Pope Francis Talked to President Obama About Religious Liberty

March 28, 2014 by 5 Comments

 

Early media reports made it sound as if the Holy Father and President Obama concentrated all their conversation on what the press termed “areas of agreement.”

It turns out that they were talking through their press badges.

According to Vatican Radio, Pope Francis and the Holy Father discussed “questions of particular relevance for the Church in that country, such as the exercise of the rights to religious freedom, life, and conscientious objection, as well as the issue of immigration reform.”

I believe that’s a polite way of saying that the Pope talked to the Prez about the HHS Mandate, and other administration attacks on religious freedom, as well as the president’s support for abortion, and embryonic stem cell research. 

Pope Francis has a history of being gentle in his dealings with ordinary folks and downright tough about the things he says to those with power and authority. I never thought for minute that he would make an exception for the President of the United States.

Will the Pope’s words affect President Obama’s actions? The knee jerk reaction is to say probably not. But I am someone who God turned upside down. I not only believe that the Holy Spirit can change people. I know He does. 

Let’s pray that something got through to our President. 

And in the meantime, let’s also thank God for giving us this good and holy man to be our Pope. 


 


Filed Under: America, Catholic, HHS Mandate, Holy Father, Politics, Post Christian West, Pro Life, Slavery, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , 5 Comments

Hobby Lobby Founders Discuss the Supreme Court Arguments on the HHS Mandate

March 26, 2014 by 2 Comments

 

I’m not going to do a post mortem on the arguments the Supreme Court heard on the Hobby Lobby/HHS Mandate case.

I won’t give you a run-down of which justice twitched, which one pulled his or her earlobe and who coughed. Trying to divine how the Court will rule by studying the questions justices asked and the expressions on their faces has become a kind of sport, like handicapping a horserace. Only it’s not nearly so accurate.

I think we would know just as much about what they’re going to do if we slaughtered a goat and studied its entrails.

Besides, I’m too nervous about this one to do that. The Court hasn’t exactly been a friend to people with traditional Christian values for a long time now. In fact, the Court has made itself the architect of this brave new baby-killing, marriage-is-meaningless world we inhabit. To a great extent the whole social mess is of the Supreme Court’s devising.

But this decision is one of the really big ones. Will we be free after this ruling?

It depends.

On how they rule.

The Court can destroy religious freedom with this ruling. It can also do as it did with the gay marriage ruling last summer and just put out a row of dominoes for others to knock over and destroy it in succeeding months.

What are the chances that the Supreme Court will actually rule in favor of religious freedom?

Will we be free after this ruling?

It depends.

On them.

 

The owners of Hobby Lobby spoke about yesterday’s arguments before the Supreme Court. Here is what they said.

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Filed Under: America, Christian Solidarity, Economics, Faith, First Amendment, Following Christ, Freedom of Conscience, HHS Mandate, Post Christian West, Religious Freedom, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , 2 Comments

Stupak: HHS Mandate was a Double Cross

March 17, 2014 by 11 Comments

I’ve written several times that President Obama lied to Congressman Bart Stupak in order to get the Affordable Health Care Act (Obamacare) through Congress.

The tactics used against pro life Democrats in order to pass this legislation totally destroyed the nascent pro life movement in the national Democratic Party. According to news reports, the Obama administration threatened to close military bases in Senator Ben Nelson’s state of Nebraska, thus putting tens of thousands of his constituents out of work. These threats were made in order to secure the 60th vote necessary to stop a filibuster in the United States Senate.

The president persuaded Congressman Bart Stupak to abandon his fight to block the bill in the House by giving him an “ironclad” promise that he would issue an executive order guaranteeing religious freedom and no federal monies for abortion under the bill. The president did issue an executive order, which I personally thought was insufficient, even at the time.

First an executive order is not a statute, and this critical issue clearly needed statutory force. Second the executive order itself was insufficient.

However, the president put the lie to his own promise when he followed this executive order by signing, promoting and putting the entire force of his presidency behind the ignominious HHS Mandate. The HHS Mandate is an egregious and direct attack on religious freedom. His administration’s arguments against court challenges to this mandate have sought to restrict First Amendment freedoms to religious practices inside church buildings.

If President Obama wins the court challenges to the HHS Mandate, using these arguments, it will be the death of religious freedom in this country. It will also set off a Constitutional crisis more serious than anything America has faced since the Civil War. That is the outcome of Congressman Stupak’s actions.

Congressman Stupak returned to private life after the session in which Obamacare passed. But he was one of the early opponents of the HHS Mandate. He signed a letter against the Mandate in which he referenced the fact that President Obama had betrayed his promises.

Now, he’s taken it a step further and publicly stated that the HHS Mandate is a double cross.

What does all this amount to?

One thing: The President of the United States is a liar. He’s not a liar on whether or not he caught a minnow that was six feet long. He’s not a liar on whether or not he had an affair with a woman. He’s a calculated, deliberate liar on matters of policy that affect the American people. He lied to a member of the United States Congress on a matter of extreme importance to this country to get the congressman’s vote.

There’s no coming back from that.

I know that a lot of pro life people want to burn Congressman Stupak in effigy. I, for one, never believed the president. I can’t find the exact word for how I felt when I watched the vote on this bill and heard Congressman Stupak’s comments. It was a mixture of pity and sorrow, coupled with grief.

I’ve experienced a bit of the pressure that is put on Democratic elected officials to get them to betray their pro life beliefs. I have a lot of sympathy for Senator Nelson, for the simple reason that he was responsible for his constituents. It’s a terrible thing to tell an elected official that if they don’t do what you want, you will destroy the lives of tens of thousands of the constituents it is their job to protect.

I’ve seen this happen on the state level, for a lot less than the Affordable Health Care Act. I’ve seen Democrats threaten to close colleges in another Democrat’s house district if they didn’t change their vote on a bill. I’ve seen a Republican speaker threaten a Democratic House member with the closure of a major industry in his district if the Democrat didn’t stop asking questions that the Speaker found embarrassing. I’ve seen pro life Republicans kill pro life bills at the behest of corporate interests. I’ve been on the receiving end of pro abortion Democrats’ demands that I kill pro life bills for party loyalty.

I’ve seen things a lot worse than what I just described, that I don’t want to write about.

I don’t doubt for one minute that the Obama administration threatened to put tens of thousands of people out of work, just simply to pass a bill. I also don’t doubt that Congressman Stupak was the object of intense hate, vilification and threats over this vote. President Obama is not only a liar, but he’s a convincing liar, and I don’t doubt that Congressman Stupak believed him.

I have never experienced the pressure that happens at the national level. I imagine it’s the difference between a 1,000-pound bomb and a hydrogen bomb. It is localized annihilation versus national annihilation.

Just the same, I can tell you that what I went through was more than enough for me. I didn’t fail. I passed the pro life bill the Democrats tried to force me to kill. I thank God for that. I mean that literally. I thank God for that.

Unlike Congressman Stupak and Senator Nelson, I had the great help of my own past. I knew what abortion was, and I knew what I had done in the past. There is no certainty quite like looking at the depth of your own depravity. It is absolutely shattering. After that, you stop trying to be smart, because you know that your own smarts have led you to do what you can never undo.

I also had the experience of having seen the lying liars of politics before. I had matriculated through the school of being in office and out of office and then back in office once again. That perspective lets you to see the lies of politics as nothing else can.

I knew that sometimes you just have to do what’s right and put the rest in God’s hands. It’s a matter of stepping out onto what looks like thin air and trusting that He will put solid ground under your foot. “Lean not on your own understanding,” the Scriptures tell us. “Trust and obey,” the hymn teaches. That is exactly what you have to do.

Bart Stupak believed a lying president, and the action he took because he believed let the genie out of the bottle. I know I’m going to get roasted and toasted by the absolutists in Public Catholic’s readership, but I feel sorry for him. I felt sorry for him at the time. He had such a magnificent opportunity to stand for life. And he gave it away for a lie.

Based on the op-ed piece he wrote for USA Today, Congressman Stupak is still trying to parse what he did. I don’t think he can accept that it was a disaster, and not just for him personally. It was a disaster for this nation, allowing as it did the formulation of the HHS Mandate.

It was an unmitigated disaster for the fight for life and for Christian values generally. The resulting purge of pro life Democrats from the Democratic Party has resulted in one of our two national parties going totally over the cliff on moral issues.

This is a terrible thing, for all Americans. Knowing what I know of politics and both of these two national parties, I can tell you that Christians no longer have a choice at the ballot box. I always get rebuffed by hard-core Republicans when I say this, but I will continue to say it, because it is true. Both parties are amoral. Without a balance of push and pull between them to keep one another honest, they will, either one of them, do terrible things. This isn’t something I’m guessing about. I’ve seen it.

By destroying the growing pro life movement within the Democratic Party, Congressman Stupak’s actions also destroyed the single best chance this country had to find legislative resolutions to the social issues that are tearing it apart. We need both parties to change this country. Congressman Stupak’s actions polarized the fight in a horrible way.

I feel sorry for him.

And for all of us.

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, calling good evil, First Amendment, Health Care, HHS Mandate, Politics, Pro Life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , 11 Comments

Obama: ‘I’ve Got a Pen and I’ve Got a Phone and I’m Not Waiting for Legislation’

January 15, 2014 by 15 Comments

The presidency has been lurching toward elected dictator-ism ever since Harry Truman took us down the path of our first undeclared war in the guise of a “police action.”

Lyndon Johnson put the cherry on top with the not only undeclared war of Vietnam, but by lying to both Congress and the American people about the cause of that war. Since then, presidents very rarely consult Congress before they take this nation to war. They just more or less get up one fine morning and decide that, hey, we’ve been at peace for, say, 30 or 40 minutes, and it’s time to gin up another war.

Sad to say, the war-making dictatorship which American presidents have taken onto themselves is truly nothing compared to the way they have gradually set aside the lawmaking powers of Congress.

That’s how we got President Obama’s very excellent HHS Mandate and its attack on (read that destruction of) religious freedom.

Each president, every single one of them without regard to political party or theory of government, has advanced the presidency into new elected dictator territory.

Now, President Obama has called a press conference to announce that he no longer needs Congress to enact laws at all. He has, he tells us, “a pen and a phone” and that’s all he needs to de facto enact gun control, immigration reform and God only knows what else.

Congress could, if it got its collective head out of endless and useless sniping and fighting with itself, assert its rightful authority and take back these powers from the Prez. After all, presidents didn’t just reach out and snatch power away from Congress against Congress’ will. Congress gave it to them.

Presidential fiat is a direct consequence of the utter and complete will-less-ness of Congress. I think that members of Congress are secretly glad when the President acts in their stead. They’re glad, because a president running amuck and making law with his mighty pen removes the necessity of taking the hard votes off their shoulders. While the president does their job of lawmaking they are free to go to receptions, raise money for their outlandishly expensive campaigns and take pot shots at members of the opposite party in an attempt to achieve the only thing that matters to them: Control of one House of Congress or the other for their political party.

I keep paraphrasing Lily Tomlin when I write about this stuff. I can’t help doing it. It just fits. So let me say it again.

I try to be cynical about American politics, but I can’t keep up.

The President of the United States made the bold announcement that he’s all through waiting for Congress to pass legislation and he is anointing himself both Congress and President in one mighty, pen-wielding man.

Do you remember the 1950s movie The Ten Commandments? It’s was good movie stuff when Yul Brynner, who played Ramses, gazed off with that incredible screen presence of his and intoned in that resonating Yul Brynner voice, “So let it be written. So let it be done.”

That was walloping great theater.

However, when a president of the United States starts channeling his inner Ramses and doing essentially the same thing, it’s not theater. It is an overstepping and trammeling of the Constitutional separation of powers that has helped keep Americans free these past 200 plus years.

President Obama didn’t start this process of elected dictators sitting in the White House, and sadly, I don’t think he’s going to be the end of it. So long as Congress only cares about getting re-elected and making sure that their political party either takes or holds power, the presidency will continue to become more imperial.

“I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone,” the man said.

Who knew that’s all it took.

From Reuters:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said on Tuesday he would not wait for Congress to pass legislation to advance his policy priorities this year and said he was “getting close” to finishing a review of U.S. surveillance practices – to be unveiled on Friday.

Obama, speaking to reporters during a cabinet meeting at the White House, foreshadowed his upcoming State of the Union address and what appeared to be a new messaging strategy by emphasizing his ability to take executive actions without approval from lawmakers.

“We are not just going to be waiting for legislation in order to make sure that we’re providing Americans the kind of help that they need,” he said.

“I’ve got a pen, and I’ve got a phone. And I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions … and I’ve got a phone that allows me to convene Americans from every walk of life,” he said.

Filed Under: America, First Amendment, HHS Mandate, Politics, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , 15 Comments

USA Today Urges Obama to ‘Grant Religious Freedom the Wide Berth it Deserves’

January 14, 2014 by 44 Comments

USA Today published an editorial calling for the Obama administration to back down on its ridiculous attack on the Little Sisters of the Poor.

Last week’s Catholic bashing column from US News and World Report, followed by their declaration that such Catholic bashing  is now “fair comment” just about pushed me to the point of totally disregarding anything that comes from the msm.  The USA Today editorial is a totally unexpected moment of sanity. In language that focuses on the issues and doesn’t bash anybody, they simply outline their reasons for believing that the Obama Administration needs to end its drive to continue the HHS Mandate.

USA Today says that they also publish editorials with contrasting views, which is a good practice. Hopefully, the contrast they publish on this issue will be as well-reasoned and focused on the issues as the one today.

From USA Today:

From a health care standpoint, the Affordable Care Act’s mandate that all employers provide coverage, without co-pays, for contraceptives is sound. It is important preventive care. So says the prestigious Institute of Medicine, arbiter of such things.

Wisely, churches and other houses of worship are exempt from the requirement, but the administration wrote rules so narrowly that they failed to exempt Catholic and other religiously affiliated hospitals, colleges and charities. Its position was constitutionally suspect, politically foolish and ultimately unproductive. The number of women affected is likely so small that the administration could find some less divisive way to provide the coverage.

Instead, the administration is battling Catholic bishops and nuns, Southern Baptists, Christ-centered colleges and assorted religious non-profits that filed challenges across the country. The lawsuits stem from an “accommodation” President Obama offered after his too-narrow religious exemption caused an uproar in 2012.

The accommodation is more of a fig leaf than a fix: Although religiously affiliated non-profits do not have to supply birth control coverage themselves, they must sign a certification that allows their insurance companies to provide it instead. Some non-profits have acquiesced, but not the Little Sisters and others who argue that this makes them complicit in an act that violates a tenet of their faith. If the non-profits refuse to sign, they face ruinous fines — $4.5 million a year for just two of the Little Sisters’ 30 homes.

 

 

Filed Under: America, Catholic, Christian Bashers, Christianity, Culture, Following Christ, Freedom of Conscience, Health Care, HHS Mandate, Politics, Post Christian West, Pro Life, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , 44 Comments

Little Sisters of the Poor and Hiring a Hit Man to Kill Your Neighbor

January 10, 2014 by 10 Comments

 

Supporters of the HHS Mandate often refer to an “opt-out” as a reason why the Mandate does not put the government in the position of forcing Christians to violate their religious beliefs.

One commenter in the Washington Post even went to so far as to label the Little Sisters of the Poor and their ministry as “religiously affiliated” rather than “religious,” meaning, of course, they aren’t a “legitimate” religious enterprise. This is the sort of specious argument you can expect from people who are trying to thread the needle of the HHS Mandate without admitting that they are attacking the First Amendment. The same author called the arguments in the lawsuit filed by the Little Sisters of the Poor “hooey.”

I guess you could go with the obvious deep-thinking in that statement. But it might be more informative to consider what the arguments in the lawsuit actually are. The simplest analogy I can use to try to explain those arguments would be to say that even if all you do is hire a hit man to kill your neighbor, you are still guilty of your neighbor’s murder. By the same token, even if all you do is require someone else to commit a grave sin in your stead, you have still taken part in committing that grave sin.

Requiring a Catholic to hire a hit man to kill their neighbor is forcing them to violate their religious belief that murder is a sin. By the same token, requiring the Little Sisters of the Poor to hire an insurance company to provide contraceptives and abortion coverage to their employees is requiring them to provide those things themselves.

For those who aren’t acquainted with the concept, it’s called morality.

If you want to read the exact language in the Little Sisters of the Poor’s reply brief, you’ll find it here. Go to page 8 and read for a couple of pages to get the Little Sisters of the Poor’s position.

The real issue here is not the same old meaningless arguments that we keep hearing from HHS Mandate supporters. It’s why religious people are being forced to answer them by making obvious points over and over. Is this really the best they’ve got?

This isn’t rocket science. Only people who are deliberately refusing to see the truth can deny that the Little Sister of the Poor and their ministry to frail elderly people are a good deal more than just a “religiously affiliated” organization. If there’s any “hooey” going on here, it’s the attempt to claim (for political purposes) that the religious commitment of these nuns is not for real.

By the same token, I, at least, am weary of explaining that forcing someone to hire someone else to do something for them is not an exemption from that activity. I think the people who keep repeating this nonsense are just saying it because they have taken a position and this is the best argument they can come up with to defend it.

Instead of going around in circles by repeating the same completely bogus argument or resorting to crude religious bigotry, perhaps they should own their HHS Mandate for what it is and be done with it. The HHS Mandate is a blatant attempt to restrict the historic religious freedom given to all Americans by the First Amendment by limiting it to only organized and federally recognized churches. It is aimed directly and obviously at the largest single denomination in America, which is the Catholic Church.

It is an egregious attack not only on the Catholic Church, or even only on people of faith, but on the bedrock freedoms on which this country was founded and which has made it the great nation that it is today.

The HHS Mandate is an obvious and deliberate government attempt to destroy the moral and prophetic voice of the Catholic Church by forcing it to violate its own teachings. The HHS Mandate is designed to force the Church to kiss Ceasar’s ring.

Since the Mandate was first promulgated, the administration’s running dogs in the press have put forth these identical arguments over and over ad nauseam. Any time the administration gets its nose bloodied in court, all you have to do is count 3, 2, 1 and here they come with the same old stuff they’ve been peddling since the beginning.

Does anybody believe that these people all wake up in the morning with the same set of thoughts in their minds? I admit they do come across as the Stepford Columnists, but I think it’s far more likely that they’re working from the same script and that script was generated, either directly or indirectly, by the administration.

Check out The Anchoress for more discussion on this topic.

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, calling good evil, Catholic, Christian Bashers, Christian Persecution, Christianity, Faith, First Amendment, Following Christ, Freedom of Conscience, Health Care, HHS Mandate, Politics, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , , 10 Comments

Little Sisters of the Poor: Doing God’s Work. Fighting Goliath.

January 9, 2014 by 29 Comments

 

The Little Sisters of the Poor, the stand up nuns who’ve taken on the Obama administration over the HHS Mandate, are a bunch of tough customers.

I mean that in the best understanding of the word “tough.” Providing frail elderly people with loving care on a 24/7 basis is work that would make the average Navy Seal turn weak in the knees.

When I say 24/7, I mean twenty-four hours, right around the clock; every single day, right around the calendar. Caring for a frail elderly person is more demanding in a lot of ways than caring for a toddler. They are both sweet, precious and strong-minded. The differences are that the toddler isn’t always trying to die on you, and they don’t have a memory of having once been a strong, independent adult.

The Little Sisters of the Poor do God’s work here on earth by providing care for people who are at the end of their earthly journey. The last phases of life are not a waste, and they are not a bother. Elderly people are beautiful, wonderful gifts to all of us. The fact that they require a bit more of us than our me-ism allows only makes them more precious.

The closest anyone will ever be to God in this life is not while sitting in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament, but when they are sitting on the bathroom floor at 3 am, holding a croupy baby while the shower runs, or when they are changing the sheets on the bed of their incontinent elderly parent. Jesus is standing right beside you when you do these things, because when you do them for the least of these, you are truly doing them for Him.

This work of caring for those who can’t care for themselves is the life’s work of the Little Sisters of the Poor. They have given their lives to caring for Christ in the disguise of our frail elderly.

It’s no surprise to me that someone like this would become such a thorn in the side of the mighty and powerful United States Department of Justice. It’s also no surprise that those who want to force these sisters to accede to the will of a galloping secularism that seeks to mow down religious expression in public places in these United States should find the Little Sisters so problematic.

How do you turn public opinion against a bunch of nuns who have given their lives to care of the frail elderly?

The usual method in cases like this, where the problem persons are just too good to attack directly, is to redirect your venom by choosing an easier target. You might, say, go at a Catholic Supreme Court justice and that mean old Catholic Church and, of course, everyone’s favorite bugaboo, the Catholic bishops.

The trick is to make the fight about something other than those sweet little nun ladies with their bedpans and rosaries. Shift the focus and make the fight about the big, bad Catholic Church and you can count on the Pavlovian Catholic haters lining up on your side of the argument.

But the fact is, the argument is precisely about the Little Sisters of the Poor, along with their bed pans and rosaries. It’s about every Christian everywhere who wants to exercise their right as free Americans to practice their faith without government interference.

As much as its proponents try to twist and turn it, the HHS Mandate is a direct attack on the Constitutional protection of the free exercise of religion of American citizens.

The HHS Mandate is a regulation, promulgated by an appointed committee and signed by the president. It has the force of law, but it is not a law. It is a star-chamber bit of special interest government bullying that seeks to make an end run around the First Amendment of the Constitution. It is a vile piece of work that directly contradicts the guarantees in the Affordable Health Care Act, which is the legal authority by which the HHS Mandate was created.

Did that last bit go in a confusing circle? There’s no surprise in that, since it is circular. Congress passed the Affordable Health Care Act, which contained guarantees of religious exemption. The act also gave regulatory powers to the Department of Health and Human Services. Then (deep breath) …

… HHS created a committee to draft these regulations, and this unelected committee of representatives of special interests wrote the HHS Mandate which goes against the specific language in the law guaranteeing religious exemptions that gives the committee its power to promulgate the regulation in the first place.

Now. Is that clear as mud? The truth is, if the whole thing seems circular, it’s because it really does go in circles. But, to add to the confusion, this circle, unlike every other circle, has a starting point.

That starting point is a president who lied.

The HHS Mandate directly contradicts the president’s own executive order guaranteeing religious exemption as part of the enforcement of the Affordable Health Care Act. The fact that the president signed the HHS Mandate and has staked his presidency on it, means that he lied when he issued that executive order, in the promises he gave Congressman Bart Stupak and to the American people.

Enter, the living saints, the Little Sisters of the Poor and their tough-as-nails insistence on their Constitutional rights as American citizens.

What to do with a bunch of nuns who take care of sick old people?

I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see attacks on the nuns themselves sooner or later. That would be the usual behavior track. But for now, the administration apologists are confining themselves to attacking the Church.

In the meantime the Little Sisters continue to do God’s work in many places, including, here, here and here.

For information about the on-going debate on this topic at US News and World Report, check out Frank Weathers.

Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, calling good evil, Caregiving, Catholic, Christian Bashers, Christian Persecution, Health Care, HHS Mandate, New Evangelization, Nuns, Politics, Post Christian West, Pro Life, Religious Freedom, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , 29 Comments

2013 Favs: The War on Girls: Sterilize Your Teen-Aged Daughter for Free (and without your consent)

December 30, 2013 by 37 Comments

I’ve been aware of this for several months. I’ve wanted to blog about it, but the Democrats and the Republicans have taken up sooooo much space with their shenanigans that I kept putting it back.

Today is the day.

Did you know that the “women’s health” advocates in our government are making sterilization available to teen-aged girls without parental consent?

I could rant about the obvious hypocrisy in this. I could also talk about the hundred-year history of eugenic sterilizations and manipulations of women’s bodies that continues into the present. In fact, I AM going to do both those things. For a starter, check out another of today’s posts here.

But for today, I think I’ll let the facts speak for themselves. This is an excerpt of a CNS article talking about the phenomena of government-sponsored sterilizations for teen-aged girls without parental consent. 

Oh, and one more tiny thing: This is one of the things that the HHS Mandate would force the Catholic Church and all Christian ministries to pay for. 

I’ll talk about this more in the future. Stay tuned. Here’s the article:

Washington D.C., Sep 25, 2012 / 04:06 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Minor children on their parents’ health care plans will have free coverage of sterilization and contraception, including abortion-causing drugs, under the controversial HHS mandate – and depending on the state, they can obtain access without parental consent.

Matt Bowman, senior counsel for the religious liberty legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, said the mandate “tramples parental rights” because it requires them to “pay for and sponsor coverage of abortifacients, sterilization, contraception and education in favor of the same for their own children.”

The Department of Health and Human Services ruled in January 2012 that most employers who have 50 or more employees must provide the coverage as “preventive care” for “all women with reproductive capacity.”

The mandate also requires the coverage for beneficiaries, including minors, on the affected health plans, Bowman told CNA Sept. 20. That means that a minor on her parents’ plan could be sterilized if she finds a doctor willing to perform the procedure.

“She can be sterilized at no cost,” Bowman stated. “Whether her parents will know and/or consent might differ by state. But the Guttmacher Institute and other abortion advocates explicitly advocated for this mandated coverage of minors so that access without parental involvement might be able to increase.”

The Guttmacher Institute, in a Sept. 1 briefing on state policies, said that an increase in minors’ access to reproductive health care over the last 30 years shows a broader recognition that “while parental involvement in minors’ health care decisions is desirable, many minors will not avail themselves of important services if they are forced to involve their parents.”

The institute, the former research arm of abortion provider Planned Parenthood, said that 26 states and the District of Columbia allow all minors 12 years and older to consent to contraceptive services. At least one state, Oregon, allows 15-year-olds to consent to sterilization. (Read more here.)

Filed Under: Catholic, Child Rearing, Eugenics, Family, Health Care, HHS Mandate, Misogyny, Politics, Pro Life, The War on Girls, Uncategorized, Violence Against Women, Women's Rights Tagged With: , , , , 37 Comments

HHS Mandate and the Complete Loss of Religious Identity

December 22, 2013 by 15 Comments

 

HHS Mandate = Totalitarianism.

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Filed Under: America, Calling Evil Good, calling good evil, Catholic, Christian Bashers, Christian Persecution, Christian Solidarity, Christianity, Culture, Faith, Following Christ, Health Care, HHS Mandate, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , 15 Comments

Baptists Teach Catholics How to Follow Church Teaching

December 8, 2013 by Leave a Comment

 

 

This is basically what Pope Francis teaches about economics in Evangelii Gaudium.

There is nothing “Marxist” about it. It is basic Gospel teaching that every serious Christian should seek to follow.

It comes from an Oklahoma Southern Baptist family, talking about their business. This is the brave Green family, owners of Hobby Lobby.

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Filed Under: America, Christian Solidarity, Culture, Economics, evangelization, Faith, Family, Following Christ, HHS Mandate, Holy Father, Politics, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , , Leave a Comment

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