Posted on 11/16/2012 2:51:21 PM PST by NYer
BALTIMORE, November 16, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The head of America’s Catholic bishops’ conference declared Tuesday that the Catholic Church will “not obey” the Obama administration’s HHS mandate, a policy he classified as “immoral.”
The mandate, which takes effect in eight months, forces employers to cover sterilizations, contraception, and abortifacient medications. Although churches themselves are exempt the mandate applies to religiously affiliated institutions such as hospitals, colleges, charities, and social service agencies.
Asked if the Church is prepared to close its hospitals and other agencies, or instead pay the exorbitant fines levied for non-compliance, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York said, “The only thing we’re certainly prepared to do is not give in, not violate our consciences, and not obey what we consider to be something immoral.”
“How we do that and what doors would remain open to us to see if there’s some way consonant with our high moral principles to be able to do it, that’s something we’ve got to start to tackle…and we’re prepared to tackle,” added Dolan, who serves as president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The prelate noted that the Church had taken “a bit of a breather” on the issue before election day because the result “could have changed the playing field.” But in the end, he said, “it didn’t.”
Obama’s Republican challenger Mitt Romney had pledged to overturn the mandate within days of taking office.
“We better get back to work and decide just what we’re going to do,” said Dolan. “No door is closed except the door to capitulation.”
Cardinal Dolan was speaking a day after Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore had pledged that the bishops were prepared for a “long-term” fight for religious freedom in his address as head of the U.S. Bishops’ religious liberty campaign.
Commenting in the wake of Obama’s re-election, Lori said, “In the short- to mid-term … the political landscape is the same, but so also is the resolve to eliminate the HHS mandate and most especially the four-part definition that it contains of what constitutes religious activity such that a church or a church institution could qualify for an exemption.”
That four-part definition “draws lines in our mission where we do not draw them,” he said.
Asked in a follow-up press conference whether the bishops would be willing to shift their position on the mandate, he said, “As it stands certainly we would not be able to live with it.”
“I think as this evolves, as the rule making process gets a little more clear and as we study this and monitor it, as we see how the court cases are proceeding, then our range of options will probably become a little more clear,” he added.
This guy sure looks like a complete jack@ss for inviting Barack Obama to the Al Smith Dinner, doesn’t he?
“In my diocese a guide for Catholic voters was distributed. The advice was to vote for candidates who support minimum wage laws and “social justice.”
...a good example of why I haven’t seen the inside of a US Roman Catholic church in >20 years. Commandeered by liberals since the late 60’s.
I don’t know where you live, but here in our OKC area diocese, we received scads of articles in our Catholic newspaper for months on end and a pamphlet called “A Voter’s Guide for the Serious Catholic” plus repeated references in homilies during mass, all of which were carefully non-partisan but explicitly pro-life. A normal adult practicing Catholic here would have had a very hard tome claiming ignorance of the issues.
I am in San Diego, CA. Maybe you have a stronger bishop.
Gladly, he isn;t.
Save your soul.....get out of that PARISH!!!
I am a Roman Catholic and I am sad to agree with several posts regarding the silence of the Bishops on Obamacare prior to the election, priests more concerned with ‘social justice’ and too many CINO’s with the Church.
There is a civil war brewing within the Church.
They are gentlemen, first and foremost, and they would never endanger their own cushy little lives for a little thing like Church doctrine.
Excellent!! They should simply ignore Obamacare, and continue to offer the insurance they've always offered, and keep the schools and hospitals open. If Obama insists on taking them on, that's his problem.
Um, no, he isn't. His name was put forth by some younger Bishops when it came time to elect a new President of the Bishop's conference, and he was voted in, with WAY more votes than the candidate who was preferred by the more liberal Bishops, who also, thankfully, happen to be the older ones, and the ones who will be replaced sooner.
He’s new but seems very responsible. I hope he finds us responsible, too, or pushes us in that direction as shepherd. You are in what has been recently described at the Diplomad 2.0 blog as a...very different place from Oklahoma. But whether we must struggle with our local parishes or not, we are all united in faith.
Had it not been for some shameful medieval church shenanigans to protest, Martin Luther would have gotten less traction if he had even cared, and who knows what the face of Christianity would look like today. Anyhow, the ideal and real churches look quite different.
That's what I hope will happen. However, I'm afraid too many of the prelates are either in way over their heads, or worse, are so weak as to be effectively complicit in Obama's plan.
With all due respect Cardinal Dolan,
Your flock overwhelmingly is not listening to you. Now I don’t know if it’s because they think that you will never let them close the schools,hospitals etc. They must think that you will compromise and go along to get along.
However, I am keeping an eye on your decision to see if you too will tip your hand and show all of us what a hypocreten looks like.
Get real. The Al Smith Dinner is a fundraiser for Catholic Charities in the NY Diocese. For the Cardinal to ignore it would have been unthinkable.
If it hadn’t been for the medieval church shenanigans, Martin Luther wouldn’t have felt the need to nail his declaration on the door. Of course, if it hadn’t been for some shenanigans several hundred years earlier, we might all be Orthodox!
“And the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
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