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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 ...
Your answer can be found in post #41 (IIRC). You seem to be having trouble understanding it. I’m not sure what the problem is; it was written in standard American English.
I won't.
The fact that you "corrected" A.A. Cunningham's perfectly accurate statement so that it would look worse for Catholics makes me think you are one of the latter.
If I feel like doing a search, I will likely find much better examples of you selectively presenting data in ways that make Catholics look bad.
That does not help when trying to present an accurate account of the Catholic vote, nor does it help to make the Catholic vote become more conservative.
No it can’t, I am asking if the Pope, and the Vatican, counts the Catholics who you guys are personally labeling non-Catholic, as Catholic.
No point discussing matters with folks who cannot (or will not ... I’m not a mind reader) understand the clear answers they have been given.
I’m not interested in “statements” which someone wants to create, I was looking to learn if the Pope and Vatican counts those people as Catholics.
I am dazzled to find this so difficult to get answered, I thought he was a greater authority than individual Catholics and their personal decisions regarding who is counted among the Catholic population.
Most liberal or left-wing Catholics follow the Democrats in favoring abortion. The few who express qualms and concerns don't act on them.
The following is from the Catholic News Agency. You might find this interesting:
“Exit polls are reporting that more weekly churchgoing Catholics voted for John McCain than for President-elect Barack Obama, slightly favoring McCain by 50 percent to 49 percent.
Those who attend Mass on a weekly basis comprised 46 percent of the overall Catholic vote, while 54 percent of Catholics surveyed said they attend less than weekly. Among infrequent Mass goers, Obama was favored 58 to 40 percent.
The fact that practicing Catholics supported McCain over Obama runs contrary to assertions made by Fr. Thomas Reese S.J. and other commentators who used the category of Catholics who attend Mass less than weekly to suggest that the teaching of Catholic bishops was ignored by the faithful.
Overall, Catholics favored Obama 54 to 45 percent, according to an Edison Media Research exit poll conducted for CNA. In 2004 George W. Bush won the Catholic vote over John Kerry, 52 to 47 percent.”
http://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/churchgoing_catholics_chose_mccain_over_obama/
If I had a fairy godmother who could grant me a wish, I would wish that every Catholic child in this nation could enjoy a thoroughly **Catholic **education that was conservative in every way (spiritually and politically) and also gave each student a solid foundation in the founding principles of our nation.
Freepers have told me that large Catholic families, who can not afford private Catholic schooling for all of their children, have joined with other Catholic families and simply hired a teacher. They are running independent Catholic one-room schools. Sounds like a good idea to me.
While, I am not Catholic, I am a graduate of Villanova University. There are issues with the Catholic faith that are not in agreement with mine, ...but....imagine how much stronger our nation would be if all Catholics were stronger in their faith, lived their faith, and voted according to those beliefs.
I know those break downs, but that is true of Jews, Protestants, and everyone else probably, but it is the kind of thing that is hard to use in any practical or meaningful way, the Jewish vote is what we are interested in, not the Orthodox, weekly attending, Jewish vote.
Let’s face it, even the weekly church attending Catholics are not exactly right wingers, the more useful category for political purposes is the category of Catholic, the collective Catholic political positions indicates what we need to know about the Catholic voter, Catholic upbringing, teaching, and culture is shaping the Catholic voter, there is something about the Catholic that we have not examined, and until we do, we cannot have hope of turning them into conservatives.
It is clear that the positive, inaccurate mantras we keep chanting about Catholicism and conservative values, are not accurate, because what they vote for generation after generation, is reality revealed, we need to examine this reality.
Gingrich is uniquely qualified to know what I am saying, and he is a strategical thinker, as a Catholic he may be able to figure out a key to turning them away from liberalism.
He woudl never insult Muslims like this. Never force Islam to do something against their religion.
he woudl go out of his way to make sure that their religion was given every grace that they needed to be comfortable and within their ‘religious’ vews
They don't ask the Pope, they don't ask the person's pastor, they don't ask to see a baptismal certificate, they don't ask to see church contribution records, they don't administer a doctrinal test, etc.
Out of self-identified Catholics in the U.S., what percentage actually attend Mass weekly? (I should point out that this is required to be a Catholic in good standing; it's not a "nice thing to do on a Sunday morning" like it is in a lot of denominations.) The percentage is probably in the low 40's. Now, if the other 55+ % can't be bothered to order their lives according to Catholic teaching enough to show up at Mass on Sunday, why should anyone think that Catholic teaching would have any relevance to their behavior in the voting booth? If they live like pagans, they're probably going to vote like pagans, right?
So it would be a fine thing if the Catholic Church could bring her disobedient sons and daughters back to the fervent practice of their faith, wherein they would learn to vote for candidates that uphold human life and traditional marriage, for starters. (Oh, and then there's that little gem from Pope Pius XI, "No one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist".) Until then, Matthew 18:17 applies.
That usurper is not only ill-advised, he must be crazy. How big is the Roman Catholic voting block? I hope big enough that we can beat him despite Holder’s people and the collection of dead people who seem to vote Dem.
This is about the Catholic vote, period, 54% of Catholics voted for Obama, that is the reality except as seen by a handful of people who want to go into trying to excommunicate them because they want better polling data, using the most pure Catholics only for generic American political data.
You are right, they are removing these people from the Catholic church without asking the Pope, because I’m pretty sure that the Pope is still counting them as Catholics.
This idea of wanting to pretend there is no Catholic vote or jumping through hoops of pretense, and even trying to convince people that Catholics are not Catholics is bizarre and infantile.
No one else does all this angry game playing. Do we really have to remove the category of Catholic, and Jewish, and Protestant, and Evangelical, and atheist?
But I keep getting told by the Catholics here on FR that the Catholic church is TOTALLY against socialism/marxism/communism. That I'm making it all up....or stupid....or (fill in the blank).
No, it's been answered honestly. You don't like the answer but that's another issue.
What's your point here? That those counted as "Catholics" by the Church is larger than the number of those who actually sincerely hold its teaching as true? Uh......yeah. The Pope knows this. Everyone knows this. That's the whole point.
That's not because of dishonesty or because of a desire to inflate numbers.It's simply because there are a limited number of metrics for quantifying affiliation with a Church. Identifying those who sincerely hold its beliefs as true is simply not practical.
You'll note that the article is actually about Catholicism. Why might that be do you think? It's because Catholicism is ground zero in the culture war. Those who hold Catholic beliefs as true are in the front line of this fight. The rest will simply be blown away by the winds of persecution. So thanks for your concern about "fixing the Catholic vote" but we're way ahead of the curve.
Tell us again what your particular profession of faith has done to incur the displeasure of the Obama administration? Tell us again what piece of current government legislation is going to affect the way your church or group of believers does business on a daily basis? Tell us again what real pain the government has inflicted or is about to inflict on your church? Tell us again what Obama's plans will cost your church in terms of real estate and money?
Anything?
Feel free to post any evidence that your profession is even a factor in this war and that you're actually something more than a mere naysayer on matters Catholic.
Well?
It sounds like you're agreeing with me, even though you refused to answer a direct question. Progress.
A person's religious beliefs will influence the way a person votes.
Yes?
So they are Catholics, thanks, I’m glad that is settled, me and the Pope and everyone else all agreed on it but there were a few deniers on this thread.
I don’t think though that I would say that such a large Democrat voting block from a single church, doesn’t need our attempts to influence and persuade them to conservatism though.
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.
True or false?
You can do it.
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