Oh My! A Real Conundrum For Objectivists! Support Central Statist Tyranny Or The Catholic Church!

[Selene]

I fully expect the political whore in the White House to do a 360 degree back flip on this piece of despicable dictatorial statism because there are seventy million [70,000,000] Catholics and they vote and they vote in key swing states like Pennsylvania.

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Catholic leaders upped the ante Monday, threatening to challenge the Obama administration over a provision of the new health care law that would require all employers, including religious institutions, to pay for birth control.

As CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer reports, it could affect the presidential elections.

Catholic leaders are furious and determined to harness the voting power of the nation’s 70 million Catholic voters to stop a provision of President Barack Obama’s new heath car reform bill that will force Catholic schools, hospitals and charities to buy birth control pills, abortion-producing drugs and sterilization coverage for their employees.

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/02/06/catholic-league-poised-to-go-to-war-with-obama-over-mandatory-birth-control-payments/

This will be fascinating to me.

Adam

[Selene]

Heritage Foundation lays it out well here:

It is a rare moment indeed when faith denominations of all stripes unite together in common cause, and it is rarer still when that cause is a political one, with a sole piece of legislation as its principal target. But when that law eviscerates the very foundation of religious liberty in America as protected under the First Amendment, it should not be surprising that Catholics and Jews, evangelical Christians, and mainline Lutherans alike find common cause in defense of their liberties.

Such is the case with the firestorm of opposition to Obamacare and the Obama Administration’s attack on religious liberty. Under a new Obamacare mandate issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the White House is mandating that virtually all religious employers, with the exception of churches, provide health care coverage for contraception — including abortion-inducing drugs — thereby trampling upon their constitutionally guaranteed free exercise of religion. And it is this mandate that has caused a vehement response in churches and synagogues across the country.

http://blog.heritage.org/2012/02/07/morning-bell-obamacare-awakens-a-sleeping-giant/?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

Now why is there no mention of Islam's opposition to this dictatorial directive?

http://www.snopes.com/politics/medical/exemptions.asp

Adam

[studiodekadent]

Even I end up supporting the religionists here.

The government is trying to force them to act in a manner they believe deeply immoral and inimical to their faith.

Whilst I think their faith is backwards, backwater, anti-promethean, misanthropic, misandrist and misogynist, anti-mind and anti-happiness-on-this-earth, Freedom of Conscience includes the right to be wrong.

That said Adam, I don't think the Catholic voters are much of a concern. The majority of American Catholics are Cafeteria Catholics who, like any sane person, don't take sex advice from celibate Augustinian old men that have in the past enabled pedophilia and in some cases committed it. These American Catholics happily use contraception of various kinds and will tell the Ecclesiarchy to shove it.

At the risk of saying something blasphemous (by Oist standards), Thank God for American Cafeteria Catholicism! They're the best weapon against the backwards values of their spiritual leaders.

[Selene]

Andrew:

You are correct in terms of most Catholics will not be in lockstep as to the use of contraception.

However, 70% of Catholics will now vote against this centralized dictatorial edict because it is wrong and because it materially effects the brethren who provide charitable services, hospital services, etc.

Moreover, these folks have had enough of being singled out and left unprotected while other religions are "uber" protected.

The turn the other cheek is beginning to get ridiculous. Jobs are being lost. Their kids are being discriminated against. This backlash will be powerful and at the ballot box.

I will be quite surprised if the pathetic excuse for a President does not reverse field for the election. Whether anyone will believe him or not is another issue.

Adam

[BaalChatzaf]

At the risk of saying something blasphemous (by Oist standards), Thank God for American Cafeteria Catholicism! They're the best weapon against the backwards values of their spiritual leaders.

Cafeteria Catholicism has done more to stifle Mother Church than the Protestant Reformation.

I put Cafeteria Catholics in the same category as Independent Voters. These folks are what have kept the system going.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[anthony]

Adam,

I saw some of this in a Jewish World Review recently. The article "First they came for the

Catholics..." alerted me to what looks like a growing solidarity among all faiths in the US,

with the present Administration the common enemy.

Well, at least the JWR's editorial policy is very pro-Christian.

Of course, I am fervently for division of Church and State, but how often is it the State

that interferes in the Church? This is rare, isn't it?

As you indicate, a terribly stupid and arrogant move that could back-fire even after if it is rescinded.

Tony

[Selene]

Tony:

Exactly correct.

WSJ today explains that:

The political furor over President Obama's birth-control mandate continues to grow, even among those for whom contraception poses no moral qualms, and one needn't be a theologian to understand why. The country is being exposed to the raw political control that is the core of the Obama health-care plan, and Americans are seeing clearly for the first time how this will violate pluralism and liberty.

Continuing later in the article:

To take a small example: The HHS rule prohibits out-of-pocket costs for birth control, simply because Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's regulators believe no woman should have to pay anything for it. To take a larger example: The Obama Administration's legal defense of the mandate to buy insurance or else pay a penalty is that the mere fact of being alive gives the government the right to regulate all Americans at every point in their lives.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204369404577209112780407698.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h

[Selene]

O'bama's Goebbels has come forward and explained that we should "lower our voices" and get some kind of grace period. You know, we will only fire up the ovens on the odd days of the week!

Now the White House may be ready to work with the church to find a way to get around the mandate, said David Axelrod, a top adviser to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign. I" think we need to lower our voices and get together," Axelrod told MSLSD's Morning Scmo

"We certainly don’t want to abridge anyone’s religious freedoms, so we’re going to look for a way to move forward that both provides women with the preventative care that they need and respects the prerogatives of religious institutions."

“The president and the administration will move forward, but with a grace period or time period in order to work this thing through,” Axelrod added. “We want to resolve it in an appropriate way.”

Axelrod said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had already given churches an exemption to the mandate, against the recommendation of the Institute of Medicine. “The question now is about these extended affiliated institutions … and there are tens of thousands – hundreds of thousands – of women who work in these hospitals and universities who are not Catholic or they may be Catholic and they use birth control.

“The question is whether they are going to have the same package that every other woman in the country has to the same right and access to basic preventive care.”

Obama Signals He May Back Down On Contraception Mandate

Now there is a campaign slogan...we want every woman to have the same package as every other woman!

[Selene]

Isn't it interesting that people of faith are willing to face jail for their convictions.

"We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write our letters from the Nashville jail, just like

Dr. King wrote his from the Birmingham jail," Dr. Land said.

"The Obama administration has declared war on religion and freedom of conscience," they wrote.

"We consider this callous requirement by the Obama administration to be a clear violation of our

nation's commitment to liberty of conscience and a flagrant violation of our constitutional protection

to freedom of religion."

http://www.lifesitenews.com/southern-baptist-leader-we-will-not-comply-with-hhs-mandate.html

What a despicable dictator this piece of pond scum floating on the American Constitutional Republic O'bama is.

Anyone see the ACLU out there, or have they disbanded.

Adam

[Selene]

The big eared bigot in the White House has started to alienate his own Democratic Senators:

Marco Rubio blasts White House on religious conscience controversy

As the furor grew over the recent Obama administration ruling regarding abortion-related services at faith-based hospitals, Florida's freshman Republican Sen. Marco Rubio stepped up the counter-attack from Capitol Hill.

In an exclusive interview with HUMAN EVENTS before his address at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington Thursday, Rubio denounced the Health and Human Services Department ruling that requires faith-based hospitals and other health providers to provide information and services related to abortion and contraception that are against their religious beliefs.

Branding the ruling an assault on "the constitutional right of religious expression," the senator spelled out his legislation (S. 2043) to overturn the Obama administration dictum. He also told HUMAN EVENTS that the president “should have listened to Vice President Joe Biden,” citing published reports that Biden had urged him not to come down with the ruling that has stirred up fierce opposition among Roman Catholics as well as other faiths. (Former White House Chief of Staff William Daley also reportedly urged Obama not to go in this direction.)

Rubio added his view that this is "the first time" an administration has clashed with faiths over matters of conscience and said if the president doesn't change his mind on the issue, "we [Congress] will have to do it for him."

Others weighing in with Rubio in opposition to the measure include Democratic Sen. Joe Lieberman (Conn.), Ben Nelson (Neb.), Bob Casey, Jr. (Penn.), and Joe Manchin (W.Va.), with Manchin agreeing to co-sponsor Rubio’s legislation.

http://www.humaneven...le.php?id=49407

[BaalChatzaf]

Has Lord Obama lost the Catholic Vote for this November's election?

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Has Lord Obama lost the Catholic Vote for this November's election?

Ba'al Chatzaf

The big eared bigot probably iced losing the election with this fascist move.

Lord O'biwan won the Catholic vote by 54% to 46% for the clueless John 'but the media used to love me till the black guy came along" McCain in 2008.

Adam

[Reidy]

Interesting choice of phrase

[Selene]

Peggy Noonan, a good writer, an intelligent woman and a politically astute member of the Reagan administration commented in her WSJ column that this is issue is about individual liberty and not the Catholic Church. She explains in an update that:

"...the furor surrounding ObamaCare and the Catholic Church. The Obama White House was surprised by the pushback but hopes it will blow over. Their thinking: The Catholics had their little eruption, letters were read from pulpits, the pundits came out, and then the pols. But life goes on, new issues arise, we'll hunker down, it'll go away. Meanwhile, play for time. Send David Axelrod out to purr about possible new negotiations.

That would be a trap for the church. Any new talks would no doubt go past Election Day, at which time, if the president wins, he'll be able to give the church the back of his hand.

The short-term White House strategy is to confuse and obfuscate, to spread a thick web of untruths about the decision and let opponents exhaust themselves trying to fight from under the web.

The church must be resolute and press harder. Now is the time to keep pounding—from the pulpit, in all Catholic publications and media, in statements and meetings. For how long? As long as it takes. The president and the more radical part of his base clearly thought the church was a paper tiger, a hollow shell, an entity demoralized and finished by the scandals of the past 20 years.

Now is the time for the church to show it's alive. How?

•

Educate.

Unconfuse the issues.

Take a different aspect of the ruling and its deeper meanings every week, and pound away.

•

Reach out.

This is bigger than the Catholic Church. Go to the mainline Protestant churches, evangelicals, synagogues and mosques. Plead for vocal, public and immediate support: "If the church is forced to go against its conscience, religious liberty in America is not safe. If religious liberty is not safe, you are not safe."

•

Know your people

.

Mr. Obama carried secular Catholics overwhelmingly in 2008. But churchgoing Catholics were evenly split, 51% to 49% for John McCain. These are the voters the president could lose by huge margins over the ruling. And he will, if they fully understand it. Such a loss could determine the 2012 outcome. He knows it, you know it. Have faith in the people in the pews. Give it to them straight, week after week, and they'll back the church overwhelmingly. The White House is watching. Pound away.

•

Call for Democratic support.

Religious liberty should not be a partisan issue. Republicans have come to the fore, but it's better for the church if Democrats do too. They're starting to come over. Make clear from the pulpit that members of both parties are absolutely essential in this fight. "All hands on deck."

You can win. Keep the faith. Literally: Keep it."