Amish, Ok. Catholics, No. (HHS Mandate)

The Amish are exempt from the entire health care reform law. So are members of Medi-Share, a program of Christian Care Ministry. Yet, when the Catholic Church asks for a religious exemption from just one regulation issued under the law – the mandate that all employers, including religious institutions, must pay for sterilization and contraceptives, including abortion-inducing drugs – the Administration balks.

The government respects the First Amendment that guarantees the right to freely exercise one’s religious beliefs, but only to a point. In the health care law it picks and chooses which beliefs it respects. The Amish do not believe in insurance, and the government understands. Christian Care Ministry believes people should form a religious community and pay medical bills for one another, and the government says okay. Yet when the Catholic Church opposes being forced to pay for services that violate its beliefs, the Administration says “tough.”

What is so special about this mandate that it cannot be touched? It was added after Congress passed the health care law and offers no exemption for religious charitable or educational institutions. It will not accept Catholic charities and schools as “religious enough” unless they hire only Catholics, serve only Catholics, have the narrow tax exempt status granted to houses of worship, and teach religion as their purpose.
Amazingly, this mandate has more force than the overall health care law. In fact recent regulations allow states to decide which “essential health benefits” to require in health plans, such as hospitalization, prescription drugs and pediatric services. At the same time, all insurance plans must include the objectionable services mentioned above. Here federal law trumps state law and threatens to fine into submission institutions that dare oppose it. The going rate is at least $100 per day per employee.

What has the government got against the Catholic Church? Has it forgotten the contributions the church has made to the poor and needy for centuries?

Catholic elementary and secondary schools provide the only real alternative to public schools in many parts of the nation. Catholic colleges offer outstanding education, be it at the university or the community college. The contribution has a long history, back to 1789 when Georgetown University was founded by the Jesuits. Yet under the health care law, if these schools and colleges wish to remain faithful to their religious principles the government will fine them into submission. There’s a thank-you note.

Many Catholic hospitals were founded by religious orders of women, and today one out of six persons seeking hospital care in the United States goes to a Catholic hospital. Until now, religious background of the patient has not been an issue. “Where does it hurt?” is the first question, not “Where is your baptismal certificate?” This approach threatens to deny hospitals any real protection as “religious employers” under the new rule. Yet their Catholicity means many of these hospitals have an added benefit. At Providence Hospital in Washington, DC, for example, patients not only get medical care, they can get clothing too if they need it. It comes through the Ladies of Charity, an auxiliary of the Daughters of Charity who founded the hospital in 1861.
Catholic social service agencies, including adoption and foster care agencies, parish food banks, and soup kitchens, meet human concerns. Services depend on need, not creed. Church sponsorship means the services have a little extra, be they volunteers from parishes, financial donations through diocesan appeals, or the dedication that comes from working for God as well as paycheck.

A Catholic might take personally the Administration’s dissing their beliefs. Lucky the Amish, who have their basic constitutional rights respected. If only we objected to health insurance generally, we might be able to enjoy the same protection. Seems odd that the Administration is more inflexible on contraception than on services that actually treat disease.

The Constitution does not permit the US Government to determine which beliefs are "true" or "adequate" or even "relevant" to any religion.

That's where the cr*p the ObamaKKKare gurus are throwing at the RCs fails.

The traditional way the government deals with any religious group that claims a "benefit" on that basis (just like any other nonprofit) is still in effect at the Postal Service. There the law notices that there is an "organization" ~ one man operations don't count. It must also have a PRIMARY PURPOSE ~ to conduct worship, etc.

Where ObamaKKKare goes off the track is that the traditional law (still embedded in the USC somewhere) recognizes that such an organization may have OTHER PURPOSES. Postal rules state: "Organizations that incidentally engage in qualifying activities do not meet the primary purpose test" ~

The "incidental" rule means, basically, that you can't claim to be an educational institution if that's just incidental to the primary purpose ~ but, if your primary purpose is to be a church (e.g. The Roman Catholic Church's primary purpose is to be The Roman Catholic Church) then you qualify for the beneficial postage rates ~ and you can do other things ~ something churches, mosques, temples, etc. are known for ~ to wit, hospitals, educational programs, and maybe even old folks homes .

What the Obots and Obamistas have done is rule that IF you have a primary purpose you may have no purposes other than the primary purpose. They then pick and chose which of the purposes qualifies, and then they disqualify the others.

I think the Supreme Court will leave the ObamaKKKare standard on the cutting room floor where it shall remain.

Let's crank this down to one Catholic priest and a lay assistant. To start with it's not in the government's authority to send spies around to see if a priest is administering last rites or providing a sick person with an aspirin! The priest is, in and of himself, considered "religious" and you'll find folks using that term. If he hires on a lay assistant to carry the boxes of aspirin for him, that doesn't mean the priest is no longer engaged in his priestly mission, nor that you can require him to pay for practices abhorrent to his own religious beliefs ~ to wit, you cannot make the priest violate his conscience and religious vows by forcing him to hand over money to buy an insurance policy that pays for abortificiants. At no point does the priest ever become other than "religious" ~ so he cannot lose that status due to the incidental tasks carried out to support that mission.

Doesn't matter if you expand the role of this priest to that of a bishop who owns a school and a hospital, both of which he staffs to meet the needs of "the faithful", who also have some religious rights here with respect to the operation of the school and the hospital.

Again, using abortificiants as an example "the faithful" can expect the school and the hospital to be used in a manner acceptable to Catholics. Same goes for a Baptist school or hospital.

The qualification of a Church extends downward to every part and parcel of that church ~ provided it has a primary purpose and is organized to meet that purpose, and does so. The purpose and the acts taken to meet that purpose are NOT LIMITED to a single place.

A Hydra Is Not The Mourning After Pill
OBAMACARE Must Be Destroyed By A Firebrand
by L.J .Keslin www.theusmat.com

Of the three GOP candidates remaining opposing Mitt Romney for the presidency Newt Gingrich , Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum. Only one has had the courage to take on a what they call a third rail issue...Eugenics... and has had his chacter asassinated for it... He’s been characterized as a women hater ,, a religious nut, a one trick pony, .... pummeled from both sides and that is Rick Santorum ,,,,What’s really in Obamacare and

What is Eugenics....? It’s control.... and all that goes with it.
Two groups late in the last century led in Eugenic development. The Nazis and the Communists. Few know or remember how the Nazis began. First citing “health risk” “nicht rauchen” baning cigarette smoking, Then terminating Down Syndrome children, and then on to mentally defective children and adults,. then on to besides murdering opponents, races. All done to make the German Reich healthy and last a thousand years.

Factoid a trillion seconds of time =31,596 years...to pay it off a $1 a second would take that long.. To pay it off at a Billion $$ a second only 995+ years

Eugenics put in common words is this :You surrender your individuality to the group to advance the greater good of the group. If your unhealthy or too old and you can’t work for the greater good of the group any more, you are disposed of in the way the group decides. If there are too many people , the group decides no more babiys, kill them. Now lets take the word”group” and change it for the word “ state”. That is what’s in Obamacare which is deceptively titled “The Affordable Health Care Act”

.So you go to the MSM (Main Stream Media) the so called “gate keepers” for information about these things and you find closed gates . Either it’s not mentioned at all , or downplayed, and given Obamacom talking point excuses for their reason. An example of this is how the sorcerers in the media were allowed to conjure Eugenics which is an integral part of Obama/Romneycare known as the Affordable Health Care Act . magically reduce a 2000 page Hydra , a nine headed venomous snake that must be slain by a firebrand ,and morph it into the mourning after pill and a “womans health care issue.” .
The “gatekeepers” never called it out for what it is ..Obama and his Demo-com HHS department Secretary Selbelius who is a CINO (Catholic In Name Only and should be excommunicated period) .Yet Obamacom tzars who hail from that foreign land, the deep swamp of Acadamica are all preaching the utopian wonders of Eugenics. Why it’s the final solution (remember him ?) population control. Which is part of the Obamacare package. Obamacomms are on record and actually called it population control and recomended Catholic bishops support it. Their statements are out there .But not offered by the so called gate-keepers but by the AM the alternate media, meaning radio talk shows like Limbaugh’s and websites like Britebart’s Government . Places Obama wants to shut down and will once re-elected .

Another issue is its constitutionality imposing a current government position on religious groups. And BTW (by the way) one group has been excluded in the “Affordable Health Care Act” for religious reasons ...the Amish....Again silence from MSM

.Demanding changes of acceptance in what was traditional core cultural values held by religious groups and advancing eugenics meaning infantacide and condeming seniors to soylent green centers certainly does have a place in the political discussion.

Once upon a time there were Democrat voices who would warn when pitfalls of bad legislation appeared. Saddly there are no longer any independent voices in todays Democrat Party. Liberal watch dogs like Proxmire or Moynihan are gone . A liberal would be screaming about the benefits from private job creation projects like an iron mine in Wisconsin for a desperate area in need of jobs or the Keystone pipeline transfering oil from Canada to American refineries and support them. A socialist or communist because of a political agenda,would reject them and they have. In each case the US Senate, and the Wisconsin state (hate the governor) senate dominated by agenda driven democrats killed both projects .They’re not just Democrats but hyphenated Demo-Coms placing their political agenda above the common good.

The Keystone pipeline and iron mine decisions which would have provided employment to thousands and reduced gas prices. Their rejection by the demo-coms should send a signal to the Republican bleeding heart establishment . “Bi-partisanship” doesn’t exist with socialists and to its leading presidential candidate ,Mitt Romney. Mr Romney should start realizing Obama is a “socialist”.. Everyone including the monthly liberal magazine Newsweek knows he is but Mr Romney just can’t seem to get around to saying it .

Where the Santorum campaign failed was to allow the media to describe the issue and reduce it into popping a pill. Furthurmore in Ohio’s case you had some local major market so called “conservative” talk show hosts ridiculing Santorum on this issue not just the drummers (as in venomous snake oil hustlers) on MSM.
Whether Santorum decides to shy away from this issue or re-frame it is up to him and his advisors. But he should be encouraged to re-adjust the focus. One way the Catholic bishops can help is use the mechanisms they have to do so...After all they have shut down parishes which retained the latin mass but can’t speakout and act on this despicable movement ? Particularly when that is being shoved on religious groups by the Demo-Coms . Especially when they’re ignoring constitutional rights...L.J.K.

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