists should have lobotomies, they might be able to convince a politician to sponsor the bill. When it becomes law, a conscience protection written into immoral and unethical law protects your colleagues on Morrissey Boulevard from being forced to give you ride to get your lobotomy as part of their duties of their job.
Get it?
Conscience protections are about my right not to be forced by the government to do harm to you, even if you have a two-digit IQ or are compromised in some other way.
The government can decide to drop a bomb on Hiroshima. People who would never kill another human being under any circumstances have the freedom to serve their country in the military in other ways by registering as a conscientious objector.
For the 235 years of our country's history before Obama, conscience protections were our government's way of admitting that while we all realize that laws are written based upon a majority opinion and a thing cannot have an intellect or morals and ethics, the people who serve it do.
For the first time in our 235 year history, we have an imbalance in the powers. In spite of written national and state laws, a single justice, even in a lower court, can overrule the constitution and written law to decriminalize or feign they have the power to write laws that do not exist.
Catholics are getting, you know, concerned about the chaos.
Let's cut to the chase.
A Catholic Bishop has a credo similar to a physician. In fact, he and his priests are physicians of the soul and their credo is: DO NO HARM to the mystical composition of an immortal soul, either by omission or commission. They are actually responsible to carry out this credo under every mission they operate whether that be a chancery, a hospital, a school or any other charitable initiative. They are responsible to carry out that credo whether the people under their leadership are Catholic, non-Catholic or even atheists. They are not a CEO of a business.
Giving pills out to women to prohibit and kill their children does physical - and more importantly - spiritual harm.
Up until this point in time, helping to elect proabortion, immoral and unethical politicians didn't affect them. They were blissfully ignorant of the ramifications of a nurse and doctor who would have to carry out the orders of passing out abortifacients. They didn't give two turds that doctor and nurse in their Catholic Hospital was put in the position of losing their salvation or their income when they handed something to an uncatechized or distraught pregnant woman.
But God in his infinite Wisdom and Mercy has brought accountability of the loss of salvation directly to them. They are now holding the ball of accountability for every harm done to an immortal soul in the execution of Obama's absurd and illegal mandate.
They are not saying to hell with Obama. In their own pathetic selfishness, they are simply trying to save themselves from joining him there.
For those of us who have waited 40 years for this moment, we'll take it any way we can get it.
Cheers, Carol.
Readers - below is letter from CJ Doyle. (Ouch!)
February 2, 2012
Letters to the Editor
The Boston Globe
P.O. Box 55819
Boston, MA 02205-5819
To the Editor:
It is difficult to take seriously Joan Vennochi's criticism of Catholic bishops for their opposition to the Obama mandate for contraceptive coverage in health insurance (Catholic Church's unfair attack against Obama, 2/2/2012).
Vennochi flails at the Church, but carefully avoids a candid consideration of the key issue, which is, that Catholics understand abortion, including abortifacient contraception, to be a legalised form of mass murder. Whether it necessitates litigation, political mobilization, or civil disobedience, Catholics are not going to stand by and see their own institutions forced to subsidize the killing of the innocent.
As for Vennochi, it requires an egregious level of intellectual dishonesty to characterize the refusal to participate in murder as imposing one's religion on others, a threadbare argument which suggests a certain lack of originality among those who persist in using it.
Sincerely,
C. J. Doyle
Executive Director
Catholic Action League of Massachusetts
35 Montclair Avenue
Boston, Massachusetts 02132
Catholicactionleague@gmail.com
42 comments:
Carol, I like your letter better! Seriously, you have once again eloquently presented the crux of the problem.....thanks!
Carol....just, wow.
get your letter put in the paper...Karen's right...it's outstanding. God bless you.
Wow!..over the top ! I read you every day but have never commented before. Wish Cardinal O`Malley had your eloquence, Carol...not to mention your convictions. Keep fighting the good fight for the Boston Archdiocese and THE One True Faith of Our Divine Savior.....Many Blessings and much gratitude...Theresa
Carol, excellent, brilliant.
Thanks to all of you for the encouragement! As just a Catholic Mom, I have a bit more license than CJ to be pithy. I love how his press releases always put the shinola on the hit below the belt.
Theresa, I'm so glad you let us know of your presence. Warm welcome.
Hope it's not too late to add my tip of the hat to you for that excellent letter, Carol. I saw Vennochi's piece but I didn't have the heart to read it. Well done and God bless1
Thanks Jack.
Joan is a Catholic. Quite an indictment of poor catechesis, isn't it?
I wonder who her pastor is here in Massachusetts?
Paulist Center?
Unni?
Fr. Ronan and his dog?
Joan, like Secretary Sebelius, is a CINO.
For a different opinion, check out Pat Buchanan's Jan. 31 column:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=49191
I thought I had remembered reading that she was a Catholic but I did a quick search and it didn't turn up anything. Of course these days, the only difference between some "Catholics" and the Episcopalians is the Sistine Chapel ceiling. The Catholics have it; the Piskies don't. Though they still have our stolen churches in Blighty and the Isle of Saints and Scholars.
But let's be fair here, Carol. Equating Fr. Ronan to Unni or the Paulist Center is beyond the beyonds. I won't stand for it. As a dog lover, I am outraged! Outraged and irate, I tell ya! Not to mention, sorta mad.
Besides, Fr. Ronan's dog has been recently admitted to the permanent diaconate. A fruit of post-V2 diversity. If he learns to bark in Latin, they'll let him howl the "responsorial psalm"! Can't be worse than some of the "music" you hear out there.
And God bless Fr. Higgins and his Schola at Mary Immaculate of Lourdes.
The convoluted twisting and turnings of these catholycs turns the stomach.
Another absurdist headline from their absurdist anti-pope from Marin County, CA induces nausea:
Today, a CNSNews.com reporter asked Nancy Pelosi whether she would stand with her fellow Catholics and oppose the law or whether she would stand with the administration and support it. The former Speaker of the House responded with this doozy:
“First of all, I am going to stick with my fellow Catholics in supporting the administration on this. I think it was a very courageous decision that they made, and I support it.”
Ms. Pelosi is clearly another CINO.
Ms. Pelosi is a first-born of satan and a spawn of hell. Sorry, just call 'em like I see 'em. And btw, I can't even take credit for that descriptor...it was the GREAT Apostolic Father St. Polycarp in reply to the arch heretic Marcion when Marcion asked him, "Knowest thou us?"
...frankly, I think Marcion was a whoooooole lot more orthodox than Pelosi, Biden, Sebelius, et. al....would LOVE to hear how Polycarp and Irenaeus would describe that bunch.
Some, including apparently the Church, have resorted to lies to in their efforts to oppose the health care law. Contrary to wild-eyed cries to the contrary, IT DOES NOT FORCE ANYONE TO ACT CONTRARY TO THEIR BELIEFS.
Questions about the government requiring or prohibiting something that conflicts with someone’s faith are entirely real, but not new. The courts have occasionally confronted such issues and have generally ruled that the government cannot enact laws specifically aimed at a particular religion (which would be regarded a constraint on religious liberty contrary to the First Amendment), but can enact laws generally applicable to everyone or at least broad classes of people (e.g., laws concerning pollution, contracts, fraud, negligence, crimes, discrimination, employment, etc.) and can require everyone, including those who may object on religious grounds, to abide by them. Were it otherwise and people could opt out of this or that law with the excuse that their religion requires or allows it, the government and the rule of law could hardly operate. When moral binds for individuals can be anticipated, provisions may be added to laws affording some relief to conscientious objectors.
Here, it may be questioned whether there is real need for such an exemption, since no one is being "forced," as some commentators rage, to act contrary to his or her belief. In keeping with the law, those with conscientious objections to providing their employees with qualifying health plans may decline to provide their employees with any health plans and pay an assessment instead or, alternatively, provide their employees with health plans that do not qualify (e.g., ones without provisions they deem objectionable) and pay lower assessments.
Wow. You really are dug in deep.
I have a few homework assignments for you.
Yes, the government can enact laws that forces its population to harm and kill people. People who don't want to kill other people ask the government for exemptions.
The administration of Barack Hussein is taking the position that nobody is exempt, including people who don't want to harm and kill other people.
Nothing I've said contradicts your assessment so far, right?
Here's your first homework assignment: Mosey on over to wikipedia and look up empathy to find out what you're missing.
Your argument is, all people who don't want to harm and kill other people have to do is take away their employees health insurance.
I'm sure you don't realize how inhumane you sound. Taking away provisions that can heal people when they are sick is antithetical to the values Catholics possess.
Ready for your next assignment?
Go look up filial love in wikipedia.
Empathy and filial love are not things you can acquire in the poophole you've dug yourself into, but it will at least give you insight into the perspectives of people who do possess them.
You also argue that the people in this country should accept a government that imposes fines upon the people who refuse to harm and kill other people.
Here's your final assignment: Go look up tyranny in wikipedia.
Before Barack Hussein, America was a country where all of its people enjoyed the freedoms our Constitution provided for us. He is taking the country to dictatorship and slavery.
Whether he will get away with it is an unknown.
Here's what we do know: Catholics don't take a shine to being forced into harming and killing other people by dictators and tyrants without empathy and filial love. Gird your loins because taking away the freedom to serve our fellow countrymen within the practices of our religion is about to get ugly.
My prayer is that this helps dig you out, at least a little.
Cheers.
My biggest fear is that there are enough people like Doug that are blind to BHO's true intent that he will be reelected. Then it's game over for this country. Hope my name's not on the Do Not Fly list so that I can relocate and write my book, "America, A Brief Period in History."
Wow! You are on a roll, Carol. Great reply. Keep up the good work.
I am on a bit of a roll, aren't I. LOL.
Spending more time in front of the Eucharist. Drawing the power out of Him, so to speak. :)
Karen, let us know when it's published!
Dug in deep ignorance concerning the free exercise clause of the First Amendment is a deep and dark hole.
Your constricted interpretation of the free exercise clause is pure nonsense. How is it the Amish have been given a complete waiver under Obama's Nuremberg health care law? They have a religious objection to insurance of any kind.
This is where I think in deep doo-doo is coming from: He's taking the position that just because the Catholic Church is being forced to provide the village idiots with the money and tools to purchase the contraception and abortion, that doesn't mean they are the party of the first part committing the abortion. Ergo, there is nothing being forced upon the Catholic Church.
I went to his profile which claims he is a lawyer. Call this a hunch, but I'll bet he's practicing defense. LOL.
His point of law doesn't stand up to jurisprudence.
If you pay for booze for teenagers , or if you even serve booze as a bartender to individuals who proceed to drive drunk and kill somebody - you actually may not have consumed the booze or killed the person with your car, but the discretion you used in giving them the money or providing them with the chemicals that proceeded to get them drunk - you are held accountable for those actions in a court of law.
Consequently, Catholics who are being forced to pay for and provide women with the chemicals that harms and kills - though we may not be consuming the chemicals or killing the people ourselves, acquiescing to Obama's mandate to provide women with the tools to do it is a collaboration with the end result.
Everything Catholics do and say is doing with the foreknowledge that all our actions and inactions will be adjudicated in the Court of Divinity, by the Divine Judge, on our day of judgment.
His statement that nobody in the Catholic Church is being forced to do something against their will just doesn't gel.
Time to go back for more talking points or smoke that crack pipe in another forum. You're toast here baby!
Carol,
Cute--but off target. Nothing I said leaves employees out in the cold, as you seem to suppose. Not to worry. If their employers choose--for religious or any other reasons--not to provide qualifying health plans, those employers are required to pay assessments (which will help enable the government make plans available to those employees) AND the employers may simply pay their employees more so the employees themselves can then purchase health plans. (Perhaps this is a good use of the savings employers will otherwise enjoy as a result of not providing health plans.)
In the end, the law requires only that employers who do not provide qualifying health plans pay assessments to the government. Unless one supposes that the employers' religion forbids payments of money to the government (all of us should enjoy such a religion), then the law's requirement to pay assessments DOES NOT compel those employers to act contrary to their beliefs.
The employers may not like paying the assessments or what the government will do with the money it receives. But that is not a moral dilemma of the sort supposed by some commentators and cynically claimed by the US Bishops Conference, but rather a garden-variety gripe common to most taxpayers--who don't much like paying taxes and who object to this or that action of the government. That is hardly call for a special "exemption" from the law. Should each of us feel free to deduct from our taxes the portion that we figure would be spent on those actions (e.g., wars, health care, whatever) each of us opposes? If someone has religious or moral objections to the teaching of evolution or to teaching black and white students in the same classroom, should we allow that person not to pay taxes used to support public schools?
breathnach,
Notwithstanding your contrary supposition, the description of the law I offered is not "my" interpretation, but rather that of the courts. Wake Forest University recently published a short, objective Q&A primer on the current law of separation of church and state–as applied by the courts rather than as caricatured in the blogosphere. It covers this. I commend it to you. http://tiny.cc/6nnnx
Dug,
I presume you've been in the poophole for decades because it is all going way over your head.
I'm going to guess you're not a constitutional lawyer because because 'separation of church and state' is an urban legend.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/WALLBUID.TXT
Here's what the constitution says:
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Barack Hussein is violating the Constitutional rights of Roman Catholics as he is prohibiting the free exercise of the Catholic Church to operate its affairs in accordance with our credo.
I'm starting to doubt you actually are a lawyer because that one is constitutional law 101. :)
While you're at wikipedia, look up the word separation.
Even if there were such a thing, separation of Church and state means the Church has the right to operate it's business, provide benefits, not to provide benefits in accordance with it's religious credo. The Constitution protects us from having the state come in and tell us we either have to provide the dimwits the tools that give them cancer, kill their children or we can't provide them insurance. That's where the separation comes into play.
Where are you getting this stuff from?
What nerve you people have to think you can come in and tell the Catholic Church what benefits to give our employees, what pills to pay for or else they'll be fined, what to say about it to our men and women in the military or face court martial for sedition.
Turn off NPR. :O)
Dug,
I read about 1/3 of the study. If anything, it is a condemnation of Obama's unconstitutional mandate.
I don't have time to read through the whole 'study'. Let's cut to the chase.
The Constitution prohibits the state from enacting laws that interfere with the operation of religious missions.
That is precisely what Obama's mandate does.
Can you cite what you think the study says that grants permission for the state to tell the Catholic Church they are now forced to give free chemicals to women that harms and kills or they must fork over their right to provide insurance to their employees and pay fines - that ultimately pays for the pills and abortions?
The curiosity is killing me...where are we losing you?
Carol,
I applaud your studiousness. Upon checking the Wake Forest paper, I see it alludes to but does not describe the general legal principles I summarized above. To the extent you are interested, here is a short article more directly on point. http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/amendment01/05.html
With respect to your broadside attack on separation of church and state, I'll take the bait and affirm it is a bedrock principle of our Constitution much like the principles of separation of powers and checks and balances. In the Constitution, the founders did not simply say in so many words that there should be separation of powers and checks and balances; rather, they actually separated the powers of government among three branches and established checks and balances. Similarly, they did not merely say there should be separation of church and state; rather, they actually separated them by (1) establishing a secular government on the power of "We the people" (not a deity), (2) saying nothing to connect that government to god(s) or religion, (3) saying nothing to give that government power over matters of god(s) or religion, and (4), indeed, saying nothing substantive about god(s) or religion at all except in a provision precluding any religious test for public office. Given the norms of the day, the founders' avoidance of any expression in the Constitution suggesting that the government is somehow based on any religious belief was quite a remarkable and plainly intentional choice. They later buttressed this separation of government and religion with the First Amendment, which constrains the government from undertaking to establish religion or prohibit individuals from freely exercising their religions. The basic principle, thus, rests on much more than just the First Amendment.
Duggy,
You're in a bit of a different Catholic forum here. Having our religion witheld from us internally has created a bit of a monster. Much like Solomon, we reached a point in our lives where we recognized enough of the deception to know they were lying to us. You can do two things at that point - one of them is going to God and asking Him to show us the Truth. When you ask sincerely, you get what you asked for. It makes us good students.
I've read 1/3 of the case law and I'll finish before I conclude my thoughts - but I will say that what I've read so far doesn't help you much with your thesis.
Though some of what you say is accurate, you are taking the law out of context.
If I understand the point you are trying to make now, you are implying that people with religious convictions don't have constitutional freedom to practice their religion because the government is godless.
That's really out there Duggie.
The fundamental of the law is -- and I think you know enough to know this - there is never to be a national religion.
You seem to be taking this premise and trying to make the case that because the government does not claim a national religions, this grants license for the state to insert itself into a particular religion operating freely and licitly.
This isn't a case where Catholics are creating a governmental religion. We are operating within our country along with other religions and none of it has anything to do with a pursuit of making a Catholic government.
Everything you cite is moot.
Within the United States, Catholics, along with every other religion, have the right to recruit, evangelize, grow its forces through evangelizing. We have the right to open a Catholic Hospital and operate our affairs with our employees and patients without violating our credo.
Obama doesn't a snowballs chance in hell to allege he can force Catholics to harm and kill people, take away their rights to provide benefits and insurance that do not violate its credo, use the law to impose fines - because the government doesn't have religious beliefs.
It's moonbattery.
Carol,
Nothing I've said has anything whatever to do with notions about government being godless or creating a governmental religion.
Rather, my point is straightforward and commonsensical. Under the First Amendment (as interpreted by the Supreme Court), the government cannot enact a law aimed at a particular religion, but it can pass a law generally applicable to everyone (e.g., a law against certain sorts of discrimination) and apply that law to everyone, including those who may object on religious grounds. (For instance, the government outlawed smoking peyote, and the Court upheld implementation of the law against those claiming their religion required it. Much the same with respect to the law against polygamy.) That is the basic legal framework.
Here, the government has enacted a law to promote health care and has prohibited discrimination against certain people (women) and services they may need. The law affords those with religious objections to some of those services some "outs" that allow them to act in keeping with both the law and their consciences. First, certain religious organizations (basically churches) are simply exempt. Second, other employers have the option to not provide qualifying health plans (which would include provisions they find objectionable) and instead pay assessments to the government. Moral dilemma avoided.
That those with religious objections continue not to like the law is neither here nor there; that's just a political objection. The point is that the law has avoided forcing them to act contrary to their beliefs, so there is no basis for the hue and cry for a broader exemption.
Doug,
It's hard to keep up with your straw men!
Did you actually read these cases, or are you simply copying and pasting things you see in other forums without reading them?
None of them apply.
Some, explain cases when people were trying to say they could avoid prosecution of criminal law because their religious beliefs permitted particular abusive crimes against other human beings. The prohibited conduct was not directly related to religious practice. Rather, it applied to protect women from exploitation from pigs and sociopaths.
Obama's mandate, IS in fact, directly related to religious practice. He is trying to force Catholics into paying for their employees contraception and abortions.
How do we know that?
Working women can pay for their own contraception and abortions. Supplemental insurance could be provided for the poor to kill their children on a sliding scale basis - just like it's done now.
This is clarified in the cases cited that talk about the litmus test of the state needing to meet "a compelling governmental interest".
The government doesn't have a compelling interest in forcing Catholics to pay for contraception and abortion, anymore than they could force them to pay for ethnic cleansing.
In fact, it is ethnic cleansing. If the government wants to write ethnic cleansing of the children of the poor into healthcare law, Catholics are not stopping them. Knock yourselves out.
But there isn't a compelling government interest to force the Catholic Church to pay for the ethnic cleansing of the poor.
To suggest the state can mandate unethical and immoral business practices for Catholic Corporations or the government will strip them of their rights and fine them while telling us these are the principles of religious freedom, is breathtaking audacity.
The government didn't have a compelling government interest to stick their nose in the business of Catholic adoptions. If gay couples wanted to adopt children, there were plenty of adoption agencies who would provide those services. Rather than permit Catholics to turn over their children to Catholic adoption agencies so that they could be placed in homes that would provide a Catholic upbringing, our constitutional rights to operate our business were taken away.
The government did not have a compelling government interest in business of passing out abortifacients to rape victims at Catholic Hospitals. There's a pharmacy and hospital on every corner. But our constitutional rights were taken away with a mandate that Catholic hospitals had to do it.
This is another assault upon the freedom of Catholics to operate a business, earn a living, serve our countrymen, while keeping our principles, morals, ethics of never harming the people God puts in our path.
Don't urinate on us and tell us it is raining.
Sadly, I've spent the time I can allocate to show you the truth. Whether you like it, lump it, is all not my affair. My job is to unravel the web of lies you've tied yourself up into.
God sees what you are doing. Good luck with it.
Carol,
I can sum up this verbose, illogical, over-winded lawyer’s "argument" in 6 words:
It's an emanation of a penumbra!
Deal with it lady or get in line for the guillotine.
(Personally, I'm liking Shakespeare's view on lawyers more and more :)
Indeep:
Come now, if you've received a legal education, you know legal academia is dominated by a Left, non-originalist approach to legal questions. I judicially recognize your citation and deem it non-controlling.
I direct your attention to the counter arguments of orginalists at the Federalist Society and the Thomas More Law Center. Excellent resources are available at both sites on free exercise jurisprudence.
When I attended law school the faculty was heavily dominated by neo-Marxists of the Critical Legal Studies school, so I am very familiar with jurisprudential arguments based on Leftist ideology. I suspect your confidence that the Obama administration will prevail on the free exercise question will likely suffer the same fate as their recent argument that there is no ministerial exception for religious personnel under federal discrimination law. Even Ginsberg, Sotomayor and Kagan were not willing to decimate the free exercise clause to that extent.
Inform yourself. http://pnhp.org blog/2011/03/15/employer-sponsored-health-plans-under-the-affordable-care-act/ Some employers are considering not providing health plans and instead paying assessments for economic, not religious, reasons; they see that as a simply a better business decision. The plain fact is that the law does not compel any employer to act contrary to his or her religious beliefs. That should be the end of any discussion of a special exemption. Employers may not like paying money to the government, but they cannot credibly maintain that their religion forbids such payments. That just will not wash.
It doesn't wash with you because you either don't know the healing mission of a Catholic Church or you do know, you resent it and you are on a crusade to crush it.
Are you willing to inform yourself?
I don't get the impression you are.
Let's try this another way.
You just put a link up telling us to inform ourselves. Go to the link.
See the androgynous man or woman at the top of the link in the doctors outfit right above the Occupy Wall Street story?
Let's just say he/she wanted to open a hospital to carry out the mission of healing the sick. She gets the building, hires the people, sets policies according to her beliefs about the things that help get people well and she carries those policies out.
She might have experience in a lab that proved to her that vitamin D improved recovery after surgery. One of the things she does when she has her hospital is teach the staff physicians and nurses about Vitamin D. Show them her research, encourage them to prescribe Vitamin D after surgery.
She has all kind of ideas in accordance with her experiences and expertise - and she runs her hospital, sets policies, teaches and heals accordingly.
Are you with me?
Now lets talk about a Catholic Bishop who wants to open a hospital to heal the sick.
A Bishop that heals the sick sees, knows and is responsible for another whole world that makes people sick. Sin and Demons. In everything he does as a physician of the soul, he is responsible for driving out demons, using the Sacraments, reversing the effects of sin, evangelizing, converting people who are not Catholic.
Accordingly, when he sets policies to heal the sick in his hospital, he incorporates policies and witness that the androgynous person doesn't even know exists.
Just like the doctor who sees the healing effects of vitamin D, the policies the Bishop sets is a witness to the truth. From those policies, everyone in the hospital knows that contraception and abortion are - you know, wrong. The policy is a catalyst for conversion. Gives him the opportunity to preach and teach. Witness.
This matrix is the same one that works in a home of every family. Parents set rules in their home as a witness, the children in the house learn boundaries by those rules in the house. When they are young, they just follow them. When they get old enough, they ask questions about why those rules are in place. We explain it according to how old they are, how much they can understand. But, the rules of the house stand as a witness.
Get it?
The state is coming into our Catholic house and telling us what policies and rules we can witness to - they are interfering in the role of conversion, taking away a tool. They are violating our constitutional rights to operate our business.
Let's talk about what this is all really about, shall we?
Going back to the androgynous person who owns the hospital down the street from the Bishops hospital, she learns what the Bishops policies are and gets mad. Doesn't understand the reasons, most likely resents what is said and done at the Bishops hospital because all the doctors and nurses in her hospital feels the judgment of the Bishop when she goes home to roll in the hay, sleep around, takes pills to prevent and abort her children.
Everyone gets in an uproar and they go on a crusade to force the Bishops hospital to stop using policies as a tool for conversion. Instead of crossing the street to CVS to get their pills to abort the children of irresponsible men they've slept with, instead of going with her lover to the adoption agency next store to adopt a child, instead of working women buying their own pills and paying for their own abortions, they pervert the law to imply Catholics can't operate their business in accordance with the religious beliefs.
continued...
Accordingly, you may be right that secular hospitals would make a business decision to outsource their insurance. A secular hospital does not have a mission and policies that have been set in place for the mission of the physician of the soul.
You are comparing apples and oranges.
It could well be that you are ignorant of the healing of the soul and conversion and witness of a Catholic Hospital - the reasons why our policies are tools for conversion. But now that you have read this - you are no longer ignorant. Do with the information what you will.
I am happy to further clarify why our businesses and ministries set policies, how we use them as tools that stand for truth, how we use the policies to teach, preach, convert all nations, how our primary purpose in having a hospital to heal the sick is to set policies as the witness.
But don't come around here with your big gun telling Catholics on this website that the state can tell the Catholic Church She doesn't have the right to set policies and use them as tools for witness and conversion.
The state doesn't have the right to take that tool for conversation away from us, fine us for not paying for the ethnic cleansing of the children of the poor. We have every right to set our own policies that witness that the hospital down the street is doing harm to women and children.
A serpent lies in wait to strike at the heel of the Catholic Church. But watch yourself because it never pans out. When you are ready to strike, She will forever, in perpetuity, crush your head. What you think is a victory will come back to destroy you.
“O Glorious Prince of the heavenly host, St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in the battle and in the terrible warfare that we are waging against the principalities and powers, against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the evil spirits. Come to the aid of man, whom Almighty God created immortal, made in His own image and likeness, and redeemed at a great price from the tyranny of Satan.
Amen!
I really appreciate and admire your tenacity, Carol - I live vicariously through it! It amazes me that those who troll here actually think they are going to sway us to buy their anti-Catholic drivel, when in fact they just increase our resolve to fight harder. At least my resolve. Maybe I should thank Duggie!
Karen, Thanks for the Amen. Zeal is a fire. I catch it, pass it on, you catch it, pass it on - and so on and so forth.
Jack mentions in the thread that I'm on a roll - and I am. W to hear something funny?
Early in the week, I went to an Adoration service with a Divine Mercy Service at a local Church. Friends invited me at the last minute. It was actually an upset in my schedule, at the end of a work day - but I decided to go. While we were having dinner, my friends told me they usually do a healing service at the end of the hour of Mercy. I'm not one for those kinds of things - but the scripture for the day was the hemorrhaging woman who touches the fringes of Christ's cloak and Christ feels the power draining from him, so I vowed to check it out.
I don't know anyone at this parish, I'm a stranger there.
At the end of the hour of Mercy, I went up to check out his gig. I watched him turn towards the Exposition of Our Blessed Lord with his hand held towards Him to drain His Power and then turn that hand towards the person he was prayer over. So, I knelt down and waited my turn. Petitioned the Lord to let nothing pass between his ordained instrument that wasn't directly from Him. Set my guardian angel on guard.
For 15 minutes, he prayed over people, saying various things. He'd call for different things with different people - mercy, repentance, redemption, healing, love.
When he got to me, he prayed for about five minutes. I was praying to Christ, drawing His Power during the prayer over me so I only heard a few things. One of them went something like this: "Christ, see your daughter who loves you and whose heart is open to you" - and then he paused - "pour your gifts into her so she can say what needs to be said for the edification of your Church".
I'm not proud to say this, but I had to immediately discipline my first reaction - which was "OH SH*T! I don't need anymore of THAT!!" -- and return my focus on being open to whatever, telling Christ I loved Him, trusted Him, I am a believer and want to serve - asking Him to let me draw from Him.
If you're feeling it, I owe it to Christ to tell you what you're tapping into is (and it sure isn't me).
I don't know what is driving Duggie. Could be he just didn't know, couldn't see and so the arguments of the enemies of the Catholic Church made sense to him.
Nothing that Christ does, leads us to for the sake of our conversion, is chance. Look at how each time his convictions were unraveled, he came back with more arguments which were again, unraveled. There we are, in a corner check mated, all of our arguments trumped with truth and He gives us the choice to accept it or reject it.
Having been there many a time, all I can at this point is pray for Dug.
Carol,
The attempt of the Obama Administration to deconstruct religious freedom (and marginalize religion) has become clear in both the HHS mandate and their argument in the recently decided Hosanna-Tabor case. That is the case in which the SOTUS unanimously decided that the failure to recognize a ministerial exception in enforcing federal anti-discrimination law was an unacceptable burden on religious freedom by the federal government.
The Obama Justice Department argued before the SOTUS that whenever a religiously based institution involves itself in an area that is open to the public and is regulated in any way by the Federal government it gives up it's rights to religious expression.
I quote from the Solicitor General, who argued the case before the SOTUS:
"The government’s interest extends in this case beyond the fact that this is a retaliation to the fact that this is not a church operating internally to promulgate and express religious belief internally. It is a church that has decided to open its doors to the public to provide the service, socially beneficial service, of educating children for a fee, in compliance with State compulsory education laws."
The Obama secularists thought they were very clever in their recent argument before the SOTUS. The facts of the case showed that the religious institution had engaged in unfair conduct against their employee. However, the Court had to balance the intent of anti-discrimination law against it's burden on religious freedom when applied to a religious institution.
Thankfully even the extreme leftist members of the SOTUS could not stomach this attack on the expression of religion in the public square.
In effect the extreme secularists within the administration and their fellow travelers in the wider culture are saying is that you are required to promote a secularist and materialistic interpretation of man when you step outside the doors of your church and engage in activities in the public square.
We have seen other members of the administration promote this gutting of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment in other contexts. Hillary Clinton has spoken of a right to "freedom of worship". That means you are allowed to engage in any superstitious practice you desire within the walls of your church but once you step into the public square you must promote a secularist understanding of mankind and his place in the naturalistic universe. This is not the pluralism that is guaranteed by the First Amendment. It is enforced secularism and an attack on free exercise.
Thanks for posting this. I only read a little about this case and appreciate these citations.
There's a word for the political tyranny being promoted by Obama, Dug - etc.: Communism.
If you want to have the crap scared out of you - I recommend another book: He leadeth me - by Fr. Walter Cisek. Father describes the painful decent of his country into the darkness of communism, persecution of the Catholic Church there. There isn't a dime's worth of difference between what he describes and the path Obama is taking this country on.
Carol, Thanks for the reminder to pray for Dug and others like him. I don't want to let my cynicism regarding other's intent overtake my desire to be charitable and loving. I wish that I was wiser!
Karen, I forgot myself. I figured as I reminding myself, I might as well remind anyone reading the thread. Can't hurt.
:)
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