Dolan in the No Spin Zone

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, American Catholicism's most prominent  clerical leader, took the battle for religious liberty to America's number one rated cable news program last night.  Whether or not the Constitution endures will probably be decided in the courts and the Congress, but in head to head combat, we know that Obama will prove to be no match for the affable and brilliant Dolan.

Father Sammie Maletta's Sermon on Obama's Assault on Religious Liberty

On February 5, 2012 Father Sammie Maletta delivered a sermon at St. John the Evangelist Parish in St. John, Indiana. This Homily addressed how President Obama is threatening religious freedom and at war with the Catholic Church. Please take a few moments to listen and then go to http://bit.ly/zPdgpw to fight this assault on freedom of conscience and religious liberty.

With Burning Anxiety

 A concerned reaction to the HHS mandate and its effect on our religious liberty 

By Charles P. Poole, Ph.D.

Editor's note: This article first appeared at Homiletic & Pastoral Review and is reprinted by permission from the author. 

 

Pope Pius XI wrote to wrote to German Catholics during their "painful trials" under the Nazi regime.

On the Fifth Sunday of Ordinary time, February 5th 2012, the bishops throughout the United States wrote official letters to be read to their faithful at all the Masses of that day. These letters concerned the “alarming and serious matter” of the recent announcement by the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (Dept. HHS) that all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees health care coverage which includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. This is clearly a direct attack on the religious freedom guaranteed to the Catholic Church by the First Amendment.

This is reminiscent of what happened in the German Reich on Palm Sunday, 1937, when Pope Pius XI dispatched the Encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Anxiety) to be read at all of the Masses that Sunday condemning the breaches by the Nazi Government of the Reichskonkordat agreement which it had signed with the Church four years earlier. 

The Encyclical spoke of “the systematic hostility leveled at the Church” and of the necessity of “obedience to our conscience and our pastoral mission, whether We be successful or not, to oppose the policy which seeks, by open or secret means, to strangle our rights guaranteed by a treaty.” The Encyclical continued “Take care, Venerable Brethren, that above all, faith in God, the first and irreplaceable foundation of all religion, be preserved in Germany pure and unstained.” It recommended “to encounter the obstinance and provocations of those who deny, despise and hate God, by the never-failing reparatory prayers of the faithful, hourly rising like incense to the All-Highest and staying His vengeance.” Of particular significance was the following statement condemning racism:

Whoever exalts race, or the people, or the state, or a particular form of state, or the depositories of power, or any other fundamental value of the human community - however necessary and honorable be their function in worldly things - whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinises them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned by God.

This statement condemning racism was added to the text of the Encyclical by Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli who soon afterward became Pope Pius XII, and after the War was unjustly defamed as bearing some responsibly for the Holocaust.

It is clear that there are some parallels between the persecution endured by the Church under the Nazi Regime and the present “alarming and serious matter” protested by last Sunday’s Bishops’ letters. There could be more analogous threats in the future. For example, there is a possibility that the abortion of medically defective babies and the denial of some forms of medical care to the elderly might eventually become mandatory, under the law. Forced Euthanasia for certain conditions might also become compulsory.

Another parallel is that the Nazi government began their persecution with the breaching of the Reichskonkordat agreement between the regime and the Church. Our government now plans to break the solemn concordat which they have with the Church, namely the Bill of Rights, which is an agreement to grant religious freedom to all, especially to every church. A solemn agreement is a solemn agreement! The Church now asks our President exactly what it requested from the Führer of the Third Reich, namely to abide by the solemn agreement of the Bill of Rights and not to embark on the road to religious persecution.

We are not suggesting or implying that the motivations of the employees of the Dept. HHS are in any manner similar to those that motivated the policies implemented in Nazi Germany during the 1930s and 1940s. These employees are certainly well-intentioned, and seeking the best for our country. Unfortunately what they plan to implement has the effect of forcing Catholics to act in a manner which violates their religious beliefs and consciences, and hence is a violation of their Civil Rights under the Constitution. This clearly constitutes a type of persecution of our religion. The plan must either be rescinded or be modified to avoid this infringement of Religious Liberties.

The Encyclical came to an end with the hopeful note “as the German people return to religion” to “again resume the task God has laid upon them.” It took the demise of Nazism to permit this to occur in post-war Germany. It is hoped that the American lawmakers will soon “resume the task God has laid upon them,” especially those who profess the Catholic faith and yet have been voting in support of the persecutors.

Note from the author:
I am a physicist and a deacon octogenarian who was approaching nine years of age in 1937 when the encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge was smuggled into Nazi Germany to be read at all Palm Sunday Masses. I lived through the era when my scientific colleagues gave the world the atomic and hydrogen bombs. I lived to see the tyrannies of Imperial Japan, and the Third Reich, rise to power, be responsible for the deaths of millions, and eventually meet their fate. I lived to witness a Polish Pope John Paul II preside over the fall of atheistic European Communism. In my sunset years I am witnessing well-intentioned, but tragically misguided so-called democratic individuals, some professing my own Catholic faith, embarking on a systematic campaign of persecution of my Church. I pray that I can live long enough, perhaps, Deo volente, to the centariari level, to witness the eventual ending of the persecution!

Charles P. Poole, Jr., Ph.D. received his BA in 1950, his MS in 1952 from Fordham University, and his Ph.D. in 1958 from the University of Maryland. He was member of the faculty at the University of South Carolina from 1964 to 1994, and is presently retired. Dr. Poole has published 22 books on physics (most listed on Amazon.com).  His areas of specialty include: condensed matter physics, superconductivity, and nanoscience.

His wife, Kathleen, died after 52 years of marriage. They had five children, 15 grandchildren, and one great granddaughter. In 1993, Charles Poole was ordained a deacon for the Diocese of Charleston, South Carolina. His websites include: www.rciaresources.com and www.faithseekingunderstanding.com

The Political Reality Behind the HHS Mandate

From American Thinker

By Janice Shaw Crouse

President Obama's policies and politics are focused like a laser on the so-called "women's rights" vote -- the feminist and the single women's vote.  According to Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research (GQR), feminist voters in the 2008 presidential election created a "new American electorate."  The data support that conclusion.  Unmarried women supported Barack Obama by a 70-to-29 percent margin, and they voted for Democratic House candidates by a similar margin, 64-to-29 percent.  There was a 44-point difference in the voting patterns of married and unmarried women in 2008.  Unmarried women edged out both younger voters and Hispanic voters as the demographic with the strongest support for Obama.

Bishops Pledge to Intensify Efforts Against Obama Administration's "Unjust and Illegal" Mandate

The Administrative Committee of the US Catholic bishops said yesterday that they will intensify their fight against the Obama administration’s “unjust and illegal” contraception mandate.  The full text of their statement follows:

Caesar's Price for Following One's Conscience - $100 A Day Per Employee

But what is the price when Caesar fails to abide by the Constitution?  When does the Congress begin to act against a regime that has no authority to compel the purchase of anything?

From LifeSiteNews

By Ben Johnson

The price of following your conscience is high – especially if you resist the mandate to furnish your employees with reproductive products and services that violate your religious beliefs.

According to a report released by the Congressional Research Service, religious institutions that fail to provide abortifacient drugs to their employees could be fined $100 a day for each of its employees.

According to the memo, “The Secretary [of HHS] may impose a civil monetary penalty on insurance insurers that fail to comply with the [health care reform law’s] requirements,” such as failing to provide contraception, sterilization, or abortion-inducing drugs. “The maximum penalty imposed by the PHSA is $100 per day for each individual with respect to which such a failure occurs.”

Obama Risks $100 Billion If Catholic Hospitals Close

Bishops May Close Facilities Rather than Bend to Contraception Dictate 

Perhaps Barack Obama assumed that religious leaders would simply offer a token protest to his new mandate for religious organizations to provide free birth control, even when contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization violate the core doctrines of their faith. The president might have had reason to expect that Catholic bishops wouldn’t put up much of a fight, considering their support for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly known as ObamaCare, from which Health and Human Services derives the authority to dictate their coverage requirements to employers.

Read the rest of this entry at The Fiscal Times >>

Guess Who Stopped By Today

We had an interesting visitor here at Sunlit Uplands today; a visit recorded by our Site Meter.  Someone in the Executive Office of the President googled "evangelicals, contraception mandate." One will never know what political or policy discussion and considerations may have prompted such a search, but we are delighted that they found our post entitled "Evangelicals, Southern Baptists Rip HHS Mandate," which we had reposted from Catholic World News.
  

Having worked in the Executive Office of the President in a far better time, we know that there are several thousand employees in the EOP, but it's nice to know that someone there is concerned about the firestorm they brought upon themselves.  

The Obama regime's sinister attempt to drive a wedge between the church hierarchy and the lay faithful, and between conservative Catholics and liberal Catholics backfired badly.  They have not only strengthened the unity of our Church and aroused a sleeping giant politically, they have forged greater unity among all Christians who care about religious liberty, conscience rights and the United States Constitution.  Yes, Catholics and Evangelicals are working together as Christian brothers and sisters to defend our "unalienable Rights" and to rid America of a regime which has proven itself to be an enemy to all people of faith.

Domain Name		(Unknown)
IP Address		198.137.241.# (Executive Office Of The President USA)
ISP		Executive Office Of The President USA
Location		Continent  :  North America Country  :  United States  (Facts) State  :  District of Columbia City  :  Washington Lat/Long  :  38.9007, -77.0431 (Map) Distance  :  413 miles
Language		English (U.S.) en-us
Operating System		Microsoft WinNT
Browser		Internet Explorer 8.0 Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 8.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/4.0; SLCC2; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; .NET CLR 3.0.30729; InfoPath.3; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET4.0C; .NET4.0E)
Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution  :  1680 x 1050 Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit		Mar 2 2012 12:20:20 pm
Last Page View		Mar 2 2012 12:20:20 pm
Page Views		1
Referring URL		http://www.google.co...DQ&usg=AFQjCNEfRq8lo
Search Engine		google.com
Search Words		evangelicals, contraception mandate
Visit Entry Page		http://www.sunlitupl...aptists-rip-hhs.html
Visit Exit Page		http://www.sunlitupl...aptists-rip-hhs.html
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC-5:00
Visitor's Time		Mar 2 2012 12:20:20 pm

Bishops Vow Continued Fight Over Contraception Mandate After Senate Rejects Blunt Amendment

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued the following statement yesterday after the Senate defeated a measure that would have prevented the federal government from forcing employers with religious and moral objections to offer contraception, sterilization and abortafacient drugs as part of their health insurance plans.

WASHINGTON -- The Senate’s 51-48 vote March 1 to table the bipartisan Respect for Rights of Conscience Act (S. 1467), sponsored by Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) and 37 other senators, impels the Church to strengthen its resolve to support religious freedom.

“The need to defend citizens’ rights of conscience is the most critical issue before our country right now,” said Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut. Bishop Lori chairs the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). “We will continue our strong defense of conscience rights through all available legal means. Religious freedom is at the heart of democracy and rooted in the dignity of every human person. We will not rest until the protection of conscience rights is restored and the First Amendment is returned to its place of respect in the Bill of Rights.”

“I am grateful today to Senator Roy Blunt and the 47 other Senators who cast a bipartisan vote reaffirming our nation’s long tradition of respect for rights of conscience in health care,” said Bishop Lori. “We will build on this base of support as we pursue legislation in the House of Representatives, urge the Administration to change its course on this issue, and explore our legal rights under the Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

Freedom of conscience has been in the forefront since the Obama Administration issued a regulation under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act forcing most employers, including religious institutions, to provide coverage for sterilization and contraceptives, including abortion-inducing drugs, even when they violate church teaching. 

Senator McCaskill, Which Side Are You On?

CatholicVote.org is airing this ad in Missouri to put pressure on Senator McCaskill to oppose Obama's anti-religious HHS mandate.

Evangelicals, Southern Baptists Rip HHS Mandate

From CatholicWorldNews.com

The Family Research Council has announced that 2,500 pastors and other evangelical leaders have signed a letter condemning the Obama administration’s contraception mandate. The signatories said:

The contraceptive mandate with the requirement that there will be no co-pay to the patient means millions of Americans will incur the additional cost for these drugs and devices. Forcing religious entities to do the same, despite objections of good conscience, is a severe blow to our religious liberty. Thomas Jefferson drafted the Virginia Act for Establishing Religious Freedom in 1779, which passed in 1786, and set the stage for the First Amendment. In it, Jefferson states: "to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical." Consequently, we ask that you would reverse this decision and protect the conscience rights of those who have biblically-based opposition to funding or providing contraceptives and abortifacients.

“What our forefathers protected is freedom of conscience, freedom of religion. That is -- the freedom to propagate our faith, to take our faith outside the walls of our home, outside the walls of our church and to have Catholic and Baptist charities, and Catholic and Baptist hospitals, and Catholic and Baptist schools that seek to educate within a worldview that is Catholic or Baptist or Lutheran or whatever,” added Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission. “And we are not going to sit by and allow our God-given rights -- which are acknowledged, recognized and protected by the Constitution -- to be atrophied and to be neutered and to be confined and restricted by the Obama administration.”

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

• Evangelicals join Catholics in opposing birth control rule (AP)
• 2,500 rel. leaders sign letter opposing mandate (Baptist Press)
• News Conference Today: FRC Releases Letter Signed By 2,500 Religious Leaders Opposing Contraceptive Mandate (Family Research Council)

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.