Posted on 01/31/2012 4:59:07 PM PST by The Shrew
Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of LincolnLincoln, Neb., Jan 30, 2012 / 06:14 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Catholics may have to suffer for the integrity of their institutions, Bishop Fabian W. Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Nebraska announced in his response to the Obama administration's contraception mandate.
“We cannot and will not comply with this unjust decree. Like the martyrs of old, we must be prepared to accept suffering which could include heavy fines and imprisonment,” Bishop Bruskewitz wrote in a letter he ordered to be read at every Sunday Mass in his diocese on Jan. 29.
“Our American religious liberty is in grave jeopardy,” he warned, describing the impact of new rules that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has instituted as part of federal health care reform.
Those rules, confirmed as final on Jan. 20, will require most religious employers to cover contraception and sterilization, including some abortion-causing drugs, in new health care plans. Sebelius has given religious groups an extra year to comply, but rejected calls for a broader exemption clause.
“This means that all of our Catholic schools, hospitals, social service agencies, and the like will be forced to participate in evil,” Bishop Bruskewitz explained.
The bishop recalled that the Church “has pleaded with President Obama to rescind this edict, but all pleas have been met with scorn and have fallen on deaf ears.”
He described Secretary Sebelius as a “bitter fallen-away Catholic,” and called her one-year deadline extension for non-exempt religious employers “an act of mockery” – because, he noted, “during that year, they must 'refer' people to the insurance that covers wicked deeds.”
A proposed U.S. Senate bill, the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act,” would amend the health care law to let employers opt out of covering some services. Bishop Bruskewitz urged Catholics to call their elected representatives in support of the bill, and to protest the “outrage” of the contraception mandate.
Meanwhile, he said, the faithful should “pray and do penance that this matter may be resolved.”
The bishop of Lincoln was one of a large number of U.S. Church leaders voicing alarm over the weekend, in letters distributed to parishes and read at Mass regarding the Health and Human Services order.
In the Diocese of Phoenix, Catholics heard a message from Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted, who declared that people of faith would not be “made second-class citizens” and “stripped of their God-given rights.”
In Marquette, Michigan, Bishop Alexander K. Sample said that if the rule takes effect, “we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees and suffer the penalties for doing so.”
New Orleans Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond stressed the need for action in his letter to the faithful over the weekend, as he decried the “unprecedented attack on religious liberty” by which the state was “violating our rights to make choices based on our morals and Church teaching.”
Archbishop Aymond is in Rome for meetings with Vatican officials as well as Pope Benedict XVI, who issued his own warning to the U.S. Church just before Health and Human Services finalized the mandate.
In remarks to bishops of the Mid-Atlantic states on Jan. 19, the Pope said all U.S. Catholics must “realize the grave threats to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres.”
The Bishop's Letter in Total
Office of the Bishop
This letter is to be read at all Masses in the Diocese of Lincoln at which the faithful are present the weekend of January 28-29, 2012. The reading is obligatory and is not to be a substitute for the homily, but is to be read as a part of parish announcements.
+ Fabian W. Bruskewitz, Bishop of Lincoln, January 26, 2012.
To the Clergy, Religious, and Faithful Laity of the Diocese of Lincoln:
Beloved in Christ,
The Catholic Bishops of the United States, led by Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, the President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, are joining together to call the attention of all Catholics in our country to a serious attack upon our faith, upon our consciences, and upon our cherished freedom of religion. I am happy to join my voice and efforts to these Successors of the Apostles and to protest most strongly against a mandate, not even a duly passed law, issued by the Obama Administration that requires all Catholics in the United States to violate their consciences and support abortion, abortion-causing drugs, contraception and sterilization.
As you know, the buying of health insurance by every citizen of the USA is now compulsory by federal law. The same law gives to the Cabinet Secretary of Health and Human Services the authority over all health insurance. The present Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, a bitter fallen-away Catholic, now requires that all insurance, even when issued privately, must carry coverage for evil and grave sin. This means that all of our Catholic schools, hospitals, social service agencies, and the like will be forced to participate in evil. The Catholic Church has pleaded with President Obama to rescind this edict, but all pleas have been met with scorn and have fallen on deaf ears. This mandate is accompanied by new attacks by the federal government on Catholic Relief Services and on the Bishops' work in immigration and refugee settlement services.
Secretary Sebelius, in an act of mockery, said that those who might quality for a conscientious exemption (almost no one), have one year to comply, but during that year they must "refer" people to the insurance that covers wicked deeds. We cannot and will not comply with this unjust decree. Like the martyrs of old, we must be prepared to accept suffering which could include heavy fines and imprisonment. Our American religious liberty is in grave jeopardy.
All Catholic are asked to pray and do penance that this matter may be resolved. All should contact their elected representatives to protest this outrage and to insist on the passage of the "Respect for Conscience" act which is now before Congress.
With my blessing and prayers for all of you and your loved ones, I am
Sincerely yours in Christ Jesus,
The Most Reverend Fabian W. Bruskewitz
Bishop of Lincoln
There you go picking on the Catholics again, St. Therese of Liseiux/Little Flower.
Those are old numbers, I’m not really worried about them. What about the other denominations?
Well, too many use voting as a means of exonerating themselves or excusing themselves from any further political involvement.
Some might argue that the purpose of voting is to keep people from taking other political activity. It channels peoples political inpulses into the voting booth.
Your vote rarely matters. The outcome of elections determined by the person who draws the district lines. Let me draw the map and I will gladly permanently give up my right to vote.
Are we going to vote our ways out of this mess? Check the bulletin the first Sunday of NOV. Rarely is there a reminder of the obligation to vote.
There are exceptions. The conservative Catholics in Mass. campaigned hard for Scott Brown. But they are Mass. Democrats and it is part of their culture to know how to throw a punch.
How little foresight they had about the jackboot that would come along with it!
Churches should be leery of favors from Caesar.
I wish it could even provoke something a tenth as contentious as those OWS hippies’ demonstrations. It would sure as heck be better focused.
Yep, they were granted an exemption from Obamacare... EVERY ONE OF THEM. At least that is what I read.
Maybe this is a big enough civil rights issue that even the unchurched will begin to care. Most Americans who are not outright atheists would probably agree it’s absurd in America to force people of any religion of the civilized world to do things they hold to be evil. If potential draftees could become conscientious objectors on religious grounds, then there shouldn’t even be a question about what “medical procedures” a church might not support on religious grounds, even while not being able to actually stop anybody from carrying them out on their own dime.
Too many churches lay down with dogs, and have gotten up with fleas. While the call to “do penance” (or repent) is not further elucidated in these announcements, surely the clear implication is that activists should be repenting from the role they played in cozying up to Caesar.
Surely you’d think there would be a lawsuit about this. Somewhere. Somehow. This kind of stuff is right down Jay Sekulow’s alley (ACLJ).
The Democratic party prizes totalitarian atheist above all things, and at heart despises all religions including Catholics.
Perhaps because leftist see Goverment as their God, and thus the one and only God is in their eyes some kind of competition for the people’s loyalty’s.
One way or the other I suspect that the Catholic Church will be made to suffer for their defiance in defense of the convictions of their faith. Most likely Democrats will try to rob the Church of its Tax exempt status. That of course will be correctly portrayed as an open attack upon the catholic community as well as the 1st amendment.
Protestants should stand with their catholic brothers in solidarity in this regard. Our Godless Federal leaders are just as inclined to attack our convictions as they are that of the Catholics.
Stand together today or fall separately tomorrow.
“Several Orthodox priests whom I know, including my own Confessor, say that there may well be martyrs in America in the near future.”
Let us hope it does not come to that, let us hope that theses nuts in Washington wise up before they let their ideological madness drive them to commit even greater evils.
I would be even happier to find out that he is opposed to socialism in general, not just the small part of it that requires abortifacients in Catholic hospitals.
I would be ecstatic if that position was shared by the Catholic hierarchy in general.
I reply I could ask, then WHY did sales of guns GO UP last year?
Is it because folks are getting prepared “just in case” ?
Well it is a good start.
What happened when scores of millions of Russian Orthodox told Stalin no?
Barky would love to tee up a bunch of stiffnecked white Catholics for the concentration camps.
He may be working on a new plan, that won't need even that reduced support. Know what I mean?
I saw a clip of Cardinal Dolan’s speech this morning. So glad the are fighting this.
Her actions are not that of a bitter fallen-away Catholic. She is automatically ex-communicated from the Church.
Canon Law and Church Teaching
Canon 1398: “A person who procures a completed abortion incurs a latae sententiae excommunication.”
Canon 751: “Heresy is the obstinate denial or obstinate doubt after the reception of baptism of some truth which is to be believed by divine and Catholic faith; apostasy is the total repudiation of the Christian faith; schism is the refusal of submission to the Supreme Pontiff or of communion with the members of the Church subject to him.”
Canon 1364 §1: “an apostate from the faith, a heretic, or a schismatic incurs a latae sententiae excommunication.”
The phrase “latae sententiae” means a judgment or sentence which is ‘wide’ (latae) or widely applied; it refers to a type of excommunication which is automatic. Such a sentence of excommunication is incurred “by the very commission of the offense,” (CCC 2272) and does not require the future particular judgment of a case by competent authority.
Apostasy, heresy, and schism are all offences which incur a sentence of excommunication automatically. Heresy is the obstinate denial of any truth of the Catholic faith, on a matter of faith or morals, which has been definitively taught by the Magisterium. The Magisterium has repeatedly and definitively taught that abortion is always gravely immoral. (CCC 2270 to 2275)
It is not just moslems...
The Amish do not carry health insurance. The government respects their principles. Christian Scientists want to heal by prayer alone, and the new health-care reform law respects that...
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/social_justice/sj0257.htm
48 percent is insane. This freak show communist usurper needs to be replaced ASAP
Ping to #76.
She bit the apple with this ruling.
I am not sure if Catholics are buying guns.
D’you mean this group of Catholics is extremely passive when it comes to elections in their town, but take an aggressive approach when it comes to “preparedness” and self-defense?
Maybe the Catholics down in Meriden are buying guns, but they are a rowdy bunch of Democrats and swarmed to the polls for Blumenthal.
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