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Posted on 04/29/2012 2:09:27 PM PDT by the invisib1e hand
It has been said that “the road to Hell is paved with religious exemptions.” There are always those who are willing to cut a deal with the devil to avoid having to confront a thorny moral issue.
This is certainly the case of the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate which would now force employers to provide medical insurance that guarantees free birth control, tubal ligation, and morning-after abortifacients. There are those who hope to avoid the whole issue by rallying around the idea of a religious exemption.
In fact, the whole debate is even being framed by the liberal media as a mere question of religious exemption. What is at stake, they claim, is the question of a few stubborn religious employers such as Catholics hospitals and universities that object to supplying birth control to their employees. When the Administration agreed to “accommodate” them by ordering the insurers to provide these “services” free of charge, Catholic institutions, unwilling to cut a deal, are made to look unreasonable.
Such a vision is completely false. This is not just a case of religious employers. This is a case of any American, Catholic or non-Catholic, religious employer or factory owner, who refuses to act as an accomplice to a policy that treats pregnancy as a disease and sexual promiscuity as a right.
What this mandate essentially does is open the virtual equivalent of a Planned Parenthood clinic inside every factory, workplace, school, university or hospital in America. It forces employers to provide the virtual space inside their enterprises for these clinics to operate – free of charge.
Thus, we do not want a religious exemption. We cannot narrow the problem to specific religious institutions since it does nothing to address the problems of countless non-religious insurers, employers, self-employed and, yes, even employees who do not fall into the very narrow religious category and yet object to participating in any way in this travesty of health care. We do not want any exemption since exemptions are by their very nature “privileges” that are just as easily taken away as they are granted.
Revoking the mandate will not solve this problem. The problem lies in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly dubbed “Obamacare.” Its provisions allow for unprecedented government intervention and socialist control over the private health care decisions of all Americans. We cannot cut a deal. Until this act is revoked, we can expect to see a string of stern government measures steamrolling the rights of all since the road to socialism has always been paved by the discarded promises, special deals – and, yes, religious exemptions.
To our catholic Brothers and Sisters; Please, hang in there for we Evangelicals are on your side. We must make it perfectly clear that we will not abide demands by the government that we set aside our beliefs to accomodate some notion of “social justicce.”
I should have put this into my previous post.
As Congress grants more and more law making authority to the tyrannic administrative state, the citizen's circle of freedom is nearly gone. Witness the exponential increase in uniformed, armed officers for nearly every governmental agency.
There are no moral or constitutional reasons to obey the illegal diktats of Baby-Doc.
We the People granted limited legislative authority to Congress and no others.
This will not end well.
He’s very publicly – and seemingly with the sympathy of the media, which is rarely if ever sympathetic to hard truths – saying quotable, churchy things: “This administration is insinuating itself into the very life of the Church”; he’s threatening to sue "all the way to the Supreme Court" but by doing so he’s putting the whole matter to the court of public opinion and seems to be setting the stage for a “compromise” which can only make both he and obama look like heroes.
He's talking terms of earthly power. A guaranteed loser for the Church. He's Obama's pope.
catholi ping
You nailed it.
YES, I watched it all. The intelligent Congressman ripped the ignorant Sebelius to shreds....repeatedly.
I hope not.
The Cardinal said,
…The Catholic Church has advocated for universal health care for nearly a century…All we have asked is that the Church be left alone to continue to doing the good work in education, charity, and health care that we have always done…I would ask: If the church really wanted to be "left alone", why did it advocate for universal healthcare to begin with? Why didn't it advocate for a government that would leave the matter in the hands of the producers and consumers of such services? Should the Church seek a privilege for itself that the populace in general doesn’t enjoy -- the right to be “left alone?”
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
This is absolutely false!! Cardinal Dolan and the bishops have repeatedly stated in certain terms that any coercion on the part of the federal government to force people of conscience to act against their beliefs is contrary to the the First Amendment and the entire law should be declared as such by the SCOTUS. In particular since Obama’s faux compromise, the bishops have become more specific about the need to not trust the government, and to oppose any HHS mandate to the point of imprisonment if necessary;
Knock it off, all you Anti-Dolan bloggers. He's leading the cause for all Americans who love liberty and our Bill of Rights.
This is absolutely false!! Cardinal Dolan and the bishops have repeatedly stated in certain terms that any coercion on the part of the federal government to force people of conscience to act against their beliefs is contrary to the the First Amendment and the entire law should be declared as such by the SCOTUS. In particular since Obama’s faux compromise, the bishops have become more specific about the need to not trust the government, and to oppose any HHS mandate to the point of imprisonment if necessary;
Knock it off, all you Anti-Dolan bloggers. He's leading the cause for all Americans who love liberty and our Bill of Rights.
that would certainly be a requisite for "posturing."
I wouldn’t call him “Obama’s Pope,” as someone with that title would be publicly supporting it, I reckon.
But I will say it seems to me that if the mandate really is a big deal to them, then they would use discipline on public Catholics who voted for it and continue to support it. It’s like trying to fight a war while well known traitors in your uniform are allowed to advise and sell secrets to the enemy in front of everyone and then publicly say it is both a good thing and they are heroes for doing so. Just gives the impression that the war must not really be a big deal to the Generals when you get right down to it.
Did Canada and Euro-states already go through this? How did the Church handle it there? Or is the conflict different here or something?
Freegards
God willing, the SCOTUS will strike down the whole evil law and this whole discussion becomes moot.
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