Posted on 12/23/2009 7:53:08 PM PST by Brian Kopp DPM
The only real chance of defeating the health care legislation came when the bill was lacking a majority of votes for passage in the House.
A lot is being said and written about why national health care legislation is becoming a reality. The simple fact, available for all to see, is that the U.S. Catholic Bishops ensured passage of the bill in the House, enabling the Senate to move forward with its version.
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They got in bed with pigs. Probably can’t figure out how they got covered in sh*t.
The USCCB is rotten and Dem to the core, but I think the problem was primarily that they went for one objection (abortion) that they were sure they could get all the bishops to sign onto and backed away from dealing with all the other important issues where there may have been more dissent.
This left it wide open for the House to simply approve something that would meet the bishops’ very minimal demands and then move ahead with the rest of it.
More than anything else, the bishops are cowards, or at any rate, those acting in the context of the USCCB. There were many individual bishops who were excellent, but unfortunately, the institutional presence of the USCCB makes it the focus of the media and the individual bishops are ignored.
It’s what I’ve been saying for years now. You can’t change the politics until you change the culture.
If one believes that healthcare is a right and no one has challenged that belief what do you expect? Of course, the Bishops are going to promote it because they don’t know the other side.
Meanwhile, the conservatives are outfunded by the liberals. You put the two together and it equals conservative thought and ideas are going to be considered outdated, outmoded and out of touch.
The sad part is that most Americans are conservative.
Also this: "For three quarters of a century, the Catholic bishops of the United States have called for national action to assure decent health care for all Americans."
The only real chance of defeating the health care legislation came when the bill was lacking a majority of votes for passage in the House. That's when the first deal was made. This was the deal that made all other deals possible. Acting at the behest of Catholic Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the Catholic Bishops, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to a vote on the pro-life amendment introduced by Rep. Bart Stupak. It passed and then the bill itself was approved.
But why did Republicans vote for the Stupak amendment if they opposed the basic premise of the bill? House Republican Leader Rep. John Boehner got his marching orders as well. He was told by Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, that the Republicans shouldn't scuttle the Stupak amendment.
The Senate then proceeded to pass its own version of the legislation, without the Stupak language. Predictably, Stupak is complaining about that. But he-and the Democrats and Republicans who voted for his amendment-only have themselves to blame. At least five lobbyists for the Bishops worked with Pelosi and Stupak on the deal that is now also predictably falling apart. Clearly, the pro-life deal was a ploy designed to keep the legislation alive.
The USCCB is guilty of gross malfeasance in pushing socialized medicine in the context of the current Democrat controlled WH, House, and Senate.
When the current health care reform precipitates hundreds of thousands of cases of passive euthanasia every year (there are already 1.5 million hospice and palliative care patients yearly, and less than a third of them are terminal cancer patients) will the bishops take responsibility for their role in facilitating these deaths?
The USCCB is still dominated by compromise, when so many bishops get together.
But another problem is the lay staff. I think they are almost all leftist dissidents. The USCCB won’t really straighten out until they broom out all those dissenters in their chanceries and in the central organization.
Unfortunately they don’t seem to have the guts to take such a step. No, it’s not nice to fire a bunch of people in a lousy job market. But it’s worse to keep a lot of aging heretics in place, constantly undermining the Church.
Which should have the priority, the jobs of dissident staff or the souls of their flock?
As we saw in the House, when the bill was in trouble, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi agreed to a demand from Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, who was in Rome, to hold a vote on an anti-abortion amendment introduced by Rep. Bart Stupak, a Catholic pro-life Democrat. At the same time, Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), told House Republican Leader John Boehner, a faithful Catholic, not to undermine the amendment. Boehner complied. As a result, the amendment passed, 240-194, with 64 Democrats and 176 Republicans in favor. This provided conservative Democrats enough cover to ignore the other objectionable aspects and vote for the final bill.
Washington Times religion reporter Julia Duin confirmed all of this, but noted in a story filed from the recent USCCB meeting in Baltimore that "Cardinal McCarrick walked away when I approached him about his call from the Vatican..."
Pelosi and many "progressives" acquiesced in the anti-abortion ploy, realizing that the provision could eventually be nullified through subsequent legislation.
Nevertheless, the Bishops are pursuing the same strategy in the Senate. Their chosen vehicle for anti-abortion language in this version of the bill appears to be Democratic Senator Robert Casey, a so-called "conservative" and "pro-life" Catholic Democrat from Pennsylvania. Casey says, however, that if his effort to water down the pro-abortion tone of the legislation fails, he may still vote for the bill.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of general interest.
They are. There are also a lot of nuns who work for the USCCB who are outright raving Marxists (well, when they can take time off from campaigning for womyn priests).
As a practicing Catholic I feel there’s a large degree of truth to this- of course they took the rats at their word and are now paying a price...
there is still recourse- I remember the US Catholic Bishops threatening to shut down all the hospitals run by Catholics (I believe like 17% in the country) if the health care bill funds abortion....
This is a low blow, assuming to know the minds of the Bishops, ascribing ulterior motives even clairvoyant abilities, as if they could possibly have foretold all the votes, amendments, twists and turns this legislation took after Stupak.
The Bishops did the only thing they could, namely to help ensure no abortion funding via the only vehicle available, Stupak. The church is not an anti-government entity, and life is the most serious moral question of public policy it’s charged with addressing.
Its activism has to hold life as the highest priority, and it’s not reasonable to expect Stupak and other supposedly pro-life Dems to buck party politics to uphold pro-life principles, then expect the church to abandon principle and embrace politics.
Wow.
When a local Catholic woman went into the parking lot at the USCCB and took pictures of bumper after bumper sporting Kerry stickers, the bishops took bold action to fix the problem: They instructed the security guards to keep people with cameras out of the parking lot.
Catholic Bishops should also be thanked for any taxpayer funded abortions in the modern bill. Catholic Bishops have been running interference for Democrats at least since I was a student at a Catholic Seminary 40+ years ago.
I have always been convinced that Catholic bishops opposed abortion (wink, wink) when they have supported Democrats every way possible. I'd say they are getting what they have always wanted.
Kincaid is absolutely dead on.
How many Catholics have paid any attention to the fact that “the bishops” have been calling for national socialism for 75 years? How many thought the silly positions taken by “the bishops” would ever have any effect in the real world?
Well, they do.
More Catholics need to start screaming bloody murder about the National Socialists in the USCCB. “The bishops” have been the LAST to do anything pro-life. The pro-life movement is the biggest, most energetic movement for ACTUAL Christian social values in the history of the Church—and it has been, since the mid-sixties until today, almost 100% a LAY MOVEMENT. You could count on the fingers of one hand the bishops AND priests who have ever contributed an original thought or strategy to the movement. The vast majority of bishops AND priests have been obstructionists, lallygaggers, and turncoats—from pro-abortion Bernardin to pro-abortion McCarrick, on down through the ranks.
but I think the problem was primarily...
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It is primarily due to breaking the First Commandment to worship God.
Far too many leaders in the Catholic Church and among its members worship Karl Marx instead of God.
Good post........
“As if” they could have predicted???
Every major talk show host predicted it. Rush, Levin, Beck—all of them said that the bishops were being naive and shortsighted, like babes in the woods, in dealing with Pelosi.
Innumerable posters here on FR and elsewhere said that the “anti-abortion” language would be yanked as soon as “the bishops’” help was no longer needed to gain a few votes.
So, the bishops COULD HAVE predicted what would happen—IF they had listened to ACTUAL PRO-LIFERS rather than Pelosi and other “Catholics” on Capitol Hill.
“The Bishops”—i.e., the USCCB, is NOT PRO-LIFE. It is a tool of the Democratic Party. Its words and actions have nothing to do with Catholicism.
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