Posted on 03/04/2012 11:40:34 AM PST by cleghornboy
In an editorial entitled, "Stop the erosion of religious liberty," The Catholic Free Press, official newspaper of the Diocese of Worcester, Massachusetts, laments that, "The Obama administration has embarked on a systematic effort to erode religious liberty to the point of non-existenceby attempting to restrict it solely to freedom of worship. Through administrative policies and mandates, religious liberty and freedom of conscience in the United States is under attack, as witnessed by the most recent 'accommodation.'..The Obama administration has been chipping away at the right of religious institutions to abide by their beliefs when those beliefs oppose the secularist agenda, particularly in the arena of morality. This was clearly evident in the decision not to renew a federal grant by the Department of Health and Human Services to the bishops' Migration and Refugee Services for its human trafficking program because it would not provide the full range of reproductive services, including abortion and contraception, to human trafficking victims and unaccompanied refugee minors...President Obama made the decision to impose the Department of Health and Human Services' Interim Final Rules on Preventive Services, requiring all private health plans, including those of Catholic hospitals, charities and schools, to provide coverage of prescription contraceptives, including abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization for women. The so-called "religious employer" exemption that was put forth with these rules is so narrowly defined that it is meaningless. Unless a religious institution employs and serves only individuals of the same religious tradition, it does not qualify for the exemption. Therefore, Catholic hospitals and schools who serve people of all faiths, precisely because of their Catholic mission, do not qualify for the exemption. The recent 'accommodation' offered in response to the outcry that resulted from this mandate, which was unquestionably a direct assault on the Roman Catholic Church's religious liberty, does not lessen the concerns initially raised...We cannot lose sight of the fact that the 'accommodation' does not alter the Obama administration's mandate promoting contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs as a matter of government policy. It is particularly troubling that the attitude toward human life identifies pregnancy as a disease, posing a threat to one's health.."
How did we get to where we are in the United States? In the words of Archbishop Charles Chaput, spoken in 2009, "40 years of American Catholic complacency and poor formation are bearing exactly the fruit we should have expected...We can't talk about following St. Paul and converting our culture until we sober up and get honest about what we've allowed ourselves to become. We need to stop lying to each other..."
Once a people appeal to conscience in order to condone sin, it is only a matter of time before such sin is openly mandated. Long before contraception was being mandated by the government, there were those in the Church - including throughout the Diocese of Worcester - who were unleashing the leaven of infidelity by neglecting to preach against sin or by appealing to a dissenting notion of the primacy of conscience.
Richard Blanchard was documenting this infidelity (within the Worcester Diocese) at the same time I was writing against it in the pages of The Catholic Free Press more than twenty years ago. For example, in his newsletter "Just The Facts," No. 6, (1993), Richard noted how a Couple-to-Couple team was teaching CCD students preparing for Confirmation in Leominster, Massachusetts (St. Leo's Parish) that, "If your conscience convinces you that birth control is right, even if the Church says its wrong, you can practice birth control and not be sinning." And then Richard explains: "This has been taught for over 20 years and still is being taught in this diocese [Worcester]. The basis for this teaching is dissent and a dissenting concept of the primacy of conscience which is nothing less than situation ethics."
In the same newsletter, Richard Blanchard noted that, "During the episcopate of Timothy J. Harrington...dissent and disobedience has flourished and taken deep roots....in September of 1984 Sister Anna Kane was appointed Vicar of Religious and Director of the then Office of Women, at the same time she became a member of Bishop Harrington's administrative cabinet. She became very militant against Humanae Vitae. Under the administration of Fr. Piermarini, (now Msgr), the religious education department employed Dr. Vincent Forde, Bernard Cooke and Alice Laffey as instructors of the Education in Ministry Program, also known as the Master Catechist Program which has for its goal, master certification for CCD teaching. All [of these instructors] openly strong advocates against the teaching on birth control in Humanae Vitae."
Within the pages of The Catholic Free Press, Humanae Vitae was openly mocked. For example, in his "Essay in Theology" column entitled "Humanae Vitae; a troubling silence (CFP, August 13, 1993), dissident priest Father Richard P. McBrien referred to the Church as "a dysfunctional family" because it will not change its teaching on the sinfullness of artificial contraception to appease those who just cannot or will not accept it.
As a result of 40 years of poor catechesis - or none at all - and outright complacency throughout the Catholic Church in America, too many people today (including sadly, many Catholics) have come to view conscience as a sort of fortress built so as to shelter them from the exacting demands of truth. In the words of Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, "In the Psalms we meet from time to time the prayer that God should free man from his hidden sins. The Psalmist sees as his greatest danger the fact that he no longer recognizes them as sins and thus falls into them in apparently good conscience. Not being able to have a guilty conscience is a sickness...And thus one cannot aprove the maxim that everyone may always do what his conscience allows him to do: In that case the person without a conscience would be permitted to do anything. In truth it is his fault that his conscience is so broken that he no longer sees what he as a man should see. In other words, included in the concept of conscience is an obligation, namely, the obligation to care for it, to form it and educate it. Conscience has a right to respect and obedience in the measure in which the person himself respects it and gives it the care which its dignity deserves. The right of conscience is the obligation of the formation of conscience. Just as we try to develop our use of language and we try to rule our use of rules, so must we also seek the true measure of conscience so that finally the inner word of conscience can arrive at its validity.
For us this means that the Church's magisterium bears the responsibility for correct formation. It makes an appeal, one can say, to the inner vibrations its word causes in the process of the maturing of conscience. It is thus an oversimplification to put a statement of the magisterium in opposition to conscience. In such a case I must ask myself much more. What is it in me that contradicts this word of the magisterium? Is it perhaps only my comfort? My obstinacy? Or is it an estrangement through some way of life that allows me something which the magisterium forbids and that appears to me to be better motivated or more suitable simply because society considers it reasonable? It is only in the context of this kind of struggle that the conscience can be trained, and the magisterium has the right to expect that the conscience will be open to it in a manner befitting the seriousness of the matter. If I believe that the Church has its origins in the Lord, then the teaching office in the Church has a right to expect that it, as it authentically develops, will be accepted as a priority factor in the formation of conscience." (Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Keynote Address of the Fourth Bishops' Workshop of the National Catholic Bioethics Center, on "Moral Theology Today: Certitudes and Doubts," February 1984).
In the same address, Cardinal Ratzinger explains that, "Conscience is understood by many as a sort of deification of subjectivity, a rock of bronze on which even the magisterium is shattered....Conscience appears finally as subjectivity raised to the ultimate standard."
And subjectivity raised to the ultimate standard gives rise to dictatorship. For, as Pope John Paul II reminded us in Centesimus Annus, "Authentic democracy is possible only in a State ruled by law, and on the basis of a correct conception of the human person. It requires that the necessary conditions be present for the advancement both of the individual through education and formation in true ideals, and of the 'subjectivity' of society through the creation of structures of participation and shared responsibility. Nowadays there is a tendency to claim that agnosticism and sceptical relativism are the philosophy and the basic attitude which correspond to democratic forms of political life. Those who are convinced that they know the truth and firmly adhere to it are considered unreliable from a democratic point of view, since they do not accept that truth is determined by the majority, or that it is subject to variation according to different political trends. It must be observed in this regard that if there is no ultimate truth to guide and direct political activity, then ideas and convictions can easily be manipulated for reasons of power. As history demonstrates, a democracy without values easily turns into open or thinly disguised totalitarianism."
Why should those who produce The Catholic Free Press be surprised that government is now mandating contraception? The Church in the United States is only reaping what it has sown.
Newt just ate David Gregory’s lunch on this subject on Meet The Press. These idiots just keep serving up the homerun pitch to Newt.
Beautiful Georgia Girl 2. Thanks for the heads up!
The Catholic bishops have played ball with the Left for many, many years. Now it’s their turn...and they are looking around saying “what just happened”?
Fools.
The Catholic bishops have played ball with the Left for many, many years. Now it’s their turn...and they are looking around saying “what just happened”?
Fools.
Just because someone is poor? That's the gateway Fluke is advocating - that since some people can't afford it Uncle Sam has to step in and provide it for everyone. Why?
By providing (or mandating that ALL businesses provide) Abortion services, the gov't is promoting a lifestyle - one that says you can have sex without consequences. I don't agree with that, why should I be forced to subsidize it? I never knew there was a Constitutional right to be a slut.
It's a free (!) country and casual sex isn't illegal. Neither is drinking (in most cases), but I don't hear anyone claiming they deserve free booze from the US taxpayer. What makes women's "needs" so special?
Obama and the Democrats are not only Forcing Abortion upon the majority of pregnant women in America, they are now Enacting a Policy of Forced Steralization on all but a select few Democratically Desirable American women.
It was thrilling to watch Newt’s “cat ate the mouse smile” after Gregory’s desperate attempt to lure him into the gotcha question. It was priceless.
As far as the Church has failed to keep their case on human sexuality front and center, this has been a long time battle. Here is a example (note the date it was written) of the Church’s stand on the whole issue (thanks to our FRiend narses):
Since, in order that the deceits of the enemy may be avoided, it is necessary first of all that they be laid bare; since much is to be gained by denouncing these fallacies for the sake of the unwary, even though We prefer not to name these iniquities “as becometh saints,” yet for the welfare of souls We cannot remain altogether silent.
To begin at the very source of these evils, their basic principle lies in this, that matrimony is repeatedly declared to be not instituted by the Author of nature nor raised by Christ the Lord to the dignity of a true sacrament, but invented by man. Some confidently assert that they have found no evidence of the existence of matrimony in nature or in her laws, but regard it merely as the means of producing life and of gratifying in one way or another a vehement impulse; on the other hand, others recognize that certain beginnings or, as it were, seeds of true wedlock are found in the nature of man since, unless men were bound together by some form of permanent tie, the dignity of husband and wife or the natural end of propagating and rearing the offspring would not receive satisfactory provision. At the same time they maintain that in all beyond this germinal idea matrimony, through various concurrent causes, is invented solely by the mind of man, established solely by his will.
How grievously all these err and how shamelessly they leave the ways of honesty is already evident from what we have set forth here regarding the origin and nature of wedlock, its purposes and the good inherent in it. The evil of this teaching is plainly seen from the consequences which its advocates deduce from it, namely, that the laws, institutions and customs by which wedlock is governed, since they take their origin solely from the will of man, are subject entirely to him, hence can and must be founded, changed and abrogated according to human caprice and the shifting circumstances of human affairs; that the generative power which is grounded in nature itself is more sacred and has wider range than matrimony - hence it may be exercised both outside as well as within the confines of wedlock, and though the purpose of matrimony be set aside, as though to suggest that the license of a base fornicating woman should enjoy the same rights as the chaste motherhood of a lawfully wedded wife.
Armed with these principles, some men go so far as to concoct new species of unions, suited, as they say, to the present temper of men and the times, which various new forms of matrimony they presume to label “temporary,” “experimental,” and “companionate.” These offer all the indulgence of matrimony and its rights without, however, the indissoluble bond, and without offspring, unless later the parties alter their cohabitation into a matrimony in the full sense of the law.
Indeed there are some who desire and insist that these practices be legitimatized by the law or, at least, excused by their general acceptance among the people. They do not seem even to suspect that these proposals partake of nothing of the modern “culture” in which they glory so much, but are simply hateful abominations which beyond all question reduce our truly cultured nations to the barbarous standards of savage peoples.
Pius XI
Casti connubii
1930
good to hear from a New Englander. It remains to be seen how many react to these events by repenting and how many react by conforming.
I was out-of-town yesterday visiting a parish, and the Monsignor told us to stand down, that it is not a big deal and “everything will be worked out wonderfully.” We’ve been reduced to a situation where the only pastoral leadership in Conn is coming from Linda McMahon.
Get me out of here. Which NH county are you in, if I can ask?
The Catholic Church was once a powerful force for anti-Communism...
But the clergy have been cozzying up to the Left for many years...
Now, they shouldn’t be surprised when the crocodile decides it’s their turn to be eaten...
The Catholic Church was once a powerful force for anti-Communism...
But the clergy have been cozzying up to the Left for many years...
Now, they shouldn’t be surprised when the crocodile decides it’s their turn to be eaten...
Oh, my is that ever sadly true. Catholics, especially those in the upper middle and upper classes have tried for years to be 'sophisticated', like their Protestant peers, and ditched anything in their faith that smacked to them of rules designed to limit their enjoyment of life, especially the rules regarding sexual morality. They were considered gauche, so they were ignored. As a result, successive generations are not even being taught what the Church teaches on sexual morality, so the attitudes and actions of most of them are no different from any of their non-Catholic peers. This is why we are where we are today regarding the politics of contraception, and especially the HHS mandate to religious institutions.
I’m in Mason, New Hampshire - birthplace of Uncle Sam. And I hear you campaignPete. The situation here in New England is really dire. Check out the statistics I site at La Salette Journey in my last post dealing with Father Robert Bruso from Fitchburg, Mass. The Church is in a state of utter collapse here.
Feel free to leave comments at the Blog or drop me a line at: cleghornboy@juno.com
God bless! Keep the Faith!
I’m glad these issues are being addressed. Still I may be a little biased in thinking that the extent of bending to modern culture, in the Catholic church never went as far as other churches such as allowing gay priests, marriages etc. We would be just as lost as other churches if it weren’t for our God given papacy and the Catechism of the church. God knew what He was doing by giving imperfect Peter the keys making him the first pope, and He knows what He is doing now.
Well said! well said. The fruit of Gramscian thought as well. Now we must pay the piper.
“God knew what He was doing ... and He knows what He is doing now.”
I am not a theologian, but some would say that God does not know, God IS knowledge. And as far as “now” goes, some say that God is eternally existent and that means God is timeless ... categories of past, present, and future just do not apply when we are talking about God.
The scandal of Judas (I’ve also heard the phrase “the mystery of Judas”): some leave the Church because they are not humble enough and refuse to belong to a Church that refrains from expelling the Judases. Yep, it is a Judas issue, not a Peter issue.
I campaigned for Newt many days in Milford for the primary. I met Santorum at the Hollis pharmacy Sunday before primary and then saw him at noon Mass at St. John’s in South Merrimack on primary day.
On that TUES afternoon, I drove from Hollis to Jaffrey polling place and drove the back road through Mason and Greenville. Greenville looked like a right-wing hotbed. I guess Ron Paul had the support there.
I was staying overnight at the Benedictine Abbey in Harvard, MA. Ever been?
one more comment:
No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the LORD, and their righteousness is of me, said the LORD
Isaiah 54
Many times Pete. They know me at St. Benedict Abbey. A beautiful Abbey. And you’re right about Greenville. It really is beautiful country up here. Did you make it to Parker’s Maple Barn? If not, you have to visit some day. Best country breakfast anywhere. In scenic Mason, NH.
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