Posted on 11/21/2012 9:49:48 AM PST by rhema
"Catholicism teaches that it is a sin to use, provide, or otherwise support contraception."
These words are not from the Catholic Catechism or a sermon by a Catholic bishop. They are excerpted from the preliminary injunction U.S. District Judge Robert H. Cleland issued last month temporarily stopping the Obama administration from forcing a family-owned outdoor-power-equipment company to comply with an Obamacare regulation that requires virtually all health care plans to provide women (but not men) with co-pay-free coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.
The judge stated the Catholic teaching on contraception as an undisputed fact of the case. He could have made similar statements about sterilization and abortion.
The Obama administration is not arguing that the Catholic Church does not actually teach that artificial contraception, sterilization and abortion violate the natural law and are intrinsically immoral, and that Catholics cannot be involved in them.
What the Obama administration argues is that it has the authority to tell Americans they can no longer practice Catholicism. What the Obama administration argues is that it can order Catholics to act against their faith.
In the case of Daniel Weingartz v. Sebelius, the administration specifically argues it can order a Catholic business owner to provide his employees with coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs -- and thus act against the teachings of his faith on a matter that involves the destruction of innocent human life.
Elsewhere, the administration argues it can order Catholic institutions -- such as the University of Notre Dame -- to provide its employees and students with coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.
Still elsewhere, by mandating that all individuals must buy government-approved health-care plans (whether through an employer or a government health-insurance exchange), the Obama administration argues that it can order all Catholic laypersons in the United States to act against the teachings of their faith.
The Catholic bishops of the United States have unanimously declared that the Obama administration's contraception-sterilization-abortifacient regulation is "an unjust and illegal mandate" that violates the freedom of conscience not just of Catholic institutions and Catholic business owners, but also of individual Catholic laypersons who do not own businesses or manage Catholic institutions.
The regulation, the bishops said, is a "violation of personal civil rights."
The regulation, they said, creates a class of Americans "with no conscience protection at all: individuals who, in their daily lives, strive constantly to act in accordance with their faith and moral values. They, too, face a government mandate to aid in providing 'services' contrary to those values -- whether in their sponsoring of, and payment for, insurance as employers; their payment of insurance premiums as employees; or as insurers themselves -- without even the semblance of an exemption."
How does the Obama administration justify ordering Catholics to act against their faith?
First, it argues that Catholics lose the right to live according to the moral teachings of their church when they start a business. "Weingartz Supply Company is a for-profit, secular employer, and a secular entity by definition does not exercise religion," Acting Assistant Attorney General Stuart F. Delery argued in a submission to Judge Cleland.
Well, what about a nonprofit institution such as a Catholic university? What about an individual Catholic layperson? How can the administration justify ordering them to act against their faith? The First Amendment says Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Isn't the administration prohibiting the free exercise of religion when it orders Catholics to act against Catholic teachings?
"The Free Exercise Clause does not prohibit a law that is neutral and generally applicable even if the law prescribes conduct that an individual's religion proscribes," Assistant Attorney General Delery told the court. "The preventive services coverage regulations fall within this rubric because they do not target, or selectively burden, religiously motivated conduct."
In plain English: As the Obama administration interprets the First Amendment, it cannot order only Catholics to pay for the administration of a drug that kills an unborn child, but it can order all Americans -- including Catholics -- to pay for the administration of a drug that kills an unborn child.
Many bishops have spoken out clearly and courageously against President Obama's attack on religious freedom.
Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh wrote in his diocesan newspaper: "The Obama administration has just told the Catholics of the United States, 'To Hell with you!'"
Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who leads the Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services, wrote a letter to be read by chaplains serving Sunday masses attended by U.S. military forces. Obama's mandate, the archbishop said, is "a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle."
Broglio and many other bishops declared: "We cannot -- we will not -- comply with this unjust law."
In his encyclical letter Evangelium Vitae, Pope John Paul II cited St. Thomas Aquinas in explaining the Catholic teaching on unjust laws.
"This is the clear teaching of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who writes that 'human law is law inasmuch as it is in conformity with right reason and thus derives from the eternal law," said the pope. "'But when a law is contrary to reason, it is called an unjust law; but in this case it ceases to be a law and becomes instead an act of violence.'"
"To refuse to take part in committing an injustice is not only a moral duty," said the pope, "it is also a basic human right."
President Obama has launched the greatest attack on religious liberty in the history of the United States. He hopes to divide Catholics from their church and American law from truth and justice.
There is no middle ground here. The church is right, the bishops are right, freedom of conscience is an alienable right, and Obama is more wrong about the meaning of liberty than any American president has ever been.
Not really. They are very much alike. There thought process is the same(Leftist in flavor), and they believe in two sets of rules. One set (i.e. they can do what they want, when they want to and change the rules to there favor when ever they want even within there upper ranks) is for them, the other set is for everyone else. They are revolutionary in style. The liberal really does treat women in general as objects, if you doubt that look at all the sex scandals and how they handle them, look at the birth control abortion debate as if woman care only about these issues(not family, not jobs, etc). To liberals, women in general are there at their service even top liberal women act like that toward other woman.
Very good -— thanks for that info. ACLJ rocks!
Will Catholics allow fellow Catholics or even themselves to Practice Catholicism? NO.
Most of them voted for Obama. ‘Nuff said.
If we must suffer, so be it.
No, most of them voted for Romney.
There are many good and wise non-Catholics supporting the Church in this. God bless them!
[CatholicVote.org] The Catholic vote cannot be understood correctly without defining what we mean by “Catholic.” And since 2000, intelligent political observers agree that the best way to measure the Catholic vote is to break up the generic “Catholic vote” into those that regularly attend Mass (active Catholics) and those that do not regularly attend Mass (inactive Catholics).
So what happened in 2012? Here are the facts: Active Catholics accounted for 11% of the electorate in 2012 and voted 57-42 for Mitt Romney over President Obama. This represents a 14-point swing from 2008.
Inactive Catholics represented 13% of the electorate and voted 56-42 for President Obama.
See post 26 re the votes of faithful Catholics vs. CINOs.
“Sure, we can practice it . . . in our jail cells.”
Then we will have fine company.
RE: Here are the facts: Active Catholics accounted for 11% of the electorate in 2012 and voted 57-42 for Mitt Romney over President Obama. This represents a 14-point swing from 2008.
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We have about 120 Million people who voted in 2012.
If Active Catholics are 11% of this, that would make 13 Million Active Catholics who voted.
42% of 13 million is 5.5 Million VOTES !! Obama won by just over 3 million votes.
5.5. million votes would have been more than enough to defeat Obama.
That also means enough ACTIVE Catholics voted for a baby-killing supporting, gay marriage supporting, contraceptive and abotificent supporting President, who wants a law to force Catholics to PAY for these, to give him a second term.
How many of these active Catholics are going to repent in ragged clothes and ashes for what they are doing to the church?
Sorry but...
The Catholics should have voted against Obama.
The idea went back further into antiquity, but 800 years ago it was reintroduced to the western mind.
By the era of our founding, "natural rights" were an established principle of political science. It achieved its pinnacle in our Declaration of Independence.
Today, the popular, barbaric culture would have us believe there is no such thing as natural rights, or that the purpose of government is to secure them for the people.
Evangelical turnout A national post-election survey commissioned by the Faith and Freedom Coalition last night found that the evangelical vote increased in 2012 to a record 27% of the electorate and that white evangelicals voted roughly 78% for Mitt Romney to 21% for Barack Obama. This was the highest share of the vote in modern political history for evangelicals, Reed said.
“Evangelicals turned out in record numbers and voted as heavily for Mitt Romney yesterday as they did for George W. Bush in 2004,” Reed observed. “That is an astonishing outcome that few would have predicted even a few months ago. But Romney underperformed with younger voters and minorities and that in the end made the difference for Obama.”
Catholic voters who regularly attend Mass broke 67% for Romney to 32% for Obama. This represented a swing of 35% in the direction of the GOP since 2008. Romney also won white Catholics by a margin of 59% to 40%, a margin of 19 points among a group that historically has voted for the winner. Nevertheless, Obama narrowly won the Catholic vote driven largely by over-performing among Hispanic Catholics.
This poll shows faithful Catholics breaking 67-32 for Romney.
If I'm doing the math right, 21 percent of the evangelical vote (which was 27 percent of all voters) is 6.8 million. Those defectors also more than supplied Obama with his margin of victory.
Sorry but...
The Catholics should have voted against Obama.
RE: A national post-election survey commissioned by the Faith and Freedom Coalition last night found that the evangelical vote increased in 2012 to a record 27% of the electorate and that white evangelicals voted roughly 78% for Mitt Romney to 21% for Barack Obama. This was the highest share of the vote in modern political history for evangelicals, Reed said.
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OK, let’s do some calculations.
27% of the approximately 120 million votes is 32.4 million votes !!
21% of 32.4 million (that’s the percentage of Evangelicals who voted Obama ) is : 6.8 Million votes !!
Obama won by just over 3 million votes !!.
That means a lot of evangelicals (nearly 7 million ) voted for a president who supports gay marriage and refuses to protect babies born alive.
How can they live with themselves and their votes?
Perhaps if we informed Obama and his MSM cheerleaders, that Islam opposes abortion, they’d be forced to stop and reconsider?
They're not only quislings on moral issues, they're lamentably ignorant. If those so-called evangelicals thought economic issues or national defense issues weighed in Obama's favor (and outweighed moral issues), they must be getting their news from NBC.
See post 32. The faithful Catholics did vote for Romney, albeit in not as high a margin (67-32) as white evangelical voters (78-21). The poseur "Catholics" and the Hispanic Catholics (for whom immigration apparently trumped life and religious freedom) provided the Obama edge among everyone who's lumped under the "Catholic" rubric.
If liberal Democrats can legally obfuscate over what the meaning of “is” is, then the Catholic Church can certainly practice what they preach while calling it something else.
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