Looks like these guys are SOL, too.
Posted on 07/25/2012 6:42:23 PM PDT by Petrosius
William, Paul and James Newland and their sister, Christine Ketterhagen, who together own Hercules Industries, have no right to conduct their family business in a manner that comports with their Catholic faith.
The federal government can and will compel them to either surrender their business or to engage in activities the Catholic faith teaches are intrinsically immoral.
This is exactly what President Barack Obama's Justice Department told a U.S. district court in a formal filing last week.
Never before has an administration taken such a bold step to strip Americans of the freedom of conscience -- a right for which, over the centuries, many Christian martyrs have laid down their lives, and which our Founding Fathers took great care to protect in a First Amendment that expressly guarantees the free exercise of religion.
As the Founders understood, no government has legitimate authority to take this right away, because it does not come from government. It comes from God. The very purpose of government is to protect this right. A government that seeks to strip it away from the people is by that very process stripping away its own legitimacy.
What we are seeing from the Obama administration today -- in its attack on religious liberty -- is simply evil. When government seeks to compel individuals to act against their consciences and to engage in activities that, if willfully done, would imperil their immortal souls, there is no other word for it.
The Newland family owns and operates Hercules Industries, a Colorado-based corporation that manufactures heating, ventilation and air-conditioning equipment. Through their hard work and dedication, and through their willingness to reinvest their own money in building their family business, they have managed to create jobs for 265 people while exerting a positive influence on the communities they serve.
The Newlands believe the morality the Catholic faith teaches them must animate their lives not only within the walls of the churches they attend, but literally everywhere else, as well -- in the way they deal with their families, their neighbors and, yes, their business.
The Newlands sued to protect their free exercise of religion in this regard because Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued a regulation, under the Obamacare law, that requires virtually all health care plans to cover -- without cost-sharing -- sterilizations, artificial contraception and abortifacients.
Under Obamacare, businesses that employ more than 50 people must provide their employees with insurance or pay a penalty, and the required insurance must include the mandated cost-sharing-free coverage for sterilizations, artificial contraception and abortifacients.
At Hercules Industries, the Newlands provide a generous self-insured health-care plan to their employees. It does not cover sterilization, artificial contraception or abortifacients.
"The Catholic Church teaches that abortifacient drugs, contraception and sterilization are intrinsic evils," says the Newlands' lawsuit.
"Consequently, the Newlands believe that it would be immoral and sinful for them to intentionally participate in, pay for, facilitate or otherwise support abortifacient drugs, contraception, sterilization, and related education and counseling as would be required by the Mandate, through their inclusion in health insurance coverage they offer at Hercules," says the suit.
The Catholic Bishops of the United States endorse this view. At a meeting in Atlanta last month, they unanimously adopted a resolution calling the HHS regulation an "unjust and illegal mandate" and a "violation of personal civil rights." They declared that the regulation created a class of Americans "with no conscience protection at all: individuals who, in their daily lives, strive constantly to act in accordance with their faith and moral values.
"They, too," said the bishops, "face a government mandate to aid in providing 'services' contrary to those values -- whether in their sponsoring of, and payment for, insurance as employers; their payment of insurance premiums as employees; or as insurers themselves -- without even the semblance of an exemption."
In a letter read during Sunday Mass in most dioceses around the country earlier this year, many of the nation's bishops flatly said: "We cannot -- we will not -- comply with this unjust law."
In response to the Newlands' complaint that ordering them to violate the teachings of the Catholic Church in the way they run their business is a violation of their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion, the Obama administration told the federal court that a private business has no protection under the First Amendment's free exercise clause -- especially if the business is incorporated.
"The First Amendment Complaint does not allege that the company is affiliated with a formally religious entity such as a church," said the Justice Department. "Nor does it allege that the company employs persons of a particular faith. In short, Hercules Industries is plainly a for-profit, secular employer."
"By definition," said the Justice Department, "a secular employer does not engage in any 'exercise of religion.'"
"It is well established that a corporation and its owners are wholly separate entities, and the Court should not permit the Newlands to eliminate that legal separation to impose their personal religious beliefs on the corporate entity or its employees," said the Justice Department.
This is just as if the Justice Department were to tell a family owned newspaper that it must publish editorials calling for a confiscatory estate tax, basing its coercion of the newspaper on the supposition (which lawyers for the Alliance Defending Freedom argue DOJ is by analogy making) that as a for-profit secular and incorporated employer, the paper has no First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
How about as Mooslims?
Obama is crushing everything because he is mad.
That’s right, conservatives! Vote for Virgil Goode because 4 more years of Obama is so much better than Romney!
Looks like these guys are SOL, too.
Obama hates true Catholics. He likes Catholics that are useful idiots, like the US bishops.
Not mad, just a through and through anti-American communist. Remember he wanted to transform this nation into his visit of America, which as his mentor and perhaps real father, Frank Marshall Davis said would be the United Soviet Socialist States of America.
All he as to do is get rid of those pesky Christians, whether Protestant or Catholic; especially those who cling to their Constitution, bible and guns.
It’s like a nightmare. What kind of tyrants have we put in power?
Obama's secret identity:
Don Julian Alvarado, "El Supremo".
But 0bama creating the ‘Office of African-American Education’ is acceptable?
Did you actually READ the article?? The Catholic bishops are going all out against this assault on religious freedom. Also note that the Catholic bishops of today are not the knee-jerk liberals who once infested the US Catholic bishopry. Those folks are being shuffled off to "honorable retirement" as fast as Pope Benedict can arrange it.
I find halal and kosher foods offensive. So I guess selling kosher and halal food will be stopped. ‘Bout time.
Catholics have supported socialism in the US for decades, they supported the Healthcare law until opps it hurt them, they supported illegals, they support redistribution of wealth, except that of the church.
The federal government can and will compel them to either surrender their business or to engage in activities the Catholic faith teaches are intrinsically immoral.
Mr. Jeffrey is not spouting hyperbole in any fashion. We are looking at demanding an instance of immediate material cooperation in evil from the Newlands as a condition of their operating a business.
The deliberate concurrence in another person's usually sinful action. The co-operation is formal and always sinful if, besides giving external help of whatever kind, one interiorly wants the evil action to be performed. Formal co-operation is at least a sin against charity by doing spiritual harm to one's neighbor; frequently it is also a sin against another virtue, especially of justice.
Assisting in another's wrongdoing without approving it. The help given assists a person to perform the sinful action, although of itself the help is not wrong. To provide necessary information to a thief, because one is forced to, would be material co-operation. Material co-operation with another person's evil action is allowed provided certain conditions are fulfilled. Such collaboration is licit because the co-operator does not internally approve of the sin of another, nor does he or she approve of the sinful use to which the assistance is put by the other. The following principles are standard in resolving this complex moral issue:
Two kinds of material co-operation are to be distinguished: immediate and mediate.
In immediate material co-operation, one person actually does something morally wrong with another person. Thus if a surgeon and an assistant are both engaged in actually aborting a fetus, the co-operation of the assistant is immediate. Immediate material co-operation in the sinful act of another is always wrong. It is pointless to say that a person who is not under duress performs a criminal action without intending to do so.
Mediate material co-operation is concurring in the wrong action of another, but not in such a way that one actually performs the act with the other or agrees with the evil intention of the other. While doing something that is in itself good or indifferent, a person rather gives an occasion to another's sin, or contributes something by way of assistance.
The morality of mediate material co-operation is to be judged on the principle of the double effect. In applying this principle, there are four basic norms to be observed. Among these norms is the obligation not to intend the evil effect (as would really be intended in immediate material co-operation) and the need for sufficient reason to permit the evil effect. The presence of a proportionate reason is not sufficient to allow what is called material co-operation.
Slowly, steadily, . . . choices as we once them are taken away piece by piece. Outraged within and amongst ourselves, sitting idly by. Oh sure, we will go to the poles and vote. What do they say about repeating an action repeatedly and expecting a different result?
Representatives and statesman have obviously been pounded into submission by fear, lest they speak out loudly and with passion.
Exactly when do God fearing people stand up and say "HELL NO". . . We will not take it anymore!
Exactly when is enough, is enough? When they come for our guns? By then it will be too late.
When I was in school many decades ago . . . We were taught then, that if you wanted to change a law, you had to be willing to break the law. You had to be willing to serve time in jail. Through peaceful civil discourse, a minority of people can effectively change the law. I guess the only ones who were listening were the Marxist. The rest of us follow the rules. Thinking its getting time to stand up and be heard outside the polling booth.
People will loose a lot. Their business their homes. But many before have lost their lives in the name of freedom. What are we willing to lose.
There's a huge opportunity out there for people who can figure this sort of thing out.
I agree with the DOJ position here.
A hundred thousand small and mid size, and a few dozen large corporations all reincorporate as Catholic Church associated entities and the Democrat Party will collapse in most Catholic dominant states.
If the DOJ wins this, and if the Bishops are more than blowing hot air, it could revolutionize the legal strategies of entrepreneurs in the country.
If a Muslim business owner requires all employees to pay 5% zakat to a Mosque, as a condition of employment, we’d all be freaking out.
If they are listed as being the persons of responsibility, when it comes to decisions made for the corporation, I believe they have every right to decide what they will spend the corporation's money on.
"It is well established that a corporation and its owners are wholly separate entities, and the Court should not permit the Newlands to eliminate that legal separation to impose their personal religious beliefs on the corporate entity or its employees," said the Justice Department.
If this is the case, what would prevent anyone from establishing a corporate entity -- under both IRS rules and the laws of that particular state -- in which adherence to Catholic teaching is written into the corporation's founding documents, corporate bylaws, etc.?
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