The day virtue was outlawed

Liberal catholics want us all to weenie out and avoid engaging in “culture wars”.

Meanwhile, I saw this commentary piece at CNSNews:

Free Exercise of Virtue Prohibited as of Today in USA

As of today–Jan. 1, 2014–a Democratic administration led by President Barack Obama will use a regulation permitted and funded by a Republican-majority House of Representatives to prohibit Americans from freely exercising not just Christianity, but virtue itself in the United States of America.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines virtue as “conformity to a standard of right”–and, in truth, there is only one such standard. Individuals are born and die, nations rise and fall–yet it remains.

Nor can it be escaped–no matter how devoutly men such as Obama seek to annul it, or how abjectly his opponents in the political establishment shrink from defending it.

What is it? The Roman senator Cicero explained it with force and clarity five decades before Christ.

“There is a true law, a right reason, conformable to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil,” wrote Cicero.

“Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice,” he said. “It is not one thing at Rome and another at Athens; one thing today and another tomorrow; but in all times and nations this universal law must forever reign, eternal and imperishable”

“God himself is its author, its promulgator, its enforcer,” said this Roman senator. “He who obeys it not, flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man.”

“When a man is inspired by virtue such as this, what bribes can you offer him, what treasures, what thrones, what empires?” wrote Cicero. “He considers these but mortal goods and esteems his own divine.”

“And,” concluded this pre-Christian statesman, “if the ingratitude of the people, and the envy of his competitors, or the violence of powerful enemies despoil his virtue of its earthly recompense, he still enjoys a thousand consolations in the approbation of conscience, and sustains himself by contemplating the beauty of moral rectitude.”

Our Founding Fathers believed precisely this when they founded the United States.

Before Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, an 18-year-old Alexander Hamilton wrote: “Good and wise men, in all ages, have … supposed that the Deity, from the relations we stand in to Himself and to each other, has constituted an eternal and immutable law, which is indispensably obligatory upon all mankind prior to any human institution whatsoever”

“Upon this law depend the natural rights of mankind,” said Hamilton.

“They are written,” he concluded, “as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

When Jefferson stated that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” and that governments are created to protect those rights, he was echoing both Cicero and the common view of his countrymen.

“Neither aiming at originality of principle or sentiment, nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American mind, and to give to that expression the proper tone and spirit called for by the occasion,” Jefferson wrote, explaining the Declaration, in a letter he wrote in 1825. “All its authority rests then on the harmonizing sentiments of the day, whether expressed in conversation, in letters, printed essays, or in the elementary books of public right, as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.”

Today, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s ironically entitled “individual responsibility requirement” takes effect–at least so far as the letter of the law is concerned. It says that almost all Americans must “maintain minimum essential coverage” for health insurance for themselves and their dependents or be penalized by the government.

This “minimum essential coverage” includes a “preventive services” regulation, which has been defined by the Obama administration to require co-pay-free coverage for sterilizations as well as drugs and intrauterine devices that cause abortions.

Quite literally, under this regulation, a mother can be forced through her insurance coverage to provide her daughter with the drug that kills her granddaughter.

[…]

Read the rest there.

About Fr. John Zuhlsdorf

Fr. Z is the guy who runs this blog. o{]:¬)
This entry was posted in Cri de Coeur, Dogs and Fleas, Emanations from Penumbras, Liberals, Our Catholic Identity, Religious Liberty and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

8 Comments

  1. Supertradmum says:

    The only answer is heroic virtue, standing up against this tyranny. I pray for all my friends who have small businesses and my friends who are doctors who will not cooperate with this new law.

    God grant Catholics the strength to stand up against this evil.

    Thanks for this link.

  2. Deo volente says:

    I’m glad you posted this Fr. Z. This part gives me chills:

    “Quite literally, under this regulation, a mother can be forced through her insurance coverage to provide her daughter with the drug that kills her granddaughter.”

    May God have mercy on us!

    D.v.

  3. FloridaJoan says:

    This brought to mind a few quotes from some recent reading: … ” There seemed no giants on the earth these days.” ” Have you noticed how few great men we’ve got ?” from Benson’s Lord of the World . In joyful hope I cleave to that small Babe born in a cave who promises us life everlasting !

    pax et bonum
    Joan

  4. Kerry says:

    “I will not sign. I will not tell you why I will not sign”.

  5. Venerator Sti Lot says:

    I recently read a review of Die Belasteten: ‘Euthanasie’1939-1945. Ein Gesellschaftsgeschichte (2013) by Götz Aly which noted his argument as to the function of this program (especially, Action T4) in creating widespread complicity. Apparently he suggests that part of the effect was that those who had been involved in generally approving of or specifically consenting to the ‘mercy-killing’ of people ill or disabled – including their own family members – would be much less likely to object to later mass murder, because they were complicit. The Blessed Clemens August von Galen, Bishop of Münster, refused any such complicity and openly opposed what he came to know of the program – in the circumstances, effectively (Hitler thought it judicious to wait till after he had won the war to settle his score with the Bishop).

    “For every one that doth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, that his works may not be reproved.” (St. John 3:20) There are those who avidly exploit proper awareness of guilt to paralyze the guilty and so prevent their impeding whatever evil goal is being aimed at. Yet even the complicit can repent.

    (It seems this book is not yet available in translation; I have never read anything by Götz Aly and do not know how much I might find in his thought that justly calls for opposition.)

  6. jhayes says:

    To avoid confusion, It’s probably worth pointing out that CNSNews is not the Catholic News Service published by the USCCB.

    It’s a publication of L. Brent Bozell

  7. Woodlawn says:

    Into the Fiery Furnace.

  8. Gallia Albanensis says:

    There is a curious 1,700-year gap in the luminaries whom Jefferson lists, between Cicero and Locke.

    What Cicero writes is remarkable, handicapped as he was by not having access to Divine Revelation. Jefferson and the Deists explicitly rejected 17 centuries of ancient wisdom in a sort-of “civilizational mid-life crisis.” By way of comparison, an insight that is profound for teenager is less impressive out of the mouth of a 40-year old.

    I’m just sayin’, is all.

Comments are closed.