Catholic Teaching and Healthcare Reform: The Proper Role of Government

The following full page ad is being run in newspapers in Altoona, Johnstown, and Pittsburgh PA by our local pro-life group. Anyone who would like to use this for advertisements in their own market is free to use/reproduce the text of this ad:

     

In adhering to the doctrine of the Church, Catholics must follow specific moral teaching relative to the life issues (i.e. abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment, etc.), and Catholic social teachings which include the person, society and the role of government etc. (i.e. economic injustice, health care). When moral teachings are distorted, one arrives at false and erroneous conclusions. One such distortion is the Seamless Garment argument which holds that all life issues have equal weight. The argument, while trying to unify a life ethic fails to recognize the preeminence of certain life issues (abortion and euthanasia) over others. The Church teaches that abortion and euthanasia are intrinsically evil act and never justifiable. Abortion and euthanasia are the preeminent life issues. Capital punishment in contrast, although an important life issue is not intrinsically morally evil as is abortion and euthanasia. Some, including many Catholics, have used this distorted argument to justify voting for a pro-abortion candidate (because the candidate is against capital punishment or another lesser life issue).

A true culture of life recognizes the above distinction and values the inviolability of human life, from conception to natural death. 

In the same way, when social teachings are distorted, one could conclude that the Catholic Church obliges governments to provide national health care for its citizens. What the Church has taught is that governments have a duty to ensure their citizens have access to basic healthcare. Their role is to facilitate an environment where access to care is available; quite different than a government-run system. This point was emphasized in a pastoral letter from Kansas City Bishops Most Reverend Joseph F. Naumann - Archbishop of Kansas City in Kansas and Most Reverend Robert W. Finn - Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph as they quote recent Popes. (August 22, 2009) 

“Right to Acquisition of Health Care”

“The right of every individual to access health care does not necessarily suppose an obligation on the part of the government to provide it. Yet in our American culture, Catholic teaching about the “right” to healthcare is sometimes confused with the structures of “entitlement.” The teaching of the Universal Church has never been to suggest a government socialization of medical services. Rather, the Church has asserted the rights of every individual to have access to those things most necessary for sustaining and caring for human life, while at the same time insisting on the personal responsibility of each individual to care properly for his or her own health.” 

Misguided Compassion 

Many Catholics have a misguided compassion relative to government give away programs. They equate government provisions with charity, and as a means to achieve social justice. Often unseen however is the danger in socialistic programs and welfare states which - although providing for people - have a negative and sometimes unintended consequence of creating dependency and diminishing motivation and enterprise. 

The Kansas City Bishops, referencing Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict in this matter noted:

Pope John Paul II wrote:

“By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.” (Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus #48) 

And Pope Benedict writes:

“The State which would provide everything, absorbing everything into itself, would ultimately become a mere bureaucracy incapable of guaranteeing the very thing which the suffering person—every person—needs: namely, loving personal concern. We do not need a State which regulates and controls everything, but a State which, in accordance with the principle of subsidiarity, generously acknowledges and supports initiatives arising from the different social forces and combines spontaneity with closeness to those in need... In the end, the claim that just social structures would make works of charity superfluous masks a materialist conception of man: the mistaken notion that man can live ‘by bread alone’ (Mt 4:4; cf. Dt 8:3)—a conviction that demeans man and ultimately disregards all that is specifically human.” (Pope Benedict XVI, Deus Caritas Est #28) 

The Limits of Government 

The Church has provided safeguards and guidance in this area of Social teaching, especially as it relates to the function of government. They point to basic principles such as the obligation to the common good, Solidarity with our fellowmen and a key principle of Subsidiarity. The Kansas City Bishops emphasize that the Principle of Subsidiarity is fundamental to the work of health care reform, stating:

“This notion that health care ought to be determined at the lowest level rather than at the higher strata of society, has been promoted by the Church as “subsidiarity.” Subsidiarity is that principle by which we respect the inherent dignity and freedom of the individual by never doing for others what they can do for themselves and thus enabling individuals to have the most possible discretion in the affairs of their lives (See: Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, ## 185ff.; Catechism of the Catholic Church, # 1883). The writings of recent Popes have warned that the neglect of subsidiarity can lead to an excessive centralization of human services, which in turn leads to excessive costs, and loss of personal responsibility and quality of care.” 

Case in Point 

The Obama Administration’s recent Health and Human Services Mandate is a precise example of what the Church warned about. The mandate, only a small part of “Obamacare” requires religious health care providers to defy their conscience by offering contraceptives, sterilizations and abortion- inducing drugs. This is an egregious over-reach of the federal government and ignores the aforementioned principles. It’s overly secularized and bureaucratized system which ignores the conscience of individuals and organizations. The mandate drew the ire of the U.S. Catholic Bishops, and many Protestant leaders who have spoken out vehemently against it. 

Put simply, Obamacare mandate erodes our First amendment right to freely exercise our religion. This is no surprise to those aware of President Obama’s anti-life record. 

The President’s Record on Life and Liberty 

President Obama has demonstrated hostility toward life and religious freedom throughout his political career including:

•   As State Senator, Obama opposed the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, which would have provided care and protection for infants born alive after an abortion.
  
•   As a candidate, he made derogatory statements such as that of people “clinging to their guns and religion.”
  
•   Changing the first amendment language by referring “freedom of religion” as “freedom of worship,” knowing full well how social engineering is
  preceded by verbal engineering.
  
•   Under the Obama administration the Army restricted the Catholic Bishop’s letter from being read by chaplains to their men and women... yet
  another first amendment infringement!
  
•   Denying Catholic Charities funding for their treatment program of victims of human trafficking because they refused to refer victims for abortions.
  
•   Most recently, the U.S. Department of Education quietly changed eligibility requirements for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness
  Program to specifically EXCLUDE people who do any kind of public service work for a religious organization or institution. The list goes on and on... To read more on the President’s record see www.lifenews.com/2010/11/07/obamaabortionrecord 
  
  

Battling Back: The Legislature and Courts

Last month, an Amendment was introduced in the Senate to give religious employers a conscience exception. Unfortunately, it was defeated 51-48 with nearly every Democrat voting against it!
Many are calling for another amendment, perhaps from the House of Representatives, but nothing yet has emerged. There are numerous lawsuits challenging the mandate, including seven on behalf of various states. 

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in late March which challenge Obamacare as unconstitutional. Experts believe the vote could go either way given the recent liberal appointees. 

The Inevitable Result 

If amendments, lawsuits and Court challenges fail, this will have a grave effect on all institutions.
In his Sunday column in Catholic New World, Catholic Cardinal George wrote that only three options will exist for Catholic institutions to avoid shutting down under the Obama administration’s mandate: 1) secularize itself, breaking its connection to the church, her moral and social teachings and the oversight of its ministry by the local bishop, 2) to pay exorbitant annual fees to avoid paying for birth control-inclusive insurance policies or 3) to “sell the institution to a non-Catholic group or to a local government.” “The state is making itself into a church,” the Cardinal wrote ... (March 6th 2012 Huff Post Chicago, The internet Newspaper: News blogs video Community)
The Cardinal added that if the President does not rescind this HHS mandate there will be not Catholic hospitals or services in the next two years!!

Do what is Necessary!

Regardless of what may happen in the legislature and courts, people of conscience should give this thoughtful prayer and become politically ACTIVE! Let your representative know you want him or her to take a stand to protect our liberties. Those who voted for Obama, in particular Catholics, must examine his record, inform their conscience and vote accordingly. 

We hope and pray this leads to an anti-Obama vote. Life and Liberty are at stake!

Written by Mark Chuff and Mark Frederick Paid for by Mark Chuff , Mark Frederick and friends

To learn more about this and other related issues, visit us on facebook.

www.facebook.com/forlifeandliberty

The greatest threat facing mankind is...

The greatest threat facing mankind is NOT anthropogenic "climate change."

Nor is it anthropogenic environmental damage.

It most certainly is not "overpopulation." Neither is it "peak oil." Nor is it food shortages.

The greatest threat facing mankind is, however, "anthropogenic."


Because the greatest threat facing mankind is the general failure of mankind to reproduce:

Look around you and think for a minute: Is America too crowded?

For years, we have been warned about the looming danger of overpopulation: people jostling for space on a planet that’s busting at the seams and running out of oil and food and land and everything else.

It’s all bunk. The “population bomb” never exploded. Instead, statistics from around the world make clear that since the 1970s, we’ve been facing exactly the opposite problem: people are having too few babies. Population growth has been slowing for two generations. The world’s population will peak, and then begin shrinking, within the next fifty years. In some countries, it’s already started. Japan, for instance, will be half its current size by the end of the century. In Italy, there are already more deaths than births every year. China’s One-Child Policy has left that country without enough women to marry its men, not enough young people to support the country’s elderly, and an impending population contraction that has the ruling class terrified.

And all of this is coming to America, too. In fact, it’s already here. Middle-class Americans have their own, informal one-child policy these days. And an alarming number of upscale professionals don’t even go that far—they have dogs, not kids. In fact, if it weren’t for the wave of immigration we experienced over the last thirty years, the United States would be on the verge of shrinking, too.

What happened? Everything about modern life—from Bugaboo strollers to insane college tuition to government regulations—has pushed Americans in a single direction, making it harder to have children. And making the people who do still want to have children feel like second-class citizens.

What to Expect When No One’s Expecting explains why the population implosion happened and how it is remaking culture, the economy, and politics both at home and around the world.

Because if America wants to continue to lead the world, we need to have more babies.

Fewer tells a monumental human story, largely ignored, but which promises to starkly change the human condition in the years to come. Never before have birth and fertility rates fallen so far, so fast, so low, for so long, in so many places, so surprisingly. In Fewer, Ben Wattenberg shows how and why this has occurred, and explains what it means for the future. The demographic plunge, he notes, is starkly apparent in the developed nations of Europe and Japan, which will lose about 150 million people in the next half century. Starting from higher levels, but moving with geometric speed, the demographic decline is also apparent in the less developed nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Only the United States (so far) has been exempt from the birth dearth, leaving America as more than "the sole super-power." Perhaps it should be called the global "omni-power." These stark demographic changes will affect commerce, the environment, public financing, and geo-politics. Here Wattenberg lists likely winners and losers. In Wattenberg's world of "The New Demography" readers get a look at a topic often chattered about, but rarely understood.

You’ve heard about the Death of the West. But the Muslim world is on the brink of an even greater collapse. WILL WE GO DOWN IN THE IMPLOSION? Thanks to collapsing birthrates, much of Europe is on a path of willed self-extinction. The untold story is that birthrates in Muslim nations are declining faster than anywhere else—at a rate never before documented. Europe, even in its decline, may have the resources to support an aging population, if at a terrible economic and cultural cost. But in the impoverished Islamic world, an aging population means a civilization on the brink of total collapse— something Islamic terrorists know and fear. Muslim decline poses new threats to America, challenges we cannot even understand, much less face effectively, without a wholly new kind of political analysis that explains how desperate peoples and nations behave. In How Civilizations Die, David P. Goldman—author of the celebrated “Spengler” column read by intelligence organizations worldwide—reveals how, almost unnoticed, massive shifts in global power are remaking our future.

Remarkably, most conventional wisdom about the shifting balance of world power virtually ignores one of the most fundamental components of power: population. The studies that do consider international security and demographic trends almost unanimously focus on population growth as a liability. In contrast, the distinguished contributors to this volume—security experts from the Naval War College, the American Enterprise Institute, and other think tanks—contend that demographic decline in key world powers now poses a profound challenge to global stability. The countries at greatest risk are in the developed world, where birthrates are falling and populations are aging. Many have already lost significant human capital, capital that would have helped them innovate and fuel their economy, man their armed forces, and secure a place at the table of world power. By examining the effects of diverging population trends between the United States and Europe and the effects of rapid population aging in Japan, India, and China, this book uncovers increasing tensions within the transatlantic alliance and destabilizing trends in Asian security. Thus, it argues, relative demographic decline may well make the world less, and not more, secure.

Overpopulation has long been a global concern. But between modern medicine and reduced fertility, world population may in fact be shrinking--and is almost certain to do so by the time today's children retire. The troubling implications for our economy and culture include:* The possibility of a fundamentalist revival due to the decline of secular fertility* The threat to the free market as the supply of workers and consumers declines* The eventual collapse of the American health care system as inordinate expenses are incurred by an aging populationPhillip Longman's uncompromisingly sensible solutions fly in the face of traditional ideas. State intervention is necessary, he argues, to combat the effects of an aging population. We must provide incentives for young families, and we cannot close our eyes and hope for the best as an entire generation approaches retirement age.The Empty Cradle changes the terms of one of the most important environmental, economic, and social debates of our day.

The world's population is still growing, thanks to rising longevity. But fertility rates - the average number of children born per woman - are falling nearly everywhere. More and more adults are deciding to have fewer and fewer children. Worldwide, reports the UN, there are 6 million fewer babies and young children today than there were in 1990. By 2015, according to one calculation, there will be 83 million fewer. By 2025, 127 million fewer. By 2050, the world's supply of the youngest children may have plunged by a quarter of a billion, and will amount to less than 5 percent of the human family. The reasons for this birth dearth are many. Among them: As the number of women in the workforce has soared, many have delayed marriage and childbearing, or decided against them altogether. The Sexual Revolution, by making sex readily available without marriage, removed what for many men had been a powerful motive to marry. Skyrocketing rates of divorce have made women less likely to have as many children as in generations past. Years of indoctrination about the perils of "overpopulation" have led many couples to embrace childlessness as a virtue. Result: a dramatic and inexorable aging of society. In the years ahead, the ranks of the elderly are going to swell to unprecedented levels, while the number of young people continues to dwindle. The working-age population will shrink, first in relation to the population of retirees, then in absolute terms. A world without children will be a poorer world - grayer, lonelier, less creative, less confident. Children are a great blessing, but it may take their disappearance for the world to remember why.

Demographic Winter: Decline of the Human Family (DVD/ Documentary)

by Rick Stout

Product Overview

One of the most ominous events of modern history is quietly unfolding. Social scientists and economists agree - we are headed toward a demographic winter which threatens to have catastrophic social and economic consequences. The effects will be severe and long lasting and are already becoming manifest in much of Europe.

A groundbreaking film, Demographic Winter: Decline of the Human Family, reveals in chilling soberness how societies with diminished family influence are now grimly seen as being in social and economic jeopardy.

Demographic Winter draws upon experts from all around the world - demographers, economists, sociologists, psychologists, civic and religious leaders, parliamentarians and diplomats. Together, they reveal the dangers facing society and the world’s economies, dangers far more imminent than global warming and at least as severe. These experts will discuss how:

The “population bomb” not only did not have the predicted consequences, but almost all of the developed countries of the world are now experiencing fertility rates far below replacement levels. Birthrates have fallen so low that even immigration cannot replace declining populations, and this migration is sapping strength from developing countries, the fertility rates for many of which are now falling at a faster pace than did those of the developed countries.

The economies of the world will continue to contract as the “human capital” spoken of by Nobel Prize winning economist Gary Becker, diminishes. The engines of commerce will be strained as the workers of today fail to replace themselves and are burdened by the responsibility to support an aging population.

Government programs will slow-bleed by the decrease in tax dollars received from an ever shrinking work force. The skyrocketing ratio of the old retirees to the young workers will render current-day social security systems completely unable to support the aging population.

Our attempts to modernize through social engineering policies and programs have left children growing up in broken homes, with absentee parents and little exposure to extended family, disconnected from the generations, and these children are experiencing severe psychological, sociological and economic consequences. The intact family’s immeasurable role in the development and prosperity of human societies is crumbling.

The influence of social and economic problems on ever shrinking, increasingly disconnected generations will compound and accelerate the deterioration. Our children and our children’s children will bear the economic and social burden of regenerating the “human capital” that accounts for 80% of wealth in the economy, and they will be ill-equipped to do so.

Is there a “tipping point”, after which the accelerating consequences will make recovery impossible without complete social and economic collapse? Even the experts can’t tell us how far we can go down this road, oblivious to the outcomes, until we reach a point where sliding into the void becomes unpreventable.

Only if the political incorrectness of talking about the natural family within policy circles is overcome will solutions begin to be found. These solutions will necessarily result in policy changes, changes that will support and promote the natural, intact family.

Just as it took the cumulative involvement of activist organizations, policy makers, the business world and the media to create the unintended consequences we are beginning to experience, so it will take the holistic contribution of all of these entities, together with civic and religious organizations, to change the hearts and minds of all of society to bring about a reversal.

It may be too late to avoid some very severe consequences, but with effort we may be able to preclude calamity. Demographic Winter lays out a forthright province of discussion. The warning voices in this film need to be heard before a silent, portentous fall turns into a long, hard winter.

Demography is destiny. But not always in the way we imagine, begins Pearce (When the Rivers Run Dry) in his fascinating analysis of how global population trends have shaped, and been shaped by, political and cultural shifts. He starts with Robert Malthus, whose concept of overpopulation—explicitly of the uneducated and poor classes—and depleted resources influenced two centuries of population and environmental theory, from early eugenicists (including Margaret Sanger) to the British colonial administrators presiding over India and Ireland. Pearce examines the roots of the incipient crash in global population in decades of mass sterilizations and such government interventions as Mao's one child program. Many nations are breeding at less then replacement numbers (including not only the well-publicized crises in Western Europe and Japan, but also Iran, Australia, South Africa, and possibly soon China and India). Highly readable and marked by first-class reportage, Pearce's book also highlights those at the helm of these vastly influential decisions—the families themselves, from working-class English families of the industrial revolution to the young women currently working in the factories of Bangladesh.

What is the impact of demographics on the prospective production of military power and the causes of war? This monograph analyzes this issue by projecting working-age populations through 2050; assessing the influence of demographics on manpower, national income and expenditures, and human capital; and examining how changes in these factors may affect the ability of states to carry out military missions. It also looks at some implications of these changes for other aspects of international security. The authors find that the United States, alone of all the large affluent nations, will continue to see (modest) increases in its working-age population thanks to replacement-level fertility rates and a likely return to vigorous levels of immigration. Meanwhile, the working-age populations of Europe and Japan are slated to fall by as much as 10 to 15 percent by 2030 and as much as 30 to 40 percent by 2050. The United States will thus account for a larger percentage of the population of its Atlantic and Pacific alliances; in other words, the capacity of traditional alliances to multiply U.S. demographic power is likely to decline, perhaps sharply, through 2050. India's working-age population is likely to overtake China's by 2030. The United States, which has 4.7 percent of the world's working-age population, will still have 4.3 percent by 2050, and the current share of global gross domestic product accounted for by the U.S. economy is likely to stay quite high.

And the primary means by which mankind has stopped reproducing are abortifacient hormonal contraceptives and abortion itself.

Martin Luther called the "Sin of Onan" marital sodomy. In the Judeo-Christian and Natural Law tradition, any sex act made deliberately infecund is no better than sodomy.

So in considering the greatest threats facing mankind, one must also consider this:

Crying to Heaven for Vengeance

by Dr. Jeff Mirus, September 7, 2004

From Our Store: Misinterpreting Catholicism (eBook)

The Bible mentions only four sins which cry out to God for vengeance. Considering the source and the emphasis, we have little choice but to examine our consciences on these points. A cursory examination will not do; we must cast off our cultural preconceptions to see beyond the obvious.

Homicide

And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground.” (Gn 4:10) It is hardly suprising that Cain’s murder of Abel provides the first instance of one of these sins that cries out for Divine vengeance. While all sins disrupt the natural order in some way, those enumerated as crying out to God appear to be chosen because they strike at nature’s root.

It is easy to see how murder fits into this category. The unjust termination of the life of another is a profound violation of “how things should be” precisely because our very nature compels us to regard our own lives as precious. To take a person's life is to terminate in another what we instinctively regard as our own highest good.

Sadly, the ease with which we understand the foulness of murder may be conditioned more by our culture than by Divine Revelation. We must take care that we do not find it abhorrent only insofar as we are creatures of society, rather than creatures of God.

Abortion is a case in point.

Sodomy

Then the Lord said, “Because the outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is great and their sin is very grave, I will go down to see whether they have done altogether according to the outcry which has come to me.” (Gn 18:20-21) The inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were guilty of homosexual activity. So far gone were they in this vice that the men of the town would not even accept heterosexual license with Lot’s daughters, both virgins, as a means of sating their lust (see 19:8-9).

Here we have another case in point for cultural conditioning. It is far more difficult for our contraceptive culture to see how contrary to nature homosexuality is. Those of us who instinctively feel its deep unnaturalness rightly react to homosexual activity with disgust, but logical arguments are unlikely to produce the same reaction in those whose instincts are damaged, blunted or rationalized away.

It is precisely in such situations that Divine Revelation is so very useful, for we cannot trust our feelings when they run counter to reality. We require a better guide. Sodomy strikes at the root of human nature because of its perversion of the procreative impulse, without which the race must die. But in case we don’t see it, God does.

Oppression of Widows and Orphans

“You shall not afflict any widow or orphan. If you do afflict them, and they cry out to me, I will surely hear their cry.” (Ex 21-23) There is a deep truth in this passage about the relationships of husbands to wives, and of parents to children, and about how vulnerable wives and children become when their natural protection is removed.

Very probably all of us can see that it would be gravely sinful to take advantage of the weakness and vulnerability of either a widow or an orphan, and we can readily imagine the financial burdens and solicitation of “favors” with which either can be afflicted. It is much easier in every way to abuse a boy or girl who has no father and to intimidate a woman who has no husband.

Once again, however, we must remove our social blinders to see the great evil in our culture which turns so many into widows and orphans in the first place. The grave sin of divorce, by which natural protection is ripped away from women and children, surely tops the list of horrors under this heading.

Cheating Laborers of Their Due

“You shall not oppress a hired servant who is poor and needy, whether he is one of your brethren or one of the sojourners who are in your land within your towns; you shall give him his hire on the day he earns it, before the sun goes down (for he is poor, and sets his heart upon it); lest he cry against you to the Lord, and it be a sin in you.” (Dt 24:14-15) Here we come to a principle of sound social order: those in positions of authority and wealth have serious obligations to those who depend on their decisions for their well-being. Fortunately, we live in a very wealthy society.

But does our very wealth cause this sin to appear irrelevant? Free enterprise is an excellent system, but too often it carries the completely unnecessary baggage of a callous attitude toward employees, regarding them as commodities. The social teachings of the Church have attempted to address this concern (without pointing at all toward socialism) for over a century.

Yet the latest trend, at least in the United States, is constant mergers and buyouts which throw hundreds of thousands out of work while enriching an elite few. Even temporary unemployment is both a bank-breaker and a heart-breaker. Working under an abusive or negligent boss can be a living nightmare. And most of us are well-shielded from adults who must work for a minimal wage. The Israelites were urged to remember their days in Egypt, and treat others accordingly.

Together and In Order

All of these sins cry out to God, but the four are not equal. The sequence in the text suggests a hierarchy of value, and it is a tightly linked hierarchy. One sin leads to another, from the gravest to the least, as we make objects out of persons and treat them accordingly, subverting all our natural relationships. For this reason, we cannot assuage our consciences by attending to the fourth sin while ignoring the first, or by claiming virtue on the third and closing our eyes to the second. If these sins cry out to God for vengeance and we still commit them or do nothing to restrict them in others, we mock God to His face. Of course, when we’re wearing our usual cultural blinders, it often appears to us that we can mock God with impunity. But isn’t this something else we know from Revelation—in case we cannot see it for ourselves?

The Obama administration would do well to recall these foundational principles before trying to force the only Church in the world still fighting for the future of humanity, and against this greatest threat to it, to cave in and pay for contraception and abortifacients:

Obama administration is taking a wrong-headed line with the church 

Forcing contraception insurance coverage goes too far

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Sunday, January 22 2012, 4:10 AM

Louis Lanzano/AP

Archbishop Timothy Dolan has lambasted the Obama administration for putting health policy ahead of moral teachings.

Excerpt:

President Obama’s health chief decreed Friday that the Catholic Church must provide its employees with health insurance coverage for contraception, its moral stance against birth control be damned.
Wrong, wrong, high-handedly, obtusely wrong.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius took Obamacare’s philosophy of equal insurance for all to a level of zealotry that reduced a deeply held matter of conscience to a bothersome trifle.
Presumably, the President was fully briefed on a decision of this magnitude. If so, he made a fundamental error that will only add to a sense among many faith-based communities that the White House has a thing against religion.
It was less than two weeks ago that the Supreme Court unanimously and thunderingly scolded the administration for trying to tell churches and church-based organization that the government knew best as to who they could hire and fire.
Because of the church’s size and reach, Sebelius’ ruling will apply most broadly to Catholic organizations, but they apply to affiliates of other religions that bar contraception and sterilization.

Bishops warned: Obama will seize assets, only proper response is "Courageous Defiance"

Cardinal O'Connor's response to Clinton admin abortion mandate:

 "Jail me!"

In a recent Sunday column in Catholic New World, Cardinal Francis George wrote that only three options will exist for Catholic institutions to avoid shutting down under the Obama administration’s HHS mandate: 1) secularize itself, breaking its connection to the church, her moral and social teachings and the oversight of its ministry by the local bishop, 2) pay exorbitant annual fees to avoid paying for birth control-inclusive insurance policies or 3) “sell the institution to a non-Catholic group or to a local government.” 

“The state is making itself into a church,” the Cardinal wrote. (March 6th 2012 Huff Post Chicago, The internet Newspaper: News blogs video Community)


Speaking at the STAND UP FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RALLY in Goshen, NY on March 23, 2012, Tim Chichester, founder of the Catholic Family Association of America, pointed out that a fourth option, the most important and appropriate one, has not been mentioned. 

And he had a dire warning for the USCCB.


In his talk, Chichester laid out the real threat to our Catholic institutions  in stark terms:

"The strategy behind the abortion / sterilization mandate is to make those institutions indistinguishable from their secular counterparts while loosening the grip of the Constitution. But, you say, what of the threats to close down the hospitals and other vital services? After all, Catholic hospitals make up 13 percent of hospitals and 16 percent of all admissions in the U.S. - won't closure work?

The answer is a strong maybe not. It worked for Cardinal O'Connor in 1994, why not now? The answer is simple. We are dealing with a president who acts like a hard core Marxist ideologue, one for whom lying and deceit are resume enhancers. This is a man who has been recorded advocating for infanticide. A man whose advisers hold that the state owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions.

He and his fellow travelers lied through their teeth to the Bart Stupaks as well as to the American public. What makes him trustworthy now? ... "

"...Let's walk through a possible scenario. Obama strings along the phony negotiations through the election cycle, the purpose being to provide the delusion of possible compromise for those too weak-minded to accept the reality of what he is. He wins the election. The phony 'negotiations' fail. The bishops fall back to the worst case scenario of “I will go to jail and shut down the hospitals” Obama calls their bluff. A slew of hospitals and many of the 400 other health centers and 1,500 specialized homes that the Catholic Church operates, start to close.

The crisis grows, the wailing begins, and, in a few weeks, Obama steps into the breach with previously prepared eminent domain filings, based upon the infamous Kelo decision, and transfers the assets representing over 200 years of Christian ministry to various private and commercial, as well as federal state and local political entities.

To Obama and all Marxists this is right and just. Let me illustrate why. In 1965 a thirty something year old woman in Odessa, in the USSR, gave help to a WW II widow who was all but starving on her miniscule war widows pension. The young lady was reported and brought to the militia station, the local police, and warned not to help the old woman. She protested. They said “We don't care – just don't help her.” A short time later she was hauled into the station house and warned again. The third time she was arrested and charged with a felony crime – slander against the state – and sentenced to 18 months of what was euphemistically called “strict regime”, the hardest of the hard labor camps.

The connection I am making here is two-fold. One is that most people have never understood the reasoning behind the Obama's effort to do away with tax deductions for charitable giving. The ideological component is the same as that used against the woman. The State is the father of us all – how dare you presume so much. The tax change is part of a web of rules and actions designed to make religious charity impossible, and thereby weaken the only real ideological opposition to Marxism.

The other connection is the recognition of the rabid anti-religious nature of these people. Simply put, you cannot negotiate with them because they simply cannot be trusted. Again, keep the name Stupak in your head...."

And then, Chichester revealed the only possible response of the leaders of the Church Militant in the face of this unconstitutional attack on our consciences and religious freedoms:

"Defiance

How can we act to make the most of this situation. A glance at the city of Nowa Huta, Poland provides insight. Nowa Huta was described by Brian Whitmore of THE BOSTON GLOBE, as the place “...where George Orwell's dark vision of a perfect industrial metropolis was executed with stunning precision. Until, that is, the workers rose up and overthrew Big Brother"

In this grimy steel town the workers wanted a church. The communists said no. The Archbishop of Kraków, Karol Wojtyla, persisted and defiantly held Mass on the site for years. Workers replaced every cross removed or destroyed by the State. Eventually the State caved.

What is needed now is for our bishops and other religious administrators to publicly defy the mandate and keep the institutions open without compliance. We must not give these Marxists the opportunity to seize the assets of religious and charitable institutions.

Our duty, yours and mine, is to assist them, to encourage them by letters and prayers. But our duty extends far beyond this rally in effort and time. We must make ourselves loud enough to be heard. We must be vigorous and persistent in creating prayerful and lively sit-ins in our politicians offices. We need to wheedle , encourage, beg , plead - what-ever it takes - to get our bishops, rabbis, ministers and priests to get motivated to the point of action. We must help them understand that a single pastoral letter to the flock is worthless without the personal courage to lead from the front. We long ago passed from the diplomatic maneuverings of 1938 to the brutal fighting of Stalingrad.

What is needed is direct, forceful, definitive and ongoing actions by courageous and defiant religious and lay leaders.

We need to tell them we will be standing next to them, saying“I will go to jail with you!”

And above all we must pray daily, unceasingly, for the conversion and confounding of those whose word and deed threaten us and our nation with such malice. We have a right and duty to pray for our deliverance from evil."

The following is the text of Chichester's entire presentation.You can also view his presentation on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9pktpXKB-U

Courageous Defiance

Timothy A. Chichester

STAND UP FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RALLY

Delivered 23 March, 2012, Goshen, NY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9pktpXKB-U

CourageousDefiance

Some 3400 years ago a man stood before a king and said the most astonishing of things. He said that the king's authority was limited by God, not the mere will of the king. In Moses we see that courageous defiance to illegitimate authority that grows within the Jewish tradition.

Some1200 years later a man rode into battle under shields and banners marked with the Greek letters Chi and Rho, the monogram for Christ. And with this came the long, painful change in the way men saw each other. With the freedom of religion granted by Constantine, the idea that man derived his dignity from his Creator, an idea carried to us from the bosom of Abraham, is unleashed upon a brutal pagan world, a world mired in the unjust economics of slavery.

Through the centuries the hope of The Prince of Peace flowed over the debauched Roman empire and raised a new civilization, a civilization that saw, with increasing clarity, that it was true, that the dignity of each man was not granted by the State, but was a boon, a boon bestowed without price, a boon innate, a boon granted by an unspeakably loving God. The slow progress of Christian humanism,sometimes even glacial, often beset by the selfish nature of fallen man, ran arrow true, and resulted in the rise of what we know to be, Christianity, currently called Western Civilization, the most creative, peaceful, prosperous and free civilization ever.

That arrow passed through the blood of many courageous men who suffered and died to

shape a future that ensured that the State reflect the God-given dignity of man. That arrow passed through a room 236 years ago, through the hearts of men steeped in Christian culture and humanism. Then that arrow sped outward with it a flaming banner emblazoned with words that reflect natural law and the true, innate, dignity of man as bestowed by Almighty God: 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."

...Rights guaranteed by a miraculous political document that began with the words

"We the People"

and closed with the words

"...in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven"

It was a constitution that former slave Fredrick Douglass described as "a glorious liberty document." We were blessed with a Declaration of Independence that acknowledged the spiritual natur eand rights of man and a Constitution to enshroud and enable them. Not unlike the melding of a body and soul.

Following the initial signing of the US Constitution, France 's Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens, emerged with generalities enabling an atheistic view quite opposed to Christian culture. In what I believe to be the most calamitous moment in the history of man, a nation declared that God did not exist. The pagans got it right. Even the murderous Aztec's, demonic in their human sacrifice,understood the reality of a transcendent deity. No one had ever thought so small as these enlightened ones who were the proto-marxists. France descended into a bloodbath that preshadowed the atheistic socialist regimes to come. The war on religion itself had become overt.

Within two generations the spiritual sewerage spawned from that atheistic ideology was recognizable enough as such a profound danger to civilization that the Vatican condemned Communism by name in 1846,two years before Karl Marx and Friedric Engles were commissioned by the German Communist League to write The Communist Manifesto.

In1891, twenty-seven years before the Bolshevik revolution, the war between the Church and the socialists for the heart of the workingman resulted in the detailed analysis and condemnation of socialism in the encyclical on capital and labor titled Rerum Novarum (which means New Things). In 1917 the war again turned bloody. Lenin asked who would be the communists Saint-Just, referring to the Frenchman behind the Reign of Terror, and found him in Felix Dzerzhinsky, and the Terror began.

The history of the20^th century is that of torrents of blood shed by the various stripes of Marxists, shed always with the harmonics of miasmic rage about man and his opiate, his religion.

The Present

I have sketched the history that has led us to this time. To a time when a self-avowed Marxist with a sworn animosity toward our Constitution, has become so emboldened as to dismiss the First Amendment and crush the Orthodox Jews and Christians who now are almost the only ones left who understand the peril, and have the spiritual resources to resist. The British, those sorry lab rats for a new world order, having voluntarily reached a level of pragmatic atheism exceeding that of the old Soviet Union, no longer have the power to resist the totalitarian State now descending upon them.

Others have talked and will talk about the Health Care Mandate and the need to overturnit. I am now going to talk to you about the duty we have to actively resist.
Since Marxist Socialist ideology holds that "Truth is what serves the State today," and that man is simply an economic unit, any behavior was,and is justified. This is a very, very, important distinction between Judeo-Christian morality and that of the Marxist Socialist. 

It goes to the heart of why so many Jews and Christians alike have been seduced wholesale away from the foundations that held them fast for centuries. It goes to the heart of why the Catholic bishops,charged with transmitting the Deposit of Faith from generation to generation, were 'surprised' by a White House lecture on how they needed to listen to the enlightened ones, the pragmatic Catholic apostates like Pelosi and Durbin, who are so willing to serve our pragmatic atheist and Marxist, Barak Hussein Obama.

The issue is much greater than the apparent First Amendment abuse. It is about making irrelevant those Christian institutions that constitute the main line of resistance to Marxist dominance over the US political sphere. 

The strategy behind the abortion / sterilization mandate is to make those institutions indistinguishable from their secular counterparts while loosening the grip of the Constitution. But, you say, what of the threats to close down the hospitals and other vital services? After all, Catholic hospitals make up 13 percent of hospitals and 16 percent of all admissions in the U.S. - won't closure work?

The answer is a strong maybe not. It worked for Cardinal O'Connor in 1994,why not now? The answer is simple. We are dealing with a president who acts like a hard core Marxist ideologue, one for whom lying and deceit are resume enhancers. This is a man who has been recorded advocating for infanticide. A man whose advisers hold that the state owns the rights to body parts of people who are dead or in certain hopeless conditions.

He and his fellow travelers lied through their teeth to the Bart Stupaks as well as to the American public. What makes him trustworthy now?

The Kelo Scenario Eminent Domain SeizureLet's walk through a possible scenario. Obama strings along the phony negotiations through the election cycle, the purpose being to provide the delusion of possible compromise for those too weak-minded to accept the reality of what he is. He wins the election. The phony 'negotiations' fail. The bishops fall back to the worst case scenario of "I will go to jail and shut down the hospitals." Obama calls their bluff. A slew of hospitals and many of the 400 other health centers and 1,500 specialized homes that the Catholic Church operates, start to close.
The crisis grows, the wailing begins, and, in a few weeks, Obama steps into the breach with previously prepared eminent domain filings, based upon the infamous Kelo decision, and transfers the assets representing over 200 years of Christian ministry to various private and commercial, as well as federal state and local political entities.


To Obama and all Marxists this is right and just. Let me illustrate why. In 1965 a thirty something year old woman in Odessa, in the USSR, gave help t oa WW II widow who was all but starving on her miniscule war widows pension. The young lady was reported and brought to the militia station, the local police, and warned not to help the old woman. Sheprotested. They said "We don't care . Just don't help her." A short time later she was hauled into the station house and warned again. The third time she was arrested and charged with a felony crime "slander against the state" and sentenced to 18 months of what was euphemistically called "strict regime," the hardest of the hard labor camps.

The connection I am making here is two-fold. One is that most people have never understood the reasoning behind the Obama's effort to do away with tax deductions for charitable giving. The ideological component is the same as that used against the woman. 
The State is the father of us all - how dare you presume so much. The tax change is part of a web of rules and actions designed to make religious charity impossible, and thereby weaken the only real ideological opposition to Marxism.

The other connection is the recognition of the rabid anti-religious nature of these people. Simply put, you cannot negotiate with them because they simply cannot be trusted. Again, keep the name Stupak in your head.

Defiance

How can we act to make the most of this situation. A glance at the city of Nowa Huta, Poland provides insight. Nowa Huta was described by Brian Whitmore of THE BOSTON GLOBE, as the place "...where George Orwell's dark vision of a perfect industrial metropolis was executed with stunning precision. Until, that is, the workers rose up and overthrew Big Brother."

In this grimy steel town the workers wanted a church. The communists said no. The Archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla, persisted and defiantly held Mass on the site for years. Workers replaced every cross removed or destroyed by the State. Eventually the State caved.

What is needed now is for our bishops and other religious administrators to publicly defy the mandate and keep the institutions open without compliance. We must not give these Marxists the opportunity to seize the assets of religious and charitable institutions.

Our duty, yours and mine, is to assist them, to encourage them by letters and prayers. But our duty extends far beyond this rally in effort and time. We must make ourselves loud enough to be heard. We must be vigorous and persistent in creating prayerful and lively sit-ins in our politicians offices. We need to wheedle , encourage, beg ,plead - what-ever it takes- to get our bishops, rabbis, ministers and priests to get motivated to the point of action. We must help them understand that a single pastoral letter to the flock is worthless without the personal courage to lead from the front. We long ago passed from the diplomatic maneuverings of 1938 to the brutal fighting of Stalingrad.

What is needed is direct, forceful, definitive and ongoing actions by courageous and defiant religious and lay leaders.

We need to tell them we will be standing next to them, saying "I will go to jail with you!"

And above all we must pray daily, unceasingly, for the conversion and confounding of those whose word and deed threaten us and our nation with such malice. 

We have a right and duty to pray for our deliverance from evil.

---

Introductory Remarks by STANDUP FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RALLY Coordinator

March,23, 2012, Goshen, NY

Tim is an entrepreneur whose background in Fortune 500 engineering,planning, financial analysis, , and econometric modeling led to the successful launch a company providing Computer Assisted Design and Engineering systems. He is now retired from the family owned business.

Well versed in economics and history, Tim has used this broad life experience in the Culture Wars to advance Christian morality in the public square through conservative activism. In 2001 he started the Catholic Family Association of America in order to fight in the anti-Christian bigotry in the public arena. As president of CFAA and a religious leader, he is a proud signer of the Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience as well as the Mount Vernon Statement.Tim has always been guided by a love of what has been bequeathed to us, by the Grace of God, through our Founding Fathers. This led him to belatedly enter the US Senate race against Gillibrand in the spring of 2010.

Tim will be addressing what the duty of all freemen is in the face of religious oppression.