Posted on 02/29/2012 3:44:36 AM PST by EBH
The Obama administration is effectively telling Catholics to abandon their work in the public square, according to Chicago's Cardinal Francis E. George.
'This year, the Catholic Church in the United States is being told she must 'give up' her health care institutions, her universities and many of her social service organizations. This is not a voluntary sacrifice,' warned the cardinal and former president of the U.S. Catholic bishops' conference.
In his Feb. 26 Catholic New World column, the cardinal said these public ministries may come to an end because of the 'much-discussed Department of Health and Human Services regulations now filed and promulgated for implementation beginning Aug. 1 of this year.'
The rules in question, formulated as part of federal health care reform, force many religious institutions to provide employees with contraception, sterilization, and abortion-causing drugs, without a co-pay through their health care plans.
Unless the rule is halted, Cardinal George said, institutions may be forced to choose between dropping their religious identity or abandoning their work.
He offered a striking picture of 'what will happen if the HHS regulations are not rescinded.'
'A Catholic institution, so far as I can see right now, will have one of four choices,' he explained.
The first would be to 'secularize itself, breaking its connection to the church, her moral and social teachings and the oversight of its ministry by the local bishop.'
The second choice would involve paying 'exorbitant annual fines to avoid paying for insurance policies that cover abortifacient drugs, artificial contraception and sterilization. This is not economically sustainable.'
A ministry's only other choices would involve transferring ownership to a non-Catholic group or the government ' or shutting down altogether.
In his column, Cardinal George also argued against tactics he said were being used to marginalize the Church in its opposition to the contraception mandate.
One such argument claims that 'the majority of Catholics use artificial contraception,' and Church institutions should therefore be forced to provide it to employees.
But this argument assumes that the moral law should conform to human behavior, rather than the other way around.
'Behavior doesn't determine morality. If it can be shown that a majority of Catholic students cheat on their exams, it is still wrong to cheat on exams. Trimming morality to how we behave guts the Gospel call to conversion of life and rejection of sin.'
Advocates of the contraception mandate also call attention to some Catholics' disagreement with Church teaching.
Cardinal George noted that there have 'always been those whose personal faith is not adequate to the faith of the Church.' But this does not change the fact that bishops 'are the successors of the apostles; they collectively receive the authority to teach and govern that Christ bestowed upon the apostles.'
The bishops, he said, speak 'for the Catholic and apostolic faith. Those who hold that faith gather with them; others go their own way. They are and should be free to do so, but they deceive themselves and others in calling their organizations Catholic.'
The cardinal invited the Catholic laity, and other concerned citizens, to 'step back and understand what is happening to our country as the church is despoiled of her institutions and as freedom of conscience and of religion become a memory from a happier past.'
'The suffering being imposed on the church and on society now is not a voluntary penance. We should both work and pray to be delivered from it.'
So they could not outright take over the hospitals in the 0bamacare program, but they could do it by removing religion.
A backdoor fascist tactic.
Committing Obamacide on the Catholic public works system? I believe that’s exactly what the Leftists are up to.
Obama wants everything done with UNION labor.
UNION jobs are the ONLY jobs he EVER promotes.
“Unless the rule is halted, Cardinal George said, institutions may be forced to choose between dropping their religious identity or abandoning their work.”
Why don’t they refuse to comply instead?
“Church Could Be Forced To ‘Give Up’ Public Work, Cardinal George Warns”
That’s EXACTLY what Obama&goons want: to push the religious institutions OUT of public life.
-—It’s a clear attempt to break in through the front door of our constitution.——
Yup. The govt schools have destroyed the public’s ability to resist.
It grieves me to say this, but when the Catholic hospitals are sold-off to the govt, there won’t be any more resistance than we’re experiencing now.
I agree this seems their plan all along. The Dewey eyed educators have been been telling their own that Education has replaced the Church and Educators the new prophets-leading the people to a bright and shining future if only they would reach beyond what they learned at home and “in church” and follow their enlightened educators.(This since the sixties) Most “progressives” are the proud product of the public education system and a Marxist Communist atheistic dominated higher education. As Lincoln reportedly wrote in a hornbook the philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next. And if Lincoln wrote such as a student I reckon others did. And the enemy is not dumb— but he is beguiling They know our history better than we seem to sometimes.
——Why don’t they refuse to comply instead?-——
Simple: cowardice. If the bishops won’t excommunicate flagrant sinners like Pelosi, there’s no way they’re going to advocate civil disobedience.
Civil disobedience would be justifiable, but it’s hard to think of an effective tactic. The IRS would seize Church bank accounts. Odumbo is smart enough not to drag nuns out of hospitals in handcuffs.
OTOH, charity will continue at a personal and church level. This may improve the health of the Church, overall.
Come on....
Where’s your faith? We will defeat this in court.
;-)
Many of these Catholics supported nobama because of his socialist bent on various social issues including illegal immigration. Now they must pay the piper. Wake up, people!
Think about that the next time you need to go to a hospital...and it is run by the government.
You might want to look here to get an idea of the level of impact within your state alone!
That is why the church shouldn’t have supported nobama in the first place.
The epiphany I had last week seems to be on track...
I have been mulling over in my mind Obama’s decision to declare war on the Catholic Church.
Obama is many things, but he is not stupid.
So why would Obama throw himself on the “contraceptive” sword? Some say it was a misstep, but I am not so sure. If so, why not correct it?
The Catholic Church I believe is the ONLY Christian denomination that completely opposes contraceptives.
Historically the Protestant and Catholic relationship is shaky at best. Many Protestants founders of this country came to America to escape religious persecution and away from the reach of the Catholic Church.
Divide and conquer is an age old battle strategy.
How easy for Obama to divide the Christian community along the lines of a solely Catholic issue. An issue in which even the majority of church-going Catholics have been disobedient to Church teachings.
I believe Obama carefully chose a solely Catholic, and unpopular teaching to divide Christians and even Catholics with the precision of a surgical knife while anesthetizing the public with phrases like “women’s rights”, “Catholics don’t follow this teaching”, “it’s a contraceptive issue”, “the Catholic Church needs to move into the modern world”.
Maybe we are being distracted from the END GAME.
The Catholic Church is one of the largest charitable organizations in the USA. This 2005 report shows Catholic Charities as being the 9th largest in the USA, 61% of funding coming from the government. There are other Catholic Charities as well, which operate at a high efficiency level, providing aid to the poor at low cost. The Catholic Church and their charities in addition to health, welfare and education providers are also a public representation of a Christ.
The Catholic Church WILL close down their hospitals, their schools, their orphanages in response to the HHS requirement to provide contraceptives and abortifacients.
Is that Obama’s end game?
With the Catholic charities closed, the poor will have nowhere to turn other than the government. A government which is fighting to remove God from the public arena.
The liberal media would like the public to believe this debate is about “contraceptives”. It is about so much more than that.
Does anyone believe Obama will stop with the Catholic Church and it’s religious objections to contraceptives?
I am terrified for our country if Obama wins. We will be one step closer to being the non-Christian nation Obama envisions us to be, with statist control over even our consciences.
History has shown where that will lead.
I hope our nation wakes up before it is too late.
Others are coming to the same conclusion:
“But sooner or later, leftists like Obama - as well as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, etc. etc. - always push for more and more regulation. And off at the end, their ultimate purpose is to subordinate traditional institutions entirely to the bureaucratic dictates of the all-powerful state.”
http://campaign2012.washingtonexaminer.com/article/obamas-left-always-was-anti-faith-and-family/382561
I reject the underlying premise in the argument, i.e., that only official church organizations have real religious freedoms.
Liberties are not held nor practiced by proxy. A Christian businessman should have no less religious freedom than his priest.
This liberty by proxy issue is being conceded, in the desire to protect the church itself. But WE are the church.
Oh I don’t disagree with you there.
BUT, ask any individual Catholic or Christian for that matter if they will comply with the healthcare mandate and you will get hundreds of excuses.
Unfortunately as a test of faith...to reject the insurance that demands the payment for murder by all who participate, many will fail.
So the question for faithful Catholics is, “Will you trust God with your healthcare?”
The civil disobediance must not come from the clergy, but from the people of faith.
I agree with you. Also, I think the idea that the Church would suffer from impossibly high fines misses the point. JUST DON’T PAY THEM. Start massive civil disobedience campaigns. There are 65 million Catholics in this country. If only 1 million of them engaged in civil disobedience all of Obama’s tyranny would be overthrown in a fortnight.
The flaw in your theory is that it this has not divided Christians. Even Protestants - most of whom are just fine will all or most forms of birth control and even abortions in some cases - realize that Obama is attacking freedom of religion and oppose the attack. Obama is not dividing Christians. He is forcing lazy or lapsed Christians to become more ardently secularist in their views. Those lazy, increasingly government dependent, losers will naturally side with Obama against the Catholic Church. They want to fornicate and avoid responsibility. In the process, Obama paints himself as a man of reason and modernity who is not forcing any Catholic institution to do anything but instead is forcing the greedy insurance companies to provide the pill to women so they can live their lives as they want (and seemingly not pay a penny for it).
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