Sermon of Father Jay Scott Newman - Tyrannical Government Decrees and the Religious Liberty Crisis

Sermon of Reverend Jay Scott Newman
(Audio)

Pastor

St. Mary's Catholic Church

Greenville, South Carolina

February 5, 2012

 

Bishops Plan Aggressive Expansion of Birth-Control Battle

From Reuters
By Stephanie Simon

Bishops listen to proceedings during the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in Baltimore, Maryland November 14, 2011.  Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

Catholic bishops, energized by a battle over contraception funding, are planning an aggressive campaign to rally Americans against a long list of government measures which they say intrude on religious liberty.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops plans to work with other religious groups, including evangelical Christians, on an election-year public relations campaign that may include TV and radio ads, social media marketing and a push for pastors and priests to raise the subject from the pulpit.

50 Members of Congress Hold Press Conference on Legislation to Stop Obama Mandate

From LifeSiteNews

By Jill Stanek

The press thinks, and Democrats hope, the controversy surrounding President Obama’s contraception mandate issue has dissipated.

It hasn’t.

I wrote yesterday a vote is anticipated any time now in the Senate on Senator Roy Blunt’s measure, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act.

Meanwhile, Congressman Jeff Fortenberry has introduced similar legislation in the House.

Both bills have the bipartisan support of 220 Members of Congress and Senators.

Today Congressman Fortenberry and 49 House and Senate colleagues will hold a news conference at 1p EST to promote the legislation, “which would protect the religious liberty and conscience rights of every American who objects to being forced by the strong-arm of government to pay for drugs and procedures recently mandated by the Department of Health and Human Services.”

Read the rest of this entry at LifeSiteNews >>

Is Obama Being Insensitive to Religion in U.S.?

“America The Beautiful” author Dr. Ben Carson on Obama’s birth-control mandate and its impact on religious freedom.

 

Divide and Conquer

From The New York Times, The Opinion Pages

By Ross Douthat

Catholic Quisling Carol Keehan and Obama

So far as I can tell, the White House’s proposed “compromise” in the contraception-sterilization-plan B-ella controversy asks the parties involved to compromise their reasoning faculties and play a game of “let’s pretend” instead. The revised regulation allows religious institutions to pretend that they aren’t actually purchasing an insurance plan that covers services they find morally objectionable, because their insurance companies will be required to pretend that they’re supplying these services free of charge. But fond illusions about “free” services aside, it’s hard to see how a system in which Catholic hospitals and colleges are required to purchase health insurance for their employees from insurers that are required to cover birth control, sterilizations and the morning- and days-after pills is meaningfully different from the original Health and Human Services mandate. As Yuval Levin writes, ”the choice for religious employers is still between paying an insurer to provide their workers with access to a product that violates their convictions or paying a fine to the government.” The rule has been changed, but the reality remains the same.
 

The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto draws a useful analogy:

 

In Depth Analysis: The Bishops' Tougher Response to the Obama 'Compromise' Mandate

From CatholicCulture.org

By Phil Lawler

After an initial muted reaction to President Obama’s proposed “accommodation,” the leaders of the US bishops’ conference have released a second, stronger statement, declaring that the mandate for contraceptive coverage in health-care programs remains “unacceptable and must be corrected.” 

On Friday evening, February 10—several hours after President Obama unveiled his “compromise” proposal—the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) released an official statement signed by five leading prelates. The bishops said that the revised plan “continues to involve needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions, and to threaten government coercion of religious people and groups to violate their most deeply held convictions.” 

Thomas Aquinas College Joins Growing Number Denouncing Obama's Assault on Religious Liberty

Thomas Aquinas College

On January 30, 2012, Thomas Aquinas College President Michael F. McLean mailed the following letter to California’s two U.S. senators, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Sen. Barbara Boxer, and the College’s local congressman, Rep. Elton Gallegly:

I am writing on behalf of Thomas Aquinas College to express the College’s strong disapproval of the Obama Administration’s decision to require that coverage for sterilization, abortifacients, and contraception be included in virtually all health plans.

Voluntary sterilization, abortion, and artificial contraception are all directly contrary to Catholic teaching and cannot, in any way, be supported by individual Catholics or Catholic institutions desiring to live in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church.

The administration’s allowance of a one-year delay before religious employers are forced to comply with the HHS mandate does not ameliorate the situation at all; in the words of Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York and President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, “in effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.”

Archbishop Dolan continued: “Never before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience. This shouldn’t happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights.” Making a similar point, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, chair of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on Pro-Life Activities, said “this mandate gravely compromises religious liberty.”

Americans hold dear our country’s long tradition of honoring freedom of conscience for its citizens. We at Thomas Aquinas College hope, therefore, that you will join with us and with all who believe in the Constitution and religious liberty to oppose this mandate. I urge you to expend every effort to have it withdrawn.

Sincerely,


Michael F. McLean
President
Thomas Aquinas College


Cc: Barack Obama, President of the United States
Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services
Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, Archbishop of New York Cardinal
Daniel DiNardo, Archbishop of Galveston-Houston
Archbishop José Gomez, Archbishop of Los Angeles

Obama's "Accomodation" is a Cynical Distinction Without a Difference

Sebelius and Obama: moving America toward cold, brutal tyranny

The so called "accommodation" offered people of faith by the Obama regime is a distinction without a difference.  It is a cynical effort to defuse growing national resistance with semantic window-dressing.  Saying that insurance companies will be mandated to provide abortifacients and contraceptives as part of the insurance packages all employers will have to chose from, makes no ethical difference.  

As president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan has decided to see the new regulatory mandate before judging it.  However, on the basis of what Obama and the vengeful, excommunicated Catholic, Kathleen Sebelius, have had to say about it, it should be met with rejection and renewed determination to oppose the Obama regime's trampling of conscience rights and religious liberty.

We would suggest to the American Catholic bishops that they need to stand up for the conscience rights of all Americans, not merely their own institutions.  No insurance company, employer or individual should be compelled by their government to purchase or do anything in violation of their conscience.  Obamacare is a carefully calculated path to an oppressive, jack-booted, police state.  It must be repealed root and stem.  The Obama-Sebelius trampling of religious liberty offers patriots an opportunity to defend our country in a dark hour, restore Constitutional government and ensure that we never again raise up to the highest office in the land an enemy of God-given rights. 

Obama's Trampling on God's Turf Now

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Yes, Virginia, there is a religious war going on. It is for the soul of America. And traditional Christianity is besieged.

In a January visit to the Vatican, American bishops were warned by Benedict XVI that “radical secularism” posed “grave threats” to their Catholic faith. Your religious freedom is being circumscribed, said the pope. The U.S. government may seek to force you to collaborate in what are “intrinsically evil practices.”

No sooner had the bishops returned home than President Obama instructed them that, under Obamacare, all Catholic schools, hospitals, orphanages, nursing homes and homeless shelters must provide the “morning after” pill, contraceptives and sterilizations for all employees, Catholic and non-Catholic alike.

Obama's Model: Romney Denied Conscience Rights and Persecuted Catholic Institutions First

Frick and Frack

As the liberal Governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney not only provided the forerunner for Obamacare, like Obama, he opposed conscience rights and exemptions for faith-based institutions under Romneycare.

From WorldNetDaily

By Joe Kovacs

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney flipped in 2005 to take a stance similar to the Obama administration on hospital mandates for the morning-after pill for rape victims, according to news reports from seven years ago.

According to a Boston Globe article dated Dec. 9, 2005, Romney reversed course on the state’s emergency-contraception law, saying all hospitals in Massachusetts would be obligated to provide the morning-after pill to rape victims.

Will American Catholics Be Forced Into 'Recusancy' System?

From Catholic World News

Looking forward to the possible ramifications of the Obama administration’s HHS mandate, Matthew Cullinan Hoffman wonders whether American Catholics of the 21st century might be put in the same position as the Recusants in England under Queen Elizabeth I.

The HHS mandate stipulates that institutions which do not provide health-care coverage that includes subsidies for contraception and sterilization will face substantial fines. Similarly, Hoffman notes, in Elizabethan England, wealthy Catholics could pay a fine for their failure to embrace the newly established Church of England. Looking forward, he suggests:

As under the old recusancy system, some larger and wealthier institutions might be able to sustain the financial burdens, but smaller ones will simply go bankrupt and be forced to fold, or will publicly violate their religious beliefs to remain in existence. The outcome will be painfully similar to that of other policies that impose morally offensive requirements on Catholics, such as requiring adoption agencies to give children to homosexuals.

Additional sources for this story
Some links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• Twenty-first Century Recusants (Catholic World Report)

The Bishops Are Wrong and Have No One But Themselves To Blame for Obama’s Persecution of Catholics

 One need not be a libertarian to recognize the truth in the following column.  Forcing any organization, company or individual to purchase or do anything in violation of their conscience is wrong, not only for religious organizations, and should be recognized as such by the righteous movement building against Obama and his mandates.  We also heartily agree that the American bishops have precipitated this crisis by "their full-throated endorsement of the modern welfare state."  The American bishops have the right and responsibility to speak out on the broad moral issues of the day.  They exceed their responsibility and competence when they address the details of public policy.  That is the arena for competent lay faithful.  It was the American bishops who were in full-throat support for Obamacare.  Did it not occur to them that shackles might follow the shekels? 

The bishops' responsibility is to teach, govern and sanctify within their dioceses.  The past decade revealed how miserably a majority of them have carried out their primary duties.  They should get their own houses in order and dispense with lobbyists.

From LewRockwell.com

By Eric Giunta

This past Sunday, bishops around the United States delivered to their congregations a short pastoral letter urging prayer, fasting, and legislative lobbying against the Obama administration’s announcement that all employers, most religious institutions included, will soon have to subsidize their employees’ contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs.

Given the terribly low expectations most Catholics have of their bishops, it is no surprise that many of my co-religionists, surveying the now-daily condemnations by clerics and laymen (on both the orthodox "right" and the dissenting "left") speak of a proverbial "waking" of "the sleeping giant." But I’m afraid a dose of ecclesiastical realism is in order. All indications are that the bishops’ approach to these events is woefully off the mark and cannot but backfire against them in the long run.

Catholic Church Rejects Surrender Terms from Obama

It gives us no pleasure that at long last the institutional Church and our coreligionists are finally seeing Obama and his regime as a manifestation of the pure evil that they are ... an evil that can only be overcome with solidarity, resistance and political action that is rooted in prayer and fasting.  There was a reason we chose to post this work from Chopin on Inauguration Day, 2009.  If Obama's war on and persecution of the Catholic Church opens the eyes of fools, and causes the majority of Catholics who voted for Obama to be more discerning and vote more prayerfully in the future, our Church and nation will be far better off.

From NewsWithViews

By Cliff Kincaid

My Catholic priest, Father Larry Swink, delivered a homily on Sunday that I told him would make headlines. In the toughest sermon I have ever heard from a pulpit, he attacked the Obama Administration as evil, even demonic, and warned of religious persecution ahead. What was also newsworthy about the sermon was that he cited The Washington Post in agreement—not on the subject of the Obama Administration being evil, but on the matter of its abridgment of the constitutional right to freedom of religion. 

What is happening is extraordinary and unprecedented. The Catholic Church is in open revolt against the Obama Administration, with Fr. Swink noting from the pulpit that priests across the archdiocese were joining the call on Sunday to rally Catholics to resistance against the U.S. Government. He said we are entering a time of religious persecution and that Catholics and others will have to make a final decision about which side they are on.

Father Barron Comments on the HHS Contraception Mandate

Father Robert Barron says that the Obama administration’s recent ruling on contraception coverage shows that the secular state is seeking to impose its morality on the Church.

Bishop Bruskewitz Calls Sebelius "A Bitter Fallen-Away Catholic"

Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz of the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska, is by far our favorite Catholic bishop in the United States.  He is a man of clear conviction who never fails to heed the counsel of Pope John Paul II, "to call evil by its proper name."

Bruskewitz: Fight insurance ruling

From The Omaha World-Herald

By Leslie Reed

Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz

LINCOLN — Bishop Fabian Bruskewitz has issued a blistering letter calling on Roman Catholics in the Lincoln Diocese to fight a federal decision requiring all employers to provide health insurance that pays for birth control, female sterilization procedures and "the morning after" pill.

U.S. bishops had asked for an exemption from the rule for employers such as Catholic hospitals and social services agencies. That request was denied this month by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic.

From the Pastor - Chaining Christian Conscience

A weekly column by Father George Rutler.

 Our many fellow Catholics now enchained for the Faith of our Fathers in such places as China, Syria, and Egypt are, as Father Faber’s hymn says, “in heart and conscience free.” But what happens when a government tries to chain the conscience itself?

A few weeks ago, in a remarkably unanimous decision, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the attempt of the present Administration in Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School v. EEOC to restrict religious freedom. Chief Justice Roberts wrote that the Administration's argument that the First Amendment does not guarantee the right of a religious organization to choose its leaders, was an “extreme” infringement of the free-exercise clause.

Now Obama Has Proved It: He Really Is An Enemy of the Catholic Church. But How Will That Affect the 54 Per Cent of Catholics Who Voted for Him Last Time?

Why do I have a sinking feeling about the answer to that question? Someone cheer me up, do

President Obama and Kathleen Sebelius, US health secretary (Photo: CNS)

From The Catholic Herald (UK)

By William Oddie

About a year ago, I wrote a blog entitled “Why Barack Obama has to be seen as an enemy of the Catholic Church”. This was picked up by quite a few American Catholic blogs, for example this one, which reproduced the piece in full; and it attracted much favourable attention: but some of the reactions, also from American Catholics – who presumably were from that shameful 54 per cent of Catholics who voted for Obama – were not favourable.

Obama Offends the Catholic Left

A contraceptive mandate provokes an unnecessary war.

From The Wall Street Journal

By William McGurn

When Barack Obama secured his party's nomination for president in 2008, one group of Democrats had special reason to cheer.

These were Democrats who were reliably liberal on policy but horrified by the party's sometimes knee-jerk animosity to faith. The low point may have been the 1992 Democratic convention. There the liberal but pro-life governor of Pennsylvania, Bob Casey Sr., was humiliated when he was denied a speaking slot while a pro-choice Republican activist from his home state was allowed.

With Mr. Obama, all this looked to be in the past. In 2006, the Illinois senator delivered a speech declaring that "secularists are wrong when they ask believers to leave their religion at the door before entering the public square." He followed up by appearing at fund-raisers for the anti-abortion Bob Casey Jr. during Mr. Casey's successful run for Sen. Rick Santorum's senate seat.