Posted on 01/23/2012 6:52:25 AM PST by marshmallow
The Obama administration has chosen to ignore the First Amendment and add insult to injury for Catholics whose schools, hospitals and charities help make this nation great. Now the real fight begins.
Religious leaders had feared the worst from Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and her Department of Health and Human Services, which since September has been considering whether to exempt Catholic and other religious employers from a regulation mandating insurance coverage for sterilization and contraceptives, including some that cause abortion.
But on Friday afternoon, Sebelius announced the bad news in the most offensive way possible. Refusing even the smallest compromise with religious employers, she simply gave them an extra year to comply with the law.
“This decision was made after very careful consideration, including the important concerns some have raised about religious liberty,” Sebelius wrote in a brief statement from HHS. “I believe this proposal strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.”
Her attempt to appear compromising is absurd. What “balance” could Sebelius possibly mean? The HHS regulations include the narrowest exemption for religious employers ever proposed by the federal government, and even more restrictive than such exemptions in most states.
Any pretense of seeking “common ground” with faithful Catholics--which President Obama offered during his much-protested appearance at the University of Notre Dame nearly three years ago--has been stripped away. Only weeks ago, it seemed that the White House might be more sympathetic than Sebelius to the concerns of Catholic and other religious leaders. President Obama met personally with Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, reportedly assuring a good outcome to the HHS debacle. But now one newspaper is reporting that the president himself gave the bad news to Archbishop Dolan on Friday morning, something akin to.........
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
The number of true Catholics? No.
The term "Catholic" is often used loosely in the media. The Vatican can tell you how many people attended Church on Sunday. It can tell you how many people have been baptized. It can tell you how many people checked the "Catholic" box in the national population census. That's what is usually meant by "Catholic" when statistics are discussed. It's based on self-identification or numbers of people who have had some form of contact with the Church.
What the Vatican can't tell you is how many people actually believe what the Church teaches.
And if one does not believe what the Catholic Church teaches, then one is not a Catholic.
There's nothing unique about that. If you believe in God, then you're not an atheist. If you don't believe in Marx's dogmas, you're not a communist. If you don't believe in Calvin's teachings, you're not a Calvinist. Irrespective of where you plant your posterior on a Sunday or any other day.
Unless you can show proof that the self-identified Catholics who respond to exit polls all present officially stamped memberships by the Pope and the Catholic Church, A.A. Cunningham's description is the only accurate one.
Mormons seem to have a lower approval rating of Obama. You should become one if you value the voting patterns of self-identified religious groups so much.
I can see how pride and chauvinism blocks we conservatives from being able to enlist even Catholic conservatives in our fight against liberalism.
I think you just said that yes, they are Catholics, and the Pope and the Vatican labels them as such, counts them as such. That is why we have a voter category called Catholic, not super Catholic, or only Catholics approved by John the internet guy, or whatever it takes to eliminate the possibility of measuring the Catholic vote in elections.
Identity pride can trump conservative politics even at conservative political sites evidently.
What???
Wait ....
I don't have an officially stamped membership ...
OH NOES!!!!!
Does this mean I'm not really Catholic???
You think so? Then let me see if I can make it clear.
It's really simple. See if you can grasp this.
Belief is important.
If it isn't, then anybody can be labeled anything.
What am I missing?
You are anti-Christian, trying to convert people to Mormonism?
You don’t do politics, track voting patterns, groups, inroads into the Hispanic vote, or the Catholic vote, or which candidate may hurt us with the Evangelical vote, or the female vote, or who may hurt us down ticket, will we get the military vote, etc?
Why would you be at freerepublic if those areas don’t interest you.
So the Pope, and the Vatican do not count those people as Catholics?
Those “non-Catholics” are removed when the Pope or the Vatican offers numbers for the Catholic population?
No. You're smart enough to realize I was making the point that religions are not to be judged by the voting patterns of their self-identified members.
You don’t do politics, track voting patterns, groups, inroads into the Hispanic vote, or the Catholic vote, or which candidate may hurt us with the Evangelical vote, or the female vote, or who may hurt us down ticket, will we get the military vote, etc?
Yes. I'm also smart enough to realize that you often try to present the data in ways that make Catholics look as bad as possible. Look, you're not one of the unhinged and crazy anti-Catholics. But even though your anti-Catholicism is subtler than theirs, it doesn't mean it's still not obvious.
Evidently no one is certain what is a Catholic.
The world has vastly overstated the number of Catholics. America evidently has a much tinier Catholic population than is reported.
No, actually, you had that fairly nicely defined for you upthread. The definition was offered in standard American English ... I should think that you would have had no trouble understanding it.
Please try again.
Sebelius, who often sat down to dine with Tiller the Killer, is a disgrace to the Catholic Church.
She should have been excommunicated years ago.
Already addressed above. The Vatican offers no statistics for who holds Catholic teaching as true.
Let's keep it as simple as possible and go one step at a time.
Statement: A person's religious beliefs will influence the way a person votes in an election.
Agree?
It’s an indelible, invisible mark, silly!
Look inside your belly button. ;)
Don’t confuse a conservative activist who wants to win elections with being anti-Catholic.
I think that breaking through this wall of pretense and group think, and chauvinistic pride of conservative Catholics, when they take on any effort to openly discuss or even mention, the voting of 22%, or 4% of our population, or whatever the new claim ends up being as the other posters figure out what a Catholic is, is vital.
Until conservative Catholics know and acknowledge how their fellow Catholics vote, then it is sure hard for the conservative movement to conquer the Catholic voter. We need some help here.
We can’t figure out how to fix it, until people know it is broken, even here many people have been misled to think that the Catholic vote is a conservative, pro-life, anti-gay agenda vote, Republicans won’t learn differently if we don’t tell them the truth.
The fact that no one can answer this simple question honestly, shows why we cannot fix the Catholic vote.
So the Pope, and the Vatican do not count those people as Catholics?
Those “non-Catholics” are removed when the Pope or the Vatican offers numbers for the Catholic population?
So the number of Catholics claimed for America and the world is vastly, and falsely inflated?
The Pope would tell me up front that those people are not Catholics, that if they are listed as such by the Vatican, we need to update our numbers to keep things honest?
Already answered.
BTW, I assure you that I will not confuse an anti-Catholic for an honest conservative activist who wants to win elections.
So the answer is that the Pope does not accept those people as Catholic?
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