Posted on 02/10/2012 4:07:25 PM PST by Mrs. Don-o
When ...the Obama administration finally announced its decision to require religiously affiliated [organizations] to cover birth control in their insurance plans, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops were fully prepared for battle.
Seven months earlier, they had started laying the groundwork for a major new campaign ... But the birth control mandate, issued on Jan. 20, was their Pearl Harbor.
Hours after President Obama phoned to share his decision with Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York ...the USCCB posted on its Web site a video of Archbishop Dolan, which had been recorded the day before. “Never before,” Archbishop Dolan said, setting the tone, “has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience .”
But Catholics may be persuaded by the argument that the mandate is a violation of religious liberty. [S]everal prominent Catholic Democrats who supported Mr. Obama in 2008... have broken with him on the birth control mandate.
Michael Sean Winters, a writer for National Catholic Reporter, a liberal independent weekly, said: “I think they misjudged that no matter what people think about contraception, that’s an internal Catholic debate. Catholics do not like interlopers.”
Douglas W. Kmiec, who served as ambassador to Malta under Mr. Obama and is now a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University, said he was disappointed that such a divisive course was chosen by a president who urged respect for others’ religious traditions. “For people attracted to him for those reasons, who applaud the very passage of the health care law, we are just sort of baffled by this,” Mr. Kmiec said. “Especially when the train wreck was foreseen, and we kept saying, ‘Not this track, not this track.’ And here came the train and ran us all over.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
even CINOs are seeing the two-faced liar that he is. Obama OUT.
The public policy arm of the United Methodist Church, which like the Catholic Church, runs hospitals and universities across the country, has applauded the mandate to cover contraception?
this is a violation not of just Catholics’ liberty or even just of religious liberty, but forcing people to pay for what they don’t want to — since when is a contraceptive something for “health”?
That doesn't mean there are no Christians in the UMC, but it does mean that their hierarchy is ultimately more corrupt than most.
There are several reasons this happened: Retirement Funds, Homosexuals, Abortionists. Property and casualty liability may well be part of the problem too.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/returntorome/2012/02/return-to-rome-special-posting-catholic-bishops-only-internal-briefing-on-the-hhs-regulations-compromise/ That was just dropped into an FR thread. Looks like they were prepared for Obama’s noncompliance with his own promise. The man does not know the difference between right and wrong, slavery and freedom, or which way is up. What a tragic loss he has been ~
There is no “public policy arm” of the United Methodist Church. What we have is a denomination that has a meeting every 4 years and ONLY that meeting speaks for the United Methodist Church. That meeting is called “General Conference”.
There is NO body that can address what the UMC “thinks” about any issue in the interim. Interestingly, this spring that 4 year General Conference will meet.
The denomination does, however, have a variety of boards and agencies that work during the 4 year intervals to implement the decisions of the GC.
One of those boards is the “Board of Church and Society”. It has a liberal named Jim Winkler at its head. Winkler enjoys stirring things with news releases of an extremely liberal bent.
I expect the GC to smack him down this spring. I’d love to see them replace him, but that is a different process, so I doubt it will happen, especially with so many liberal bishops.
As it stands, the GC this year will continue to disapprove of gay ministers and marriage; it will probably continue to walk toward a more pro-life position, hopefully (finally) reaching a RILOM (RapeIncestLifeofMother) position this year.
We still suffer from the 70’s when the church hierarchy was seized by liberals while the conservatives slept. With a meeting only every 4 years, changing the course of this denomination is extremely slow. However, will proportional delegate assignment based on size of membership in any geographic region, a more moderate voice is slowly emerging. Africa is conservative and the fastest growing. The southeast and southwest have some marked conservative growth. All the liberal areas are shrinking like crazy, and the midwest is stagnant to declining.
The first offer was: fertility-toxic and baby-toxic drugs for all with no co-pays, and you-all will pay for it, via insurance.
The second offer was: fertility-toxic and baby-toxic drugs for all with no co-pays, and insurance will pay for it, via you-all.
Many bishop's remarks against this have been strong --- they are not, I am sorry to say, nearly strong enough.
The problem is not “just” that the HHS mandate will be funded by religious organizations, which is brutally offensive in itself. But even worse is that any, each, and all of us are being forced in exactly the way. Connie Sulkowski who runs a real estate office, and Tony Rios who owns a couple of restaurants, and Chuck Schmidt who employs a workforce of 50 in his printing plant. They should not be forced to euthanize their consciences to subsidize products and services they find morally repugnant.
The fact is that every person legally resident in America (with a few sharia compliant exceptions) will be required, like it or not, to purchase services that are ethically corrupt. To cover them 100% without co-pay. And we will have no alternative except coercive penalties (fines) and, if it comes to that, imprisonment.
The underlying issue isn’t even birth control. It’s Total control --- Total State Control --- of our bodies and our souls.
It’s not just the separation of Church and State. It’s the separation of moral choice from real life.
Obamacare is totalitarian, and it has to go. The whole thing. That is what the bishops should be saying.
Re: Obama (the tagline)
No: they’ve already rejected it. Cynicism will not help now. Cheering the bishops might.
They know Obama doesn’t want dialogue and compromise. He wants their guts in a Hefty bag.
I love you, Salvation, for this terrific list!
Among other problems there are not enough prisons to deal with all the people against this mandate in principle. But then, there may not be enough people standing ready to resist.
Skepticism, not cynicism. I`m glad to hear they`ve rejected the fake “accommodation,” and I`m cheering that. However, they`re still down with much of Obama`s agenda.
And at the end of the day... Americans won`t care either way, so long as THEY don`t lose any of their goodies.
It’s our freedom of religion. We need to be appraised of all that is happening!
Thanks.
Oh I know that -- xzins is the living proof that there are Christians -- in fact deep, believing orthodox Christians in the UMC fighting the good fight.
For long I have believed that those within these denominations MUST keep fighting to take back control from the liberals and we outside MUST help them not just by prayer but by all other means. However now I have started to despair of that...
i'm rooting for you! Fight! Fight! kick out the liberals!
We still suffer from the 70’s when the church hierarchy was seized by liberals while the conservatives slept -- I have a sneaky feeling that this is the time when a lot of conservatives were sleeping. Also, this should serve as a warning to all of us even those in denominations not touched by liberalism that they need to be on their guard.
“Come November, this will all be long forgotten.” **From another poster: “some conservative blog sites are speculating that Obama may have purposefully gone after Catholic issues, such as contraception, sterilization and abortion in medical insurance, in order to bait and drive up Santorum’s visibility on social issues.”
The reason? Obama doesn’t want his opponents emphasizing how awful the economy is right now. It isn’t improving, jobs are scarce, and big labor is making political moves under the radar, moves Santorum will ignore because he supports labor unions.
The solution to the UMC problem is to have it devolve back to its ethnic church roots. That will remove the top end financial incentives that attract those of a criminal mind to the cloth.
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