ALL: Bishops Must Choose Between Christ-Centered Care and Obamacare

al Reuters ^ | 9/9/2009

[markomalley]

As Obama prepares to address the nation Wednesday on his health care plan, American Life League challenged the nation's Catholic bishops to be prepared to shut down Catholic health care and make it clear that they prefer this action to compromising with the intrinsic evils currently contained in various Obamacare proposals.

"Obama speaks tonight. Christ speaks always. When it comes to health care reform which road will our Catholic bishops take?" the group asked in a Washington Times ad.

The ad highlighted six principled positions Catholic-supported health care must include: opposition to abortion, contraception, sterilization, human embryonic stem cell therapy, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Judie Brown, president of American Life League, the country's largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization, said the ad addressed a critical question from the nation's lay Catholic faithful: Why are the bishops largely remaining silent in opposition to the deadly provisions contained in Obamacare proposals?

"The president has laid before us a government mandate to subsidize a culture of death and impose it on Catholic health care," Brown said. "We desperately need our bishops to lead the fight against this plan so diametrically opposed to the Faith - yet their silence speaks their approval."

(snip)

"For the American bishops, the choice is simple," Brown said. "Embrace Obamacare and sell the soul of the Church to government bureaucrats and politicians or embrace the Faith and be prepared to shut down Catholic health care rather than participate in intrinsic evil. We ask the bishops to unite behind Christ and His teachings now while there is still time to have a positive effect on the road ahead."

[markomalley]

I like the ALL, but they need to stress that socialized medicine is, in of itself, a grave evil and opposed to the Social Doctrine of the Church...

This is a pro-life issue. But not simply an abortion issue.

[Rutles4Ever]

I think they’re trying to take the shortest distance between two points. i.e., any debate about “socialized medecine” is... dare I say it... aborted by the pro-abortion provisions of the bill. It’s a show-stopper, and one that forces the bishops to come out against its passage regardless of anything else in there.

[all the best]

The Catholics must decide whether they are going to covet their fellow citizens’ wealth. The Bishops have been ptomoying covetousness for years
Thou shall not covet thy neighbors’ goods. Not even to pay for your health care or for that of the needy. Thou shall not covet thy neighbors’ goods PERIOD
What is so hard to understand about that.

[markomalley]

The Catholics must decide whether they are going to covet their fellow citizens’ wealth. The Bishops have been ptomoying covetousness for years Thou shall not covet thy neighbors’ goods. Not even to pay for your health care or for that of the needy. Thou shall not covet thy neighbors’ goods PERIOD What is so hard to understand about that.

Not a thing. For me or anybody who actually endeavors to follow Catholic social doctrine (which, I'm finding is an upsettingly small proportion of Catholics)

Take, for example, this quote from Pope Pius XI:

Just as it is gravely wrong to take from individuals what they can accomplish by their own initiative and industry and give it to the community, so also it is an injustice and at the same time a grave evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organizations can do. For every social activity ought of its very nature to furnish help to the members of the body social, and never destroy and absorb them.

Quadragesimo Anno, paragraph 79

What is so difficult to understand about that?

[Salvation]

I agree with the thesis of the headline, however, I only have a few statements from Bishops who have stepped forward. If anyone has others -- please let me know and I will add them or post their remarks.

ObamaCare and Catholic social teaching [Bishop Neckless]
Some Catholic bishops question gov't health care
Boston’s Roman Catholic Cardinal Says He Confronted Obama about Abortion in Health Care Plan....

Iowa Bishop: Don’t Be Railroaded into the Current...Health Care Proposals
in a message issued by the Diocese of Sioux City (The Church on Universal Healthcare)
Nazi Health Care A Catholic Bishop Speaks Out Against "End of Life Care" (Germany, 1941)
Bishop Nickless: "No Health Care Reform is Better than the Wrong Health Care Reform"
Cardinal Rigali, Abp. Chaput Intensify Warnings Against Obamacare's Abortion Expansion

[NYer]

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[rbmillerjr]

Good stuff by this group.