Obama's Re-Election Sets up Two-Pronged Crisis for Church

Our Sunday Visitor ^ | 11/7/12 | Russell Shaw

[marshmallow]

For the Catholic Church in the United States, the re-election of Barack Obama as president means serious trouble ahead – in fact, nothing less than an accelerating two-pronged crisis.

The first prong of the crisis is that Obama is expected to press policies favoring abortion, contraception and same-sex marriage even more aggressively and coercively in his second term than in his first.

The second prong is reflected in the fact that, according to CNN exit polls, 50 percent of the Catholics who voted backed Obama despite his well-publicized conflict with their Church, with 48 percent going for Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

Further analysis of the poll data is expected to produce the usual, predictable finding that Catholics who attend Mass regularly are substantially more likely to stand with the Church than Catholics who don't.

Future of mandate

In any case, Obama's re-election leaves him at liberty to move ahead with enforcing the famous Department of Health and Human Services mandate requiring Church-related institutions like colleges and universities, charities, and hospitals to provide abortifacient drugs, contraceptives and sterilizations via their employee health care plans.

The mandate, part of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act – otherwise known as Obamacare – is scheduled to go into effect for Church institutions Aug. 1, 2013. Cumulatively huge fines will be imposed on those that fail to comply.

Obama in the past has said he would provide some form of "accommodation" to religious groups who object to the mandate on moral grounds. But he hasn't done that yet, and even if he does, the affected institutions still face the prospect of having the employer-employee relationship serve as a vehicle for things the Church judges immoral.

Only the possibility of action by one or more courts staying the administration's hand now seems capable of preventing this.....

[Rashputin]

I think you're right. It seems to me there are an awful lot of people who claim to be Catholic but who have been trying to build a US Catholic Church that's Protestant in all but name and about like the Anglican Church has been, a part of the State.

[PeevedPatriot]

IMHO he wants hospitals to remain open but will seek cost reduction by mandating they accommodate walk-in abortion on demand (late term can't be done outpatient). Other cost cutting would include euthanasia on demand and/or whatever criteria IPAB and other obamacare bureaucrats come up with. That's on top of the disincentives (reduced payments and penalties) for treating various illnesses and patients that are being phased in. We need to be vigilant about what's happening because the alphabet media won't be drawing attention to it.

Peace be with you and stay healthy!

[PeevedPatriot]

I understand and appreciate your point. I'm guessing though that the obama administration is more aware than most catholic laity that many of our hospitals have become secularized in recent decades. Just as our colleges have. Some claim it's due to accepting government money (Medicare, Medicaid, etc) but I don't buy that argument. It'd be illegal to discriminate against those patients anyway. No, there are many organizations that contract with the feds to provide a service and remain essentially true to their mission. I think what's happened in Catholic hospitals is that many of the religious orders that founded them got out of the health care ministry and turned them over to organizations that haven't remained committed to Catholic health care principles. If our institutions survive this mess, it'd be nice if some of those orders resumed their former health care ministries, at least at an administrative level to reinvigorate and oversee adherence to Catholic health care principles in these facilities.

Peace be with you.

[Biggirl]

Will be praying Psalm 109 from this day onwards.

[Jim from C-Town]

They may be secularized, but they are owned by the Church.