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| Cardinal O'Connor's response to Clinton admin abortion mandate: |
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"Jail me!" |
In a recent Sunday column in Catholic New World, Cardinal Francis George wrote that only three options will exist for Catholic institutions to avoid shutting down under the Obama administration’s HHS mandate: 1) secularize itself, breaking its connection to the church, her moral and social teachings and the oversight of its ministry by the local bishop, 2) pay exorbitant annual fees to avoid paying for birth control-inclusive insurance policies or 3) “sell the institution to a non-Catholic group or to a local government.”
“The state is making itself into a church,” the Cardinal wrote. (March 6th 2012 Huff Post Chicago, The internet Newspaper: News blogs video Community)
Speaking at the STAND UP FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RALLY in Goshen, NY on March 23, 2012, Tim Chichester, founder of the Catholic Family Association of America, pointed out that a fourth option, the most important and appropriate one, has not been mentioned.
And he had a dire warning for the USCCB.
In his talk, Chichester laid out the real threat to our Catholic institutions in stark terms:
"The strategy behind the abortion / sterilization mandate is to make those institutions indistinguishable from their secular counterparts while loosening the grip of the Constitution. But, you say, what of the threats to close down the hospitals and other vital services? After all, Catholic hospitals make up 13 percent of hospitals and 16 percent of all admissions in the U.S. - won't closure work?
The answer is a strong maybe not. It worked for Cardinal O'Connor in 1994, why not now? The answer is simple. We are dealing with a president who acts like a hard core Marxist ideologue, one for whom lying and deceit are resume enhancers. This is a man who has been recorded advocating for infanticide. A man whose advisers hold that the state owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions.
He and his fellow travelers lied through their teeth to the Bart Stupaks as well as to the American public. What makes him trustworthy now? ... "
"...Let's walk through a possible scenario. Obama strings along the phony negotiations through the election cycle, the purpose being to provide the delusion of possible compromise for those too weak-minded to accept the reality of what he is. He wins the election. The phony 'negotiations' fail. The bishops fall back to the worst case scenario of “I will go to jail and shut down the hospitals” Obama calls their bluff. A slew of hospitals and many of the 400 other health centers and 1,500 specialized homes that the Catholic Church operates, start to close.
The crisis grows, the wailing begins, and, in a few weeks, Obama steps into the breach with previously prepared eminent domain filings, based upon the infamous Kelo decision, and transfers the assets representing over 200 years of Christian ministry to various private and commercial, as well as federal state and local political entities.
To Obama and all Marxists this is right and just. Let me illustrate why. In 1965 a thirty something year old woman in Odessa, in the USSR, gave help to a WW II widow who was all but starving on her miniscule war widows pension. The young lady was reported and brought to the militia station, the local police, and warned not to help the old woman. She protested. They said “We don't care – just don't help her.” A short time later she was hauled into the station house and warned again. The third time she was arrested and charged with a felony crime – slander against the state – and sentenced to 18 months of what was euphemistically called “strict regime”, the hardest of the hard labor camps.
The connection I am making here is two-fold. One is that most people have never understood the reasoning behind the Obama's effort to do away with tax deductions for charitable giving. The ideological component is the same as that used against the woman. The State is the father of us all – how dare you presume so much. The tax change is part of a web of rules and actions designed to make religious charity impossible, and thereby weaken the only real ideological opposition to Marxism.
The other connection is the recognition of the rabid anti-religious nature of these people. Simply put, you cannot negotiate with them because they simply cannot be trusted. Again, keep the name Stupak in your head...."And then, Chichester revealed the only possible response of the leaders of the Church Militant in the face of this unconstitutional attack on our consciences and religious freedoms:
"DefianceTo read the text of Chichester's entire presentation, see the previous post, Courageous Defiance.
How can we act to make the most of this situation. A glance at the city of Nowa Huta, Poland provides insight. Nowa Huta was described by Brian Whitmore of THE BOSTON GLOBE, as the place “...where George Orwell's dark vision of a perfect industrial metropolis was executed with stunning precision. Until, that is, the workers rose up and overthrew Big Brother"In this grimy steel town the workers wanted a church. The communists said no. The Archbishop of Kraków, Karol Wojtyla, persisted and defiantly held Mass on the site for years. Workers replaced every cross removed or destroyed by the State. Eventually the State caved.What is needed now is for our bishops and other religious administrators to publicly defy the mandate and keep the institutions open without compliance. We must not give these Marxists the opportunity to seize the assets of religious and charitable institutions.Our duty, yours and mine, is to assist them, to encourage them by letters and prayers. But our duty extends far beyond this rally in effort and time. We must make ourselves loud enough to be heard. We must be vigorous and persistent in creating prayerful and lively sit-ins in our politicians offices. We need to wheedle , encourage, beg , plead - what-ever it takes - to get our bishops, rabbis, ministers and priests to get motivated to the point of action. We must help them understand that a single pastoral letter to the flock is worthless without the personal courage to lead from the front. We long ago passed from the diplomatic maneuverings of 1938 to the brutal fighting of Stalingrad.What is needed is direct, forceful, definitive and ongoing actions by courageous and defiant religious and lay leaders.We need to tell them we will be standing next to them, saying“I will go to jail with you!”And above all we must pray daily, unceasingly, for the conversion and confounding of those whose word and deed threaten us and our nation with such malice. We have a right and duty to pray for our deliverance from evil."
You can also view his presentation on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9pktpXKB-U