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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He offered a striking picture of 'what will happen if the HHS regulations are not rescinded.'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.'
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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.
If the thinking has cowardice as the starting point.
The Church should begin excommunicating all the deviant nuns and teachers; demand strict compliance with the Catholic dogma in all her institutions; state firmly that she will not comply with any form of contraception mandate and ask the faithful not to comply; pull the assets from unaffiliated banks and don't pay any fines.
A principled approach will draw faithful to the Church and expel those who should have left a long time ago.
-—— The Church should begin excommunicating all the deviant nuns and teachers; demand strict compliance with the Catholic dogma in all her institutions;-——
I’m all for that, but this won’t stop Obama.
-——state firmly that she will not comply with any form of contraception mandate and ask the faithful not to comply; pull the assets from unaffiliated banks and don’t pay any fines.———
They’ll put liens on Church properly, etc.
——A principled approach will draw faithful to the Church and expel those who should have left a long time ago.-——
True, but it won’t prevent asset seizure.
In the long run, confiscation of Church property may purify the Church, but Obama’s not interested in that.
I’m all for fighting the mandate, but we need to make our efforts as effective as possible.
The more I think about it, I think the best approach would be for priests to advocate, from the pulpit, voting against Obama. Let Obama take away the Church’s 501(c)3 status. Now THAT would ignite a firestorm.
Priests would be able to speak freely. The Church would be poorer, but better able to teach.
I realize that the non-payment option will be defeated in the courts, and of course it should be exercised together with general return to Catholic orthodoxy in matters of the dictrine on sexual sin, and robust involvement of the Church in civic affairs.
The Church should demonstrate that her mandate is not to protect material assets. She should be ready to take a hit in terms of financial pressure because of the fines and subsequent liens, as well as the loss of the tax exempt status. The purpose of refusing to pay the tax is not to save money but to drive home the point that no one should obey unjust laws. Build ye treasure in Heaven.
0bama cannot stand competition. He always tries to find some way to eliminate it without getting his hands dirty.
Yes. I hope the bishops don’t buckle.
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