Posted on 02/01/2012 3:55:45 AM PST by Kaslin
President Obama and his radical feminist enforcers have had it in for Catholic medical providers from the get-go. It's about time all people of faith fought back against this unprecedented encroachment on religious liberty. First, they came for the Catholics. Who's next?
This weekend, Catholic bishops informed parishioners of the recent White House edict forcing religious hospitals, schools, charities and other health and social service providers to provide "free" abortifacient pills, sterilizations and contraception on demand in their insurance plans -- even if it violates their moral consciences and the teachings of their churches.
NARAL, NOW, Ms. Magazine and the Feminist Majority Foundation all cheered the administration's abuse of the Obamacare law to ram abortion down pro-life medical professionals' throats. Femme dinosaur Eleanor Smeal gloated over the news that the administration had rejected church officials' pleas for compromises: "At last," she exulted, the left's goal of "no-cost birth control" for all had been achieved.
As always, tolerance is a one-way street in the Age of Obama. "Choice" is in the eye (and iron fist) of the First Amendment usurper.
Like the rising number of states who have revolted against the individual health care mandate at the ballot box and in the courts, targeted Catholics have risen up against the Obamacare regime. Arlington (Va.) Bishop Paul Loverde didn't mince words, calling the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services order "a direct attack against religious liberty. This ill-considered policy comprises a truly radical break with the liberties that have underpinned our nation since its founding." Several bishops vowed publicly to fight the mandate.
Bishop Alexander Sample of Marquette, Mich., asserted plainly: "We cannot -- we will not -- comply with this unjust law."
It's not just rabid right-wing politicos defying the Obama machine. Pro-life Democratic Sen. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania denounced the "wrong decision." Left-leaning Bishop Robert Lynch threatened "civil disobedience" in St. Petersburg, Fla., over the power grab. Lefty Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne wrote that Obama "botched" the controversy and "threw his progressive Catholic allies under the bus" by refusing to "balance the competing liberty interests here."
White House press secretary Jay Carney blithely denied on Tuesday that "there are any constitutional rights issues" involved in the brewing battle. Yet, the Shut Up and Hand Out Abortion Pills order undermines a unanimous Supreme Court ruling issued just last week upholding a religious employer's right to determine whom to hire and fire. And two private colleges have filed federal suits against the government to overturn the unconstitutional abortion coverage decree.
Hannah Smith, senior counsel at the nonprofit law firm The Becket Fund, which is representing the schools, boiled it down for Bloomberg News: "This is not really about access to contraception. The mandate is about forcing these religious groups to pay for it against their beliefs."
How did we get here? The first salvo came in December 2010, when the American Civil Liberties Union pushed HHS and its Planned Parenthood-championing secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions in violation of their core moral commitment to protecting the lives of the unborn.
The ACLU called for a litigious fishing expedition against Catholic hospitals nationwide that refuse to provide "emergency" contraception and abortions to women. In their sights: Devout Phoenix Catholic Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who revoked the Catholic status of a rogue hospital that performed several direct abortions, provided birth control pills and presided over sterilizations against the church's ethical and religious directives for health care.
The ACLU and the feminists have joined with Obama to threaten and sabotage the First Amendment rights of religious-based health care entities. The agenda is not increased "access" to health care services. The ultimate goal is to shut down health care providers -- Catholic health care institutions employ about 540,000 full-time workers and 240,000 part-time workers -- whose religious views cannot be tolerated by secular zealots and radical social engineers.
Is it any surprise their counterparts in the "Occupy" movement have moved from protesting "Wall Street" to harassing pro-life marchers in Washington, D.C., and hurling condoms at Catholic school girls in Rhode Island? Birds of a lawless, bigoted feather bully together.
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You missed the point. It does not matter what the reason is, when they come for someone for something and get away with it, they will come for someone else for some other reason.
And yes, commercial fishermen took the US to SCOTUS over the issue of Rights. Are Rights equally applied to all Americans? No, they said. (WASHINGTON v. FISHING VESSEL ASSN., 443 U.S. 658 (1979))
And according to SCOTUS, “You have mere privileges which can be revoked at any given time, only Treaty Indians have Rights guaranteed by the Constitution, (and yours have been revoked).” - repeated in three separate cases.
So religion as a Right, like all the others, are illusions, and can be revoked, unless you practice a Treaty tribal religion which is guaranteed as a Right.
Further, many Catholic priests (and other denomination leaders) at the time denounced commercial fishermen from the pulpit as rapists, worse than child molesters, and evil people who need to be imprisoned.
What goes around, comes around.
He can't win without both sides. I honestly think he expected this to be a non issue. Look at the “Catholic” congress critters like Pelosi.
When he woke up, what a dream!
Yo Michelle. I mean, if Casey called himself King of Spain would you describe him as such?
He's about as "pro life" as Harry Reid who is as "pro life" as Nancy Pelosi who is as "pro life" as Barack Obama.
It just doesn't work that the selfsame church would advocate "universal and complete disarmament" when it has been defended, repeatedly, by force of arms.
I understand the vital nature of landmines--especially to lareg area defense, and am glad the US didn't buy into the international conventions against them.
We have also developed cluster munitions which detonate after time, provided they function correctly. In fact, we (the US) have spent fortunes developing weapons which are not indiscriminate in killing those not specifically targeted, and continue to do so (concrete filled laser guided bombs used as kinetic weapons in lieu of levelling a block or two are a good and recent example). As for ordinary small arms, that was not what I read in your excerpt.
Given a small force and a large amount of terrain, I'd use landmines, too. (Just police the area after you win, or have the means to render the mines ineffective). Consider that tons of munitions (UXO) are dug up annually in Europe alone, the legacy of the last couple of big wars there (and even still live shells on our own Civil War Battlefields), I can see where the Church may be coming from, but that doesn't mean I completely agree.
Nowhere in the statement you cited did I see anything about rifles, pistols, guided munitions, or other conventional and personal weapons, nor even artillery, bombs, or other arms normally used in warfare, with the exception of landmines. As the landmine hadn't been developed yet when the Second Amendment was written, I see little conflict there.
While it might be an effective way to keep the neighbors' pets from soiling your lawn (more than once), most people are neither likely to posess nor to employ them because of their inherent inability to distinguish between genuine threats and acciedental incursions which carry a liability aspect far beyond the benefit of keeping unwanted intruders out. Even our own government froens on the concept of mining the back 40 or mounting claymores to keep varmints out of the garden.
Still, there is a big difference between a disagreement over which weapons of war to employ and requiring the Church to pay for practices which violate doctrine.
The US Government using landmines is nowhere the same as requiring the Catholic Church to buy insurance which pays for abortions.
not mine
I grew up in a predominantly Catholic area where the Priest would annually bless the fleet, (if not a Bishop), and I have held a commercial fishing license.
But if you would show me where fishing is mentioned in the Constitution and /or Bill of Rights, I'd be grateful, 'cause I missed that, too.
As for Rights being taken away, No. A right can never be taken away, it continues to exist even if you don't practice it, but you might have to fight for the ability to do so after you have forsaken it, or fight against a usurpation of that right.
But all in all, this isn't about fishing, it's a power struggle, between the secular government and the Church.
Ask me to choose between God and the Government, and the Government loses every time. I'll only be here a short while, and there forever after. (Now you see why the war on religion).
Requiring Catholic Hospitals to provide abortion services won't hunt, and your next trip to an ER may be longer as a result, depending on where you live.
Didn't think so. It just annoys me.
Paragraph 508 on Disarmament merely states "arms," which I take to mean all arms and not some. I also quoted Paragraph 510, which discussed one particular issue.
However, see the following article: http://www.uscatholic.org/news/2011/01/gun-control-church-firmly-quietly-opposes-firearms-civilians
From this article:
The most direct statement comes in the bishops' "Responsibility, Rehabilitation and Restoration: A Catholic Perspective on Crime and Criminal Justice" from November 2000.
"As bishops, we support measures that control the sale and use of firearms and make them safer -- especially efforts that prevent their unsupervised use by children or anyone other than the owner -- and we reiterate our call for sensible regulation of handguns."
That's followed by a footnote that states: "However, we believe that in the long run and with few exceptions -- i.e. police officers, military use -- handguns should be eliminated from our society."
I find it hard to misunderstand the meaning of "handguns should be eliminated from our society." As I said, I oppose my own bishops on this issue, so I'm not picking on RCs. I'm just saying that if your church pushes European Socialism and gun control and then expects a different cultural outcome in America than they got in Europe, they're crazy.
Bingo!
Hey, we are discussing a church.
How's that? If that makes me a bad Catholic, I'll stand in line to be excommunicated behind all the ones who vote for abortion and those who support the practice. I doubt I'd live long enough to be kicked out.
But in this matter of religion, in the steadfast position of the Catholic Church that Abortion is Wrong, I support them, and the Right to not be forced by government to pay for murder.
What say you on that topic?
Saw no mention of firearms owned for self-protection from criminals or criminal governments.
And I am not the best educated Catholic, but I have always thought that if it is not in the Catechism, or pronounced by the Pope ex cathedra, it's just some guy in a robe's opinion.
East Coast commercial fishermen live under a Federally determined regime. They ceded their rights a long time ago. A fact that many despise today. They are all but Federal pets. But that's another story.
Fishing on the West Coast was a State regime up until it was taken over forcefully in the 80s. You haven't lived until you have stared down a 19yr old on the bow of a 50’ Coast Guard cutter - watching him sweat and shake as he mans the locked and loaded .50 cal pointed at you and your boat. You for the crime of fishing. For which some were sent to Federal prison. And another had the back of his head blown off ...
Freedom is mentioned a few times in the Constitution, I believe. We fought, literally. We lost. You lost. We paid and they collected. You paid, and now it is time to collect yours. And you are upset.
We were told we were the wrong race, now you are in the process of being told you hold the wrong religion. But, because you and too many other refuse to understand what has happened to others in the recent past, you will suffer the consequences.
Again you seem to be stuck. Rights are only as good as the Court's interpretation of them. Those rights only last until the Court decides otherwise, and practicing them becomes a felony with fines and prison time guaranteed.
When fighting means fighting the US Marshals, the US Coast Guard, the FBI, the media, the Church, and others. When the entire might and wealth of the Federal government is against your livelihood, you personally, your family, and your friends. When the people in the town you live in scowl and turn their backs on you, muttering nasty comments under their breath. While your wife files for divorce, taking the house and the kids ...
Just because you believed you lived in a free country and fought for it ... did't mean it was true.
Dolan is entering his time of testing, We'll see how well he holds up or not. He did well locally, but on a national scene, under the pressures to come - is unknown.
And I held many different commercial fishing permits and licenses for 35 years. Fished almost every fishery from WA to AK. Wrote statistical TAC papers which were influential in local and international negotiations, as well as holding office for decades in the most influential and powerful fishing association in Washington state.
Pray for Dolan. He's your hope.
I guess Michelle doesn’t hang out at Free Republic. If she did, she would know.......
First they came for the Mormons
No matter, we won't get those rights back, any of us, unless we all work together.
But again, this isn't about property rights, or fishing rights, or even mineral rights, this is incredibly fundamental, even more than those.
My ancestors came here in the 1600s because they sought Freedom of Religion and freedom from those who had an established State Religion.
They established a colony based on that freedom, although it is far from free now as one of those East Coast States.
We've been persecuted for our beliefs before.
I just think its funny how that fundamental Right, a First Amendment Right, is equated with fishing rights, for Catholics, but if the Obama Administration demanded Jews eat pigmeat or Muslims go into a gym without a footbath--instead of just force Catholics pay for murder there'd likely be a greater and more universal outcry.
That you are equating fishing rights with being forced against our religious belief to pay for the murder of babies and somehow acting as if the two are in any way the same speaks volumes, not just about how we got to this point, but about how we are going to go a lot farther if we don't turn around.
In the meantime, you'll be left to fight the euthenasia laws with folks who have decided gay ministry and marriage are just fine, 'cause we'll likely be heading off to 'camp'. Good luck.
“And I am not the best educated Catholic, but I have always thought that if it is not in the Catechism, or pronounced by the Pope ex cathedra, it’s just some guy in a robe’s opinion.”
You are correct. Unfortunately, the guys in robes have been pontificating (please pardon the pun) about these “social issues” from the pulpit for years, which is why so many RCs and EOs are liberals.
Fortunately, more and more RCs and EOs are being exposed to different ways of looking at the world at pro-life gatherings. This retarded (but foreseeable) move by the 0bama administration will merely push more “moderates” to full-blown conservatism.
“But in this matter of religion, in the steadfast position of the Catholic Church that Abortion is Wrong, I support them, and the Right to not be forced by government to pay for murder.”
I completely agree. In the long run, more moderate RCs are going to hear the position of conservatives and more RCs will move right.
Fortunately, more and more RCs and EOs are being exposed to different ways of looking at the world at pro-life gatherings. This retarded (but foreseeable) move by the 0bama administration will merely push more “moderates” to full-blown conservatism.
I think you are right.
When the Mexican priest at our parish called those of us who support GA's immigration law as "working for the dark forces" in his Easter Sunday homily this year, the grumbling was audible.
Though I do know some Catholic friends here who agree with him on immigration, for the most part, the Catholics in my area seem quite conservative..
My ancestors came here in the 1600s
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Hey so did mine - 1640 where they were fishermen also - where the first environmental law was passed making it an offence to render whales in the town limits due to air quality issues. Heh.
Are you related to Edward Higby
Birth 2 Feb 1616 in Ivinghoe, co Bucks, England
Death 23 Sept 1699 in Long Island City, Queens, New York, USA ?
Nope, we were further South.
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