Posted on 03/07/2012 3:55:37 AM PST by markomalley
“We did not ask for this fight, but we will not run from it.”
Thus, Card. Dolan about the latest insult tossed our way by the Obama Administration.
From LifeSite:
Cardinal: Obama Admin Lectured Bishops on Catholic Teaching
by Steven ErteltCardinal Timothy Dolan, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops, has released a public letter today detailing a stunning conversation he and other bishops had with top White House officials about the controversial Obama mandate.
In the letter, Cardinal Dolan relates a shocking meeting in which top Obama Administration asked to meet with the bishops to “work out the wrinkles” of the mandate. After accepting the invitation and arriving at the White House, the bishops asked whether any ability to broaden the very narrow religious exemptions in the mandate were off the table.
“The invited us to ‘work out the wrinkles.’ We have accepted that invitation,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, this seems to be stalled: the White House Press Secretary, for instance, informed the nation that the mandates are a fait accompli (and, embarrassingly for him, commented that we bishops have always opposed Health Care anyway, a charge that is scurrilous and insulting, not to mention flat out wrong.”)
Dolan writes: “At a recent meeting between staff of the bishops’ conference and the White House staff, our staff members asked directly whether the broader concerns of religious freedom—that is, revisiting the straight-jacketing mandates, or broadening the maligned exemption—are all off the table. They were informed that they are. So much for “working out the wrinkles.” [Get this...] Instead, they advised the bishops’ conference that we should listen to the “enlightened” voices of accommodation, such as the recent, hardly surprising yet terribly unfortunate editorial in America.” [The editorial in the Jesuit-run America which I looked at HERE. In other words, The Magisterium of Nuns.]
He said, “The White House seems to think we bishops simply do not know or understand Catholic teaching and so, taking a cue from its own definition of religious freedom, now has nominated its own handpicked official Catholic teachers [Isn't this what I have been talking about? Is it time for the American Patriotic Catholic Association? "But Father! But Father!", some of you are saying. "This isn't China; this is America!]
“We have made it clear in no uncertain terms to the government that we are not at peace with its invasive attempt to curtail the religious freedom we cherish as Catholics and Americans,” the archbishop of New York wrote in a public letter to the Catholic bishops last Friday. “We did not ask for this fight, but we will not run from it.”
The Catholic bishops’ president made it appear the mandate is not going to be changed in any way to protect religious freedom.
Dolan said, “The White House already notified Congress that the dreaded mandates are now published in the Federal Registry ‘without change.’ He added that “The Secretary of HHS is widely quoted as saying, ‘Religious insurance companies don’t really design the plans they sell based on their own religious tenets.’ That doesn’t bode well for their getting a truly acceptable “accommodation.”
Cardinal Dolan also said “We will continue to accept invitations to meet with and to voice our concerns to anyone of any party, for this is hardly partisan, who is willing to correct the infringements on religious freedom that we are now under. But as we do so, we cannot rely on off the record promises of fixes without deadlines and without assurances of proposals that will concretely address the concerns in a manner that does not conflict with our principles and teaching.”
He added that “Congress might provide more hope, since thoughtful elected officials [catholic HHS Sec. Sebelius, who cannot receive Holy Communion, is not an elected official. ] have proposed legislation to protect what should be so obvious: religious freedom. Meanwhile, in our recent debate in the senate, our opponents sought to obscure what is really a religious freedom issue by maintaining that abortion inducing drugs and the like are a ‘woman’s health issue.’ We will not let this deception stand. Our commitment to seeking legislative remedies remains strong. And it is about remedies to the assault on religious freedom. Period.”
“Perhaps the courts offer the most light,” he said about the many lawsuits that have been filed against the mandate. [And remember the 9-0 SCOTUS Hosanna-Tabor decision.]
Dolan warned the bishops that “given this climate, we have to prepare for tough times. Some, like America magazine, [In case the editors wondered if their betrayal of the bishops would go unnoticed.] want us to cave-in and stop fighting, saying this is simply a policy issue; some want us to close everything down rather than comply (in an excellent article, Cardinal Francis George wrote that the administration apparently wants us to ‘give up for Lent’ our schools, hospitals, and charitable ministries); some, like Bishop Robert Lynch wisely noted, wonder whether we might have to engage in civil disobedience and risk steep fines; some worry that we’ll have to face a decision between two ethically repugnant choices: subsidizing immoral services or no longer offering insurance coverage, a road none of us wants to travel.” [It sounds as if closing down is on the table.]
Cardinal Dolan added that “we know so very well that religious freedom is our heritage, our legacy and our firm belief, both as loyal Catholics and Americans. There have been many threats to religious freedom over the decades and years, but these often came from without. This one sadly comes from within. As our ancestors did with previous threats, we will tirelessly defend the timeless and enduring truth of religious freedom.”
Card. Dolan’s letter to the bishops of the USCCB. HERE
The bishops still refuse to admit that, ironically, they have created this problem themselves. Until they PUBLICLY exert their authority and declare that these people are not legitimate teachers in the Church, silence them, and PUBLICLY excommunicate them until they repent, there is absolutely nothing to keep Obama or anybody else from claiming that the dissidents are legitimate representatives of the Catholic Church and its teachings.
Obama is simply skipping over the bishops because he sees that they have virtually no real authority in the Church, something that is entirely their own fault for having failed for so many years to exercise it. And his gamble is paying off.
It would be very easy for Obama to set up his own version of the Catholic Church, the "American Catholic Church," or some such thing, and I have thought all along that this was really his objective. The new improved American Catholic Church will get to keep all the property, of course, and will still continue running the schools and hospitals...for the US government.
The Catholic Church dealt with the Medicis hundreds of years ago and the White House pimp thinks that he knows better than the RED HAT.
The pimp is as stupid as he is arrogant. Hard to believe that so many Catholics voted for him. I didn't.
But, truth be known, I seriously doubt that I will vote for Bishop Romney, god-to-be of a distant planet. The absurdity of THAT particular belief is as unbelievable as the arrogance and stupidity of the Commander-in-Thief-of religious freedom.
I googled Catholic Hospitals in Chicago and there are dozens of them along with assisted living homes and other services.
They handle millions of patients a year, many with reduced or no payments and if they were to shut down, there would be real, not imaginary, health care crisis in Chicago.
It is the same in any major city as most of the original big city hospitals were Catholic {or Christian} hospitals.
The mooselimb hospital services are hard to find.
The Catholic Nuns are the reason that there are so many Catholic hospitals.
A hundred and fifty years ago, thousands of Nun/Nurses were the core for running inexpensive health care facilities.
Think about Nun/teachers/nurses and you begin to see why obama has really stepped on his crank with this religious intrusion.
obama was OK until the Bishops turned their guns on him, he now has a fight he didn't need and can't win, because he had the Catholic vote in '08, and now he's going to have to fight to break even.
That picture turns my stomach.
Let us pray that Cardinal Dolan will stay strong.He has an army of Catholics and non-Catholics at his side.
They (CC) just need to tell that socialist race pimp to put his head up his split and stay out of their business.
Challenge this fool head on, in public, expose him for all the rest of the world to see.
We need to out this kenyan communist illegal alien usurper neo-jihadi in November from office period.
A B O !!!
yes, until then...keep the responses to the kenyan marxist short, truthful and concise.
I think the next step should be a very large civil disobedience, the last step before open civil war against the federal government.
Civil disobedience - the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government - was coined by Henry David Thoreau in his book ‘Civil Disobedience (Resistance to Civil Government)’ in 1849.
Thoreau compared the government to a machine: when the machine was producing injustice, it was the duty of conscientious citizens to be “a counter friction” (i.e. resistance) “to stop the machine.”
Thoreau asserts that because governments are typically more harmful than helpful, they therefore cannot be justified. Democracy is no cure for this, as majorities simply by virtue of being majorities do not also gain the virtues of wisdom and justice. The judgment of an individual’s conscience is not necessarily inferior to the decisions of a political body or majority, and so “it is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to do at any time what I think right... Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice.”
I refuse to obey an unjust law, I refuse to buy insurance, I refuse to pay the fine for not buying it. If all the religious institutions REFUSE to obey to Obama’s diktats, what he can do? Send the Army to coerce the Cardinals? Throw them in prison?
That group of heretics already exists.
I have said the same thing for years. Now, their are many posters on FR that have attacked me for it, but there will be an open schism in the US Catholic churches soon.
THat’s true. Didn’t one of the “women’s ordination” events happen with clergy from the American Catholic Church? Maybe they can merge...
The problem is that not all the churches would do it, and there will even be a substantial number of “Catholics” (with whom Obama is already negotiating) who will be perfectly happy to go along with Obama. This would mean, essentially, a schism.
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