Posted on 03/03/2012 4:20:49 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o
Perhaps Barack Obama assumed that religious leaders would simply offer a token protest to his new mandate for religious organizations to provide free birth control, even when contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization violate the core doctrines of their faith. The president might have had reason to expect that Catholic bishops wouldn’t put up much of a fight, considering their support for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly known as ObamaCare, from which Health and Human Services derives the authority to dictate their coverage requirements to employers.
Obama has enjoyed significant support from Catholics, the largest religious group in the country, winning the Catholic vote by nine points in 2008 and relying on their support to pass the PPACA. However, the Catholic bishops have united against the Obama administration after the imposition of the mandate, along with leaders of other religious denominations. Richard Land, who leads the largest Southern Baptist organization in the U.S., proclaimed solidarity with Catholics and pledged to go to jail before submitting to the HHS mandate.
Evangelical leaders Chuck Colson and Timothy George declared this the moment when Christian organizations would have to choose between Caesar and God. Jewish theologian and scholar Meir Soloveichik signed a joint statement of opposition in The Wall Street Journal, along with Colson and Bishop Donald Wuerl – a statement noting that stories "involving a Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew typically end with a punch line,” but that they consider this to be no laughing matter.
The strongest statement of opposition came this week from President Obama’s home town of Chicago. Francis Cardinal George sent a message to parishioners in the archdiocese that the Catholic Church would shut down its various institutions in the community before violating the core doctrine of Humanae Vitae by providing contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients to its employees, free or otherwise. In a lengthy missive, George remarked that Catholic bishops are fighting for a separation of church and state, and that the mandate represents an unprecedented arrogance in Obama’s attempt to have government define the boundaries between faith and works.
“Liberty of religion is more than freedom of worship,” George wrote, noting that even the Soviet Union allowed people to go to church, “if you could find one.” The HHS mandate emulates the Soviet experience, George argued, in declaring that only places of worship demonstrate the free exercise of religion protected by the Constitution, and not “schools, religious publications, health care institutions, organized charity, ministry for justice and the works of mercy that flow naturally from a living faith.”
If the Obama administration insisted on enforcing its mandate on Catholic organizations, George concluded, then "two Lents from now” their listing of Catholic hospitals and health-care institutions would be empty.
What would that mean to the U.S., and to Obama's health care reform mandate? Put simply, it would create a disaster for the delivery of health care in the country, and rapidly escalate the public costs of health care.
The Catholic Church has perhaps the most extensive private health-care delivery system in the nation. It operates 12.6 percent of hospitals in the U.S., according to the Catholic Health Association of the U.S., accounting for 15.6 percent of all admissions and 14.5 percent of all hospital expenses, a total for Catholic hospitals in 2010 of $98.6 billion. Whom do these hospitals serve? Catholic hospitals handle more than their share of Medicare (16.6 percent) and Medicaid (13.65) discharges, meaning that more than one in six seniors and disabled patients get attention from these hospitals, and more than one in every eight low-income patients as well. Almost a third (32 percent) of these hospitals are located in rural areas, where patients usually have few other options for care.
Compared to their competition, Catholic hospitals take a leading role in providing less-profitable services to patients. They lead the sector in breast cancer screenings, nutrition programs, trauma, geriatric services, and social work. In most of these areas, other non-profits come close, but hospitals run by state and local governments fall significantly off the pace. Where patients have trouble paying for care, Catholic hospitals cover more of the costs. For instance, Catholic Health Services in Florida provides free care to families below 200 percent of federal poverty line, accepting Medicaid reimbursements as payment in full, and caps costs at 20 percent of household income for families that fall between 200 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty line.
Imagine the impact if these hospitals shut down, discounting the other 400-plus health centers and 1,500 specialized homes that the Catholic Church operates as part of its mission that would also disappear. Thanks to the economic models of these hospitals, no one will rush to buy them. One in six patients in the current system would have to vie for service in the remaining system, which would have to absorb almost $100 billion in costs each year to treat them. Over 120,000 beds would disappear from an already-stressed system.
The poor and working class families that get assistance from Catholic benefactors would end up having to pay more for their care than they do under the current system. Rural patients would have to travel farther for medical care, and services like social work and breast-cancer screenings would fall to the less-efficient government-run institutions.
That would not only impact the poor and working class patients, but would create much longer wait times for everyone else in the system. Finally, over a half-million people employed by Catholic hospitals now would lose their jobs almost overnight, which would have a big impact on the economy as well as on health care.
Some may doubt that the bishops would create this kind of havoc and disruption, and perhaps President Obama believes Cardinal George and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to be bluffing. However, Obama may want to read St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, and his Principle and Foundation of faith, which informs Catholics on the priority of salvation.
The first task of mankind, according to St. Ignatius, is to serve God and “save his soul,” and “other things on the face of the earth” should be used only as long as they serve that purpose. When they become a hindrance to salvation, St. Ignatius warns to “rid himself of them.”
If Obama insists on forcing the Catholic Church to fund and facilitate access to products and services they believe imperil their own souls and those of others, the bishops will simply stop employing people in these religious organizations – and once those doors close, they may never reopen.
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I believe that R Land and others have had their "first they came for the Catholics..." moment.
Well, no doubt there are some "religions" which are delighted with the HHS mandate.
Since he has risked trillions already 100 billion is peanuts.
“There are a lot of evangelical Christians who wouldn’t be happy with a “Catholic church only” exemption in Obamacare, and would continue to get on Obama’s case about it. And that’s just for starters.............”
You are correct. And the RC leaders have acknowledged that the HHS mandate involves all entities with a religious or otherwise conscienscious objection to this policy.
After reading all these responses I echo the concerns - that merely to threaten closing the hospitals, schools, charities, etc may not be enough. In fact it may be exactly what this administration is counting on. Somehow we laity need to get our leaders to comprehend the enormous cponsequence if the real goal is to shut our services down, then a different tactic needs to be considered. I believe a very visible coordinated civil-disobedience effort may be needed. We could start with a massive march on Washington this summer.
NOTHING WOULD BRING THE SERIOUSNESS OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT’S ACTIONS AS MUCH AS THE SIGHT OF BISHOPS, AND MINISTERS BEING HANDCUFFED AND HAULED OFF TO JAIL WHILE THE GOVERNMENT SHUTS DOWN THE HOSPITALS.! I think we should force the issue in order to get the attention off some folks who may be well-meaning, but are just too stupid to comprehend what is going on.
There’s no “risk” whatsoever. It’s a calculated decision. The cost in dollars doesn’t matter, as long as they get what they want.
For leftists, all good MUST come from the government. They will pay lip-service to “religion” as long as it fulfills their leftists goals, but everyone in power know that it’s with a “wink and a nod.”
The “reverends” Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and Emanuel Cleaver are “religious” in that they realize they can use religion to con their constituents into supporting them. As long as they spew the leftist dogma, everything’s hunky-dory. However let a clergy-man utter one conservative thought, and you’re right in the middle of a constitutional crisis, as well as threats of IRS investigations.
Communism will not suffer religion to exist. Marx realized that until they can purge religion from the public’s mind, it can be used as the “opiate of the masses,” as the above mentioned charlatans are so adept at doing.
But the one thing that all forms of totalitarian governments require is a rejection of private charities, since all good must come from the government.
Mark
When you have done 1/1000 of what the bishops have already done in this affair, you might have credibility to bitch around about “the Catholics.”
Throw stones at someone else.
I agree. The Bishops are threatening to surrender the field, and the Administration is saying, “Don’t throw us in that briar patch, Brer Bishop!”
Make them send in troops to force the distribution of abortion pills. Make them shut down hospitals and put the patients on the street. Make them send in troops to close colleges that have the “wrong” insurance plan and don’t pay the fines.
This is WAR. The Church needs to be thinking like Breitbart, controlling the narrative, not letting the Zero administration tell the story.
That sums it up. In the leftist world, the government in the giver of all good things and will not tolerate private charity. But frankly bambi wouldn’t care if the catholic hospitals and schools close down, because it would simply give him another excuse to say there’s not enough to go around and it’s time for the elderly, the handicapped, or anybody who is not a wealthy or academic leftist to get out of the because we just can’t afford them anymore,
Once again these will be the treasures of the Church..
That sums it up. In the leftist world, the government in the giver of all good things and will not tolerate private charity. But frankly bambi wouldn’t care if the catholic hospitals and schools close down, because it would simply give him another excuse to say there’s not enough to go around and it’s time for the elderly, the handicapped, or anybody who is not a wealthy or academic leftist to get out of the because we just can’t afford them anymore,
Once again these will be the treasures of the Church..
What painting is that?
Shutting down Catholic hospitals makes cost control mandates like denial of care euthanasia all the more important to Democratic elites. Shutting down Catholic private schools means many more students are forced into public school.
Actually, the closure of Catholic hospitals, offices and charities will/would dump all those people into government hands, whether that government is muslim or not. The extra money will be absorbed, and the extra people will create demand and lines, long lines and waits that will kill some of them off.
Clever ba$tards, aren’t they.
It would all have to be absorbed by the government and involve the hiring of millions of new unionized government workers. So it is exactly what Obama wants. The insurance issue was just the lever.
You have to watch a few steps ahead on the chessboard at all times with these f-cks.
Glad to see other freepers coming to that conclusion. We can’t be the only ones.
Obama don't care. His jack booted HHS thugs would march in seize the facilities and dragoon the employees into working for the government while blaming faith based organizations. A win-win for Obama and the Democrats.
We have to make the Donkey Party own this.
Personally, I think it is well past time for a General Strike, nation wide.
How about during all of Holy Week. Maybe that would get Marxist Omullah and the Communists attention. Shut it down, nobody works. Barricade the White House and Planned Parenthood and HHS with mobs of God fearing citizens.
Therefore, the Catholic Church needs to act. They need to close one or two hospitals at least, and offer a plan of when the rest wil be closed. I honestly think Obama expects the Catholic Church to just *obey* him. He needs a tangible, real-time wake-up call.
I also have been thinking about the possibility that the scarcity of painkilling drugs (a thread of a few days ago) is to discourage people from going for needed surgery.
I don’t think he give rat you know what if Cathoic hospital closes if that happen
He probably saying WHATEVER
An earlier post was talking about "A Day With No Mexicans"; how about "A Day With No Catholics"?
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