Posted on 11/24/2008 8:28:54 PM PST by Lorianne
When I saw the Catholic bishops had declared war on President-elect Obama at their semiannual meeting in Baltimore two weeks ago, my first reaction was pique: Gosh, guys, it isn't even parade day yet, and here you are, all dressed up and ready to rain on it.
Were they in spasm because Obama had won Catholics by nine points? (Nine! A landslide compared with the five by which my co-religionists had favored Bush in '04.) Peeved because even some of the most ardent pro-lifers had broken ranks? (In Colorado, where Denver Archbishop Charles J. Chaput called Obama "the most committed 'abortion rights' presidential candidate of either major party since the Roe v. Wade abortion decision in 1973,'' it was Catholic voters who turned the state from red to blue.)
...
What in the world were these bishops talking about, claiming that religious freedom in America was under attack? Keep up the hysterics, boys, I thought as I scanned the latest story, and this will be birth control all over again: Your lips are moving but no one can hear you. And the most ludicrous line out of them, surely, was about how, under Obama, Catholic hospitals that provide obstetric and gynecological services might soon be forced to perform abortions or close their doors. Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Chicago warned of "devastating consequences" to the health care system, insisting Obama could force the closure of all Catholic hospitals in the country. That's a third of all hospitals, providing care in many neighborhoods that are not exactly otherwise overprovided for. It couldn't happen, could it?
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
I will refuse to get medical care. Only vision, dental and catastrophic care. After seeing that woman who left the hospital with all her limbs cut off, I’d rather NOT.
Jim wrote: “all touchy fealy and nobody in the pews.” You should have been at my Church yesterday, where we have the Latin Mass. The priest said, in no uncertain words, that he wouldn’t give a dime to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and we shouldn’t either, and when they took up the second collection for that organization, no one put any money in the basket.
We need more priests like that, priests who aren’t afraid to tell us what is right and what is wrong!
We currently have a nationwide severe shortage of OB/GYNs.
OTOH, our hospital emergency rooms are the newest “tourist destinations”, for foreigners unsatisfied with their home nations nationalized health care institutions.
I submit it is way past time for Catholics to “put up, or shut up”.
“The closing of Catholic hospitals would definitely create a health care crisis and help socialists finally get their dream of socialized medicine.”
How so?
The Church would continue to own the locked up hospitals. They would not be selling them. It’s too serious a threat for Obama and Boxer not to take seriously.
Boxer may have noticed that several CA hospitals have had to close due to an overabundane of uninsured patients (illegals) who they were forced to treat. Michelle Obama as a member of the U of Chicago board called for their ER to send non-paying patients to other, lesser neighborhood facilities. Without functioning Catholic hospitals the health care system would be in a world of hurt and that would be worsened, not ameliorated, by socializing medicine.
Actually, doctors should get together and threaten that they will retire from medicine if socialized medicine is forced on them. Their profession has already suffered financially from having to treat Medicare and Medicaid patients. Many have chosen not to take M/M patients because the return is so low.
“I am not too happy with the Jews either who voted 78% for a good friend of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Slapping my forehead.
I don't see how they could do anything else. It will be a cold day in hell before abortions are performed in a Catholic Hospital.
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BHO cut his teeth with these type of tactics. The Catholic Church must not relent.
Many people seem to imagine a Hollywood type script and scenario in which the evildoer is paraded through the streets in an auto da fe with a formal proclamation being read in the evildoer's face by the bishop before his/her ultimate earthly disposal. Those salutary methods were available only in the good old days. Today we are limited to less dramatic responses.
Many Catholic bishops in our country have reminded these miscreants publicly that they are not to receive the Holy Eucharist in the absence of satisfactory public repudiation of their pro-babykilling stances as public officials. No bell, book and candle but that amounts to a clerical recognition of the miscreants' self-excommunication. What is bound on earth is bound in heaven, as is traditional.
Ditto.
...um, because closing the Catholic hospitals would FLOOD all the others? And what happens when supply drops and demand stays the same or goes up? Lines would get long. Costs would sky rocket. Basic services would require appointments weeks in advance.
And the media would have a FIELD DAY with that. They’d parade all kinds of sick orphans and women in front of the cameras crying about the lack of health care in the US and how only the government can step in and fill the cracks.
Seriously, I wonder if the hospitals in question could just quit providing OB-GYN services.
I wonder if the bishops might be a little sheepish on their efforts over the last thirty years or so. They have, indeed, opposed abortion. My contention has always been that they have done so, wink, wink.
This is admittedly anecdotal, but most (not all) of the priests I have ever known were liberal Democrats. Countless sermons have reflected this. Archdiocese solicitation drives have funded a good many organizations that, by extension, suggested a death wish on the part of the Catholic Church. IMHO, American bishops' pronouncements over the years have been, and continue to be, anathema to the continuation of the "institution" of the United States and, by extension, the Catholic Church. I'm shocked, shocked to discover that the majority of Catholics are proabortion.
Are there qualms of late on the part of the bishops? Every one of them has been around long enough to watch it all unfold and participate.
2009 will prove darned interesting. I would like to see Congress take a run at the FOCA. This is but one area that I would like to see what kind of country we really have as I approach the twilight of my life.
I’ll bet $100 that the bishops will cave before Obama does.
Would it be possible for the government to take those closed hospitals under eminent domain? That’s what I’m worried about.
Also, did you notice the implication in the article that the possibility of closing these hospitals wasn’t real?
Just another one of “Satan’s little helpers” using a variation of the Biggest Lie Ever Told: Satan says I don’t exist.
A little surprised for a Slate article. I am also concerned as a school nurse that now I’ll be mandated to teach homosexual propaganda in kindergarten or lose my job. That is a real possibility, as the One intends to make it a hate language crime if one dissents, and there is no rom for conscientious objector in this, according to him. mandated through hate-crime legislation makes it impossible to object to without facing criminal charges. America is no longer.
I wondered the same, but if it’s church property, I don’t think they can, nor would they be able to tax church property without changing the tax code .. but I’m not a lawyer. Nor do I know the corporate structure(s) of the Catholic hospitals.
I’ve been very disappointed with the way Catholic colleges have gone in the past 30-40 years, caving in on issues that veer from Catholic teaching. Same with formerly Methodist and Presbyterian colleges. They all seem to have lost their “Christian” bearings. The Catholic hospitals, tho, have continued in a more “Catholic” vein, refusing abortions and euthenasia.
Hopefully, just the threat to close those hospitals would cause the FOCA to lose substantial support in Congress. It’s about time the American Catholic bishops got serious about this issue. They’ve let it slide entirely too long.
Have you seen the plan for a world order? Who will govern this order? How will order be kept? Will there be a balance of power in this order? What would be considered a perfect world order? What are things that will be discarded that this order be put in place? Is it Church? Nation? Individual identity? Freedom? The bill of rights? The current Constitution?
...And what recourse do ordinary people have to file grievances in this order?
Does anyone ask these questions as your hands touch those words every single day of your lives?
The bishops cannot close the hospitals without the cooperation of the hospital’s Board of Directors.
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