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Posted on 08/01/2012 10:26:53 AM PDT by STARWISE
The Cardinal Newman Society, a national organization to help renew and strengthen Catholic identity in Catholic higher education, issued the following statement:
August 1, 2012, marks the formal beginning of the persecution of Catholic colleges and universities that wish to remain faithful to the teachings of the Catholic Church.
As of today, the Obama administration is forcing Catholic colleges to help students and employees obtain no-cost sterilizations, abortion-causing drugs and contraceptives, and also “counseling” promoting these practices.
And who are the first victims of the Obama administration’s new Sexual Revolution? Catholic colleges and the parents of Catholic college students!
One year ago, when the Obama administration shocked the nation with “interim final” regulations for its HHS mandate, it publicly admitted that it had rushed the rules to ensure that college students get “contraceptive services” in the 2012-2013 school year. Many student insurance plans renew in August.
In other words, the Obama administration’s desire to support students’ sexual activity without even one year’s delay is precisely why:
1) they rushed to publish a poorly constructed religious exemption, and
2) they refused to accept comments on the interim regulations until after they were issued.
Many news publications have deceptively reported that the HHS mandate is delayed another year for religious institutions, without explaining that many religious colleges and employers cannot meet the Obama administration’s arbitrary criteria for the delay.
Catholic colleges that covered “contraceptive services” as of February 10, 2012, are ineligible for the delay. But infidelity is not the only reason why Catholic colleges may be affected:
· They may have complied with state laws which violate religious freedom.
· They may have been unaware of provisions included in their health plans by insurance companies or by college personnel in prior years.
· They may operate in areas without affordable coverage that excludes contraception.
Moreover, the past infidelity of a Catholic college is no excuse for the federal government to violate that college’s First Amendment right to uphold Catholic teachings.
And further, the Obama administration is violating the rights of Catholic parents who send students to Catholic colleges, reasonably expecting their religious beliefs to be upheld. There is no religious freedom when the federal government prevents Catholic families from freely choosing authentic Catholic education.
August 1, 2012- Obamacare contraception mandate takes effect
Excerpt:
Religious freedom advocates have been distraught by the requirement to cover contraceptive services, as some religions, notably the Catholic Church, have beliefs that conflict with the mandate.
HHS contends that certain non-profit religious organizations such as churches and schools are not required to cover the services. Non-exempt employers that have religious objections, which do not comply will be penalized. According to the Congressional Research Service employers who do not comply could be hit with a federal tax of $100 per-day-per-employee.
*snip*
“The implementation of this policy [Wednesday] marks the beginning of the end of religious freedom in our nation,” added Christen Varley, executive director of Conscience Cause a non-profit faith advocacy organization, in a statement. “Starting [Wednesday], employers with religious and moral objections must make an unimaginable choice: comply and deny your faith, or resist and be subject to crippling fines. Religious institutions have been given an absurd one year reprieve in which to decide the same.
~ ~ ~
Related to Obama's war on religious liberty, Cardinal George, of the Archdiocese of Chicago, former head of the United States Council of Catholic Bishops, issued this statement after overlord Rahm Emanuel's inflammatory, idiotic rebukes of Chick-Fil-A CEO's personal beliefs.
***
Sunday, July 29, 2012
Reflections on “Chicago values”
Comments (90)
Recent comments by those who administer our city seem to assume that the city government can decide for everyone what are the “values” that must be held by citizens of Chicago. I was born and raised here, and my understanding of being a Chicagoan never included submitting my value system to the government for approval.
Must those whose personal values do not conform to those of the government of the day move from the city? Is the City Council going to set up a “Council Committee on Un-Chicagoan Activities” and call those of us who are suspect to appear before it? I would have argued a few days ago that I believe such a move is, if I can borrow a phrase, “un-Chicagoan.”
The value in question is espousal of “gender-free marriage.” Approval of state-sponsored homosexual unions has very quickly become a litmus test for bigotry; and espousing the understanding of marriage that has prevailed among all peoples throughout human history is now, supposedly, outside the American consensus. Are Americans so exceptional that we are free to define “marriage” (or other institutions we did not invent) at will? What are we re-defining?
It might be good to put aside any religious teaching and any state laws and start from scratch, from nature itself, when talking about marriage. Marriage existed before Christ called together his first disciples two thousand years ago and well before the United States of America was formed two hundred and thirty six years ago. Neither Church nor state invented marriage, and neither can change its nature.
Marriage exists because human nature comes in two complementary sexes: male and female. The sexual union of a man and woman is called the marital act because the two become physically one in a way that is impossible between two men or two women. Whatever a homosexual union might be or represent, it is not physically marital. Gender is inextricably bound up with physical sexual identity; and “gender-free marriage” is a contradiction in terms, like a square circle.
Both Church and state do, however, have an interest in regulating marriage. It is not that religious marriage is private and civil marriage public; rather, marriage is a public institution in both Church and state. The state regulates marriage to assure stability in society and for the proper protection and raising of the next generation of citizens. The state has a vested interest in knowing who is married and who is not and in fostering good marriages and strong families for the sake of society.
The Church, because Jesus raised the marital union to the level of symbolizing his own union with his Body the Church, has an interest in determining which marital unions are sacramental and which are not. The Church sees married life as a path to sanctity and as the means for raising children in the faith, as citizens of the universal kingdom of God. These are all legitimate interests of both Church and state, but they assume and do not create the nature of marriage.
Jesus affirmed this understanding of marriage when he spoke of “two becoming one flesh” (Mt. 19: 4-6). Was Jesus a bigot? Could Jesus be accepted as a Chicagoan? Would Jesus be more “enlightened” if he had the privilege of living in our society? One is welcome to believe that, of course; but it should not become the official state religion, at least not in a land that still fancies itself free. Surely there must be a way to properly respect people who are gay or lesbian without using civil law to undermine the nature of marriage.
Surely we can find a way not to play off newly invented individual rights to “marriage” against constitutionally protected freedom of religious belief and religious practice. The State’s attempting to redefine marriage has become a defining moment not for marriage, which is what it is, but for our increasingly fragile “civil union” as citizens.
Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago
~~~
God help us fight the reprehensible tyrants.
..Ping!
Lie down with dogs; rise up with fleas. Anybody who accepts government funding in any form will find that he is no longer his own master. The worst thing that happened to freedom in this country was when government essentially took over education. It was all downhill from there.
It has nothing to do with government funding.
Catholics have only themselves to blame. They vote Democrat.
If they abide by the Bible, they know that “we ought to obey God rather than man.” There is no room for compromise.
When I say funding, I include students taking government-backed student loans. About the only colleges left that have true freedom are Hillsdale and Grove City, because they are not tied to any government money in any way.
Americans have allowed government to have a hand in everything, and this is the result. I’m not blaming the Catholic institutions in particular; we are all at fault. When we let government take a major role in education, health care, insurance, and business, we lost our freedom. Government control of every aspect of our lives was only a matter of time.
I don't go with the chronic negativity, though. People are turning around. Cheer them to do the right thing.
You do want them to do the right thing, don't you?
THANK YOU for pointing this out. I worked in Catholic health care for most of my career, and I wonder what those who take the "government funding" swipe would have preferred that we do. Should we have discriminated against Medicare and Medicaid patients and turned them away? Should we have refused to care for patients we knew couldn't afford care but for whom we could recoup a bit of the cost from the state and the feds? Or were we supposed to care for them without accessing government funding, thereby exhausting our resources and exacerbating the local bed shortage by caring for fewer patients overall?
The issue for me isn't who Catholic providers have accepted funding from as much as it is the government mandates that make providing care so costly in the first place. IMHO Catholic providers should be able to contract for services just as secular providers do, and if our country weren't in the process of becoming a secular atheocracy, it wouldn't really be an issue.
FYI, for those who don't wish to be part of an insurance plan that forces us to subsidize what we consider immoral, Solidarity Health Share is supposed to be up and running by the end of the year. Here's an EWTNnews article about it.
Since when is “free entertainment” a civil right. Any sexual activity that is not intended to produce children is merely entertainment. Contraception, abortion, and sterilization have only one purpose - entertainment. The next thing you know, people will be demanding that their monthly cable bill be covered by 0bamacare.
He's not a muslime. /s
“Catholics have only themselves to blame. They vote Democrat.”...............
Puuulllleeezzz!
This is getting tiresome I am a lifelong Catholic and have never voted for Democrats. My Mother, God rest her soul, was born in 1902, and she never voted for a Democrat either as she was always conservative. Her Father (my Grandfather), told her on his deathbed that he was so very happy that he had never voted for FDR!!!!! You see my Granddad was a community banker, and he realized early on that FDR was a demagogue who did not understand economics.
So, just because some Catholics vote for Democrats, does not mean that all Catholics vote for Democrats.
Blacks used to be Republicans until they were brainwashed.
Catholics are only now coming out of a century-long stupor, and realizing that Liberalism is not a Christian philosophy. Many of our current GOP leaders are Catholics,
In fact, my take on liberalism is that it “slays the Holy Spirit”, which is considered the greatest sin of all according to the bible. Liberalism poisons the minds of people, convincing them that they are being charitable when they are really abrogating their personal responsibility to their neighbors. Liberals define CHARITY as a bad thing when it is, in fact, a theological virtue, and according to the Gospel of St. John, the greatest of all virtues. Instead liberals promote collectivism as a substitute for personal growth in charity. Is it any wonder that our country and the world are in trouble?
Great - when they come for you - we’ll keep out mouths shut.
So because a thin majority of Catholics voted for the Halfrican in the last election, all of us -- including those Catholics, like me, who have *never* voted for a Democrat for President, and only rarely voted for one for any other office -- get to forfeit our Constitutional rights?
I used to live in an America where we thought the First Amendment, and the rest of the Bill of Rights, applied to everyone, equally, without regard to whether or not they agreed with us.
Maybe we ought to try to bring that America back. Think about it.
Hillsdale and Grove City are just as much subject to the evil HHS "mandate" as any other college, or any other employer, for that matter. It has nothing to do with whether they take government money, or not.
http://iwf.org/blog/2788680/Infographic:-The-HHS-Mandate
When Otto von Bismarck launched his Kulturkampf against Catholic Church institutions --- moved to knock down the Catholic school system, instituted "civil marriage" laws and tried to force the Church to comply ----half of the Prussian bishops ended up in prison or in exile, 1800 parish priests were imprisoned or exiled, and thousands of laypeople were imprisoned for helping the priests.
Obama's Kulturkampf --- well, we'll see.
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