Saturday, February 11, 2012

Catholic Bishop 's Response To Obama Compromise

Compromise HAH

The United States Catholic Bishop's Statement ( Must read )

and another Must Read the Catholic Bishop's internal letter.

Must read Anchoress reaction roundup

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

For the President to cave on this issue demonstrates that he is a weak and ineffectual man who is not qualified to hold the highest office in the country. It was only the extreme failure of the Republicans in their getting the country bogged down in Iraq, failing to do anything about Osama bin Laden, and utterly destoying the economy of the United States that could have resulted in the election of such a weakling as Obama being elected. Nothing less than the destruction of America that Bush accomplished could have resulted in the election of a man as Obama who does not have even enough intestinal fortitude to stand up to a bunch of lying hypocrites, and point out their hypocisy and duplicity. NOBODY has ever tried to mandate that they use birth control, but their birthrates demontrate that the lying hypocrites are using birth control without any mandate. For the President to pander to such people just shows that we don't have much of a President. If the true concern of these people was procreation, they would not be worried about the birth control of others, they would get busy having babies themselves. It is obvious they are lying about this concern and their true agenda is to destroy the opportunity of others to have comprehensive health care.

James H said...

Sigh

Besides all that long rant it's not relevant. If we are in a position to where the President is judged on "caving In" on religious liberty we are in bad shape

Kurt said...

The President messed up on the first round but now has come up with a very fair and reasonable accomodation.

Anonymous said...

James, the issue was never "religious liberty", it was health care. Nobody has tried to interfer with anybody following their own religious convictions in the practice of birth control, or the abstinence thereof. It is just utterly dishonest and dishonorable to claim that anyone was trying to "mandate" birth control. This is about lying hypocrites making up a religious issue to get their way about a health care proposal that they thwarted with lying scheming and conniving, and completely disingenuous weeping and wailing about a threat to their religion which they made up out of thin air. What a way to get out of fair employment practices!

Andy said...

Anonymous,

As an analogy. Say the federal government was concerned about the plight of pig farmers because no one was eating pork and many of the pig farmers were going bankrupt. As a result, they passed a law that stated if you are an institution that operated a cafeteria, you had to serve a domestic pork option at every meal, though religions that held pork to be unclean didn't have to serve pork at meals following worship services. Let us also assume that the Jewish faith required its members to educate the younger generation in Hebrew and the Muslim faith to educate theirs in Arabic. Both Jews and Muslims operate religious schools for just that purpose (as well as to provide a general education). Since meals provided at these schools were not provided following worship services, they had to include pork. These religious entities would have two options: 1) offer pork at their schools in violation of their religious principles, or 2) shut down their schools, which would prevent the efficient education of their children in Hebrew and Arabic, in violation of their religious principles. By requiring pork to be served or the schools to be shut, the government would have infringed on those groups religious liberty.

Likewise, the Church teaches artificial contraception is a sin and prohibited. Jesus also commanded his followers to feed the hungry, provide for the poor, help the sick, visit the imprisoned, etc. The federal government has essentially stated that the Church has two options: 1) offer artificial contraception to your employees in violation of its religious principles or 2) face heavy, if not prohibitive, fines if you intend to feed the hungry, help the sick, etc. Either violate your religious principles you've held for 2000 years, or we are going to fine the stuffing out of you if you try to following the teachings of Christ.

Anonymous said...

Why are you trying to confuse a simple issue with a big fantasy about pork?

Anonymous said...

And again, NOBODY is trying to mandate that anybody violate their own personal religious convictions. This is just one big lie. There is nothing in those regulations that tell anybody to use birth control, although the Catholics have stirred up much support by lying about it. But this sort of disingenuous dishonesty usually backfires. A few months down the road, people will realize they have been deceived and nobody was ever trying to force anybody to use birth control.

stanchaz said...

I was raised as a Catholic. Or perhaps lowered. :-) Whatever. But seriously... I strongly disagree with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops statement, which denounces President Barack Obama's attempts at compromise as "needless government intrusion in the internal governance of religious institutions". On the contrary, the Bishops comments are themselves a needless religious intrusion upon the proper and legitimate functions of government...functions that serve to promote women's rights, and equality, and fairness for ALL. No one is coming into our Churches and trying to tell parishioners what to believe. BUT If the Bishops want to start businesses that employ millions of people of varying faiths -or no "faith" at all- THEN they must play by the rules. Just because a religious group in America claims to believe something, we cannot excuse them from obeying the law in the PUBLIC arena, based on that belief. They can legally attempt to change the law, not to deny it outright. And if they want to plunge overtly into politics from the pulpit, then they should give up their tax-exempt status. Did I miss something, or when it comes to the "sanctity of life", is every single righteous Catholic still a card carrying conscientious objector, refusing to take up arms, totally against the death penalty, and contraception in all its forms? Oh well, hypocrisy is often at the heart of politics, and politics masquerading as religion even more so. This country is an invigorating mixture of all the diversity that life has to offer, drawing its strength FROM that diversity. We need to work together to preserve, enrich, and strengthen this unique experiment - NOT to tear it down with poisonous, paralyzing, and un-Christian demonization of each other.

Andy said...

Anonymous,

anal·o·gy

a : resemblance in some particulars between things otherwise unlike : similarity
b : comparison based on such resemblance

"NOBODY is trying to mandate that anybody violate their own personal religious convictions."

The government is saying first amendment protection only applies inside places of worship, but if you practice your faith outside those places of worship, we'll fine you into bankruptcy. Not sure that is what was meant in the "...or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." clause of the first amendment.

Stanchaz,

"Did I miss something, or when it comes to the "sanctity of life", is every single righteous Catholic still a card carrying conscientious objector, refusing to take up arms, totally against the death penalty, and contraception in all its forms?"

Being raised Catholic, I would hope you realize that those are gross misrepresentations of Catholic doctrine or outright incorrect.

"This country is an invigorating mixture of all the diversity that life has to offer, drawing its strength FROM that diversity."

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Because we have a diverse population, the government should force Catholics to violate the tenants of their faith?

Anonymous said...

NOBODY is trying to force Catholics to violate the tenants of their faith. There is NO MANDATE of birth control. This is an outright heinous LIE. The effort is to mandate that all employers, including Catholics, practice FAIR employment practice.

Mike W. said...

Please don't confuse Anonymous with the facts. It is much easier to pontificate (no pun intended) than to engage in real reasonable dialogue.

Anonymous said...

The catholic church teaches that artificial birth control is a sin period. To compel the faithful to underwrite those services is governmental intrusion into the practice of our faith period. I have the same objection to the funding of planned parenthood with my tax dollars since they provide abortions. For a country obsessed wirh choice, i should have the choice not ro participate.

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