This would also cause chaos with medical education. Many of the Catholic hospitals are conjoined with a Catholic university medical school.
I believe that this is part of der Fuehrer’s plan.
If the bishops fold on this, it’s going to be hard for me to stay in the Church. Already I don’t donate to CC or the schools. I just donate for my little parish church to keep its doors open and to Christian radio. I’ll find a parish with no school that doesn’t pledge to any one except Rome.
Although I am not Catholic, I stand behind them on this.
The public school teacher unions will rejoice over Catholic schools closing.
Catholic Charities closed its adoption centers here in MA, because they would have been forced to adopt children out to sodomites.
There was barely a whimper from the public.
When the Church is forced to sell off hospitals, the reaction will be similar.
The Marxists formed our society in government schools. They are now simply reaping the harvest.
An abortifacient kills an innocent life. The Bible has only three instances where God approves the breaking of the law, and one of them is saving innocent life. See Exodus 1:17. The Catholic Church should defy the law and accept the punishment for doing so. I doubt even Obama wants nationwide television coverage of nuns and bishops being hauled off in cuffs.
As a Lifelong Catholic, I give this opinion.
The Church may sell these hospitals or turn them over to someone else to run, but they love money too much to just close them.
I sincerely hope they are not bluffing.
My reaction is that this is all part of the plan of Obama and his minions: close down the economic contributions of the Catholics. Those bastards want the Catholics and all other religious groups out of the economy.
If this happens they will just replace them with governments entities.
Bookmark
OK, after reading all of the above posts, I wish to add my two cents worth.
The only way to get Obama to back down is to somehow force the government to arrest the leaders of the Church and these facilities. That cannot be done by closing the hospitals and charities and schools. [especially the schools - as the government wants a monopoly on all education].
Our bishops need to lead the laity in active rebellion against an unjust government mandate. They can do this by keeping open the facilities and by refusing to change their insurance programs - or by refusing to pay the fine imposed by their disobediance. Somehow, we need to confront them and their abusive use of federal power against otherwise law-abiding citizens who refute their ideology. Unfortunately I think the arrest and imprisonment of bishops, nuns and laity over this stupid government mandate may be necessary to finally open the eyes of the majority of U.S. citizens. It will fire up the “silent majority’ of hard-working and conservative-minded people like no other way.
The bishops aren’t bluffing. But I think the probably have authority to close only a few of these schools and hospitals. Many of them probably have autonomous boards of trustees. And many of the executives and governing board members will defy the bishops and keep the hospitals and schools open.
Elementary and some high schools are more directly under bishops’ control, but even many of the high schools are run by religious orders who only indirectly answer to bishops.
Bishops can withdraw the name “Catholic” but if they do that, in most cases, people will yawn and shrug.
Shutting down Catholic hospitals would obviously reduce access to care which in turn reduces the cost of government health care. I would imagine, with so much uncompenstated and undercompensated care that in many if not most cases, operating margins are very low or negative for these hospitals. Shedding health care will permit the Bishops to concentrate on their core mission; that is saving souls. I think that the Bishops are fully aware that if they are co-opted by 0bama, the Catholic Church will not be taken seriously; they will be finished.