Fr. Pedro Escribano of the Society of Jesus Christ the Priest, in the Diocese of Madison, is undergoing a delicate brain tumor operation today (Friday).
CatholicVote has been doing us all a great service these days in tracking Pres. Obama’s attack on the Catholic Church and on the 1st Amendment rights of all Americans in his pursuit of power and his agenda.
The following letter, which I saw on CatholicVote was signed by former Vatican Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, Princeton Prof. Robert George, Notre Dame Law Prof. Carter Snead, Catholic University of America President John Garvey, and EPPC Fellow Yuval Levin.
My emphases.
Today the Obama administration has offered what it has styled as an “accommodation” for religious institutions in the dispute over the HHS mandate for coverage (without cost sharing) of abortion-inducing drugs, sterilization, and contraception. The administration will now require that all insurance plans cover (“cost free”) these same products and services. Once a religiously-affiliated (or believing individual) employer purchases insurance (as it must, by law), the insurance company will then contact the insured employees to advise them that the terms of the policy include coverage for these objectionable things.
This so-called “accommodation” changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy. It is certainly no compromise. The reason for the original bipartisan uproar was the administration’s insistence that religious employers, be they institutions or individuals, provide insurance that covered services they regard as gravely immoral and unjust. Under the new rule, the government still coerces religious institutions and individuals to purchase insurance policies that include the very same services.
It is no answer to respond that the religious employers are not “paying” for this aspect of the insurance coverage. For one thing, it is unrealistic to suggest that insurance companies will not pass the costs of these additional services on to the purchasers. More importantly, abortion-drugs, sterilizations, and contraceptives are a necessary feature of the policy purchased by the religious institution or believing individual. They will only be made available to those who are insured under such policy, by virtue of the terms of the policy.
It is morally obtuse for the administration to suggest (as it does) that this is a meaningful accommodation of religious liberty because the insurance company will be the one to inform the employee that she is entitled to the embryo-destroying “five day after pill” pursuant to the insurance contract purchased by the religious employer. It does not matter who explains the terms of the policy purchased by the religiously affiliated or observant employer. What matters is what services the policy covers.
The simple fact is that the Obama administration is compelling religious people and institutions who are employers to purchase a health insurance contract that provides abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization. This is a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand. It is an insult to the intelligence of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other people of faith and conscience to imagine that they will accept as assault on their religious liberty if only it is covered up by a cheap accounting trick.
Finally, it bears noting that by sustaining the original narrow exemptions for churches, auxiliaries, and religious orders, the administration has effectively admitted that the new policy (like the old one) amounts to a grave infringement on religious liberty. The administration still fails to understand that institutions that employ and serve others of different or no faith are still engaged in a religious mission and, as such, enjoy the protections of the First Amendment.
Signed:
John Garvey
President, The Catholic University of America
Mary Ann Glendon
Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University
Robert P. George
McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University
O. Carter Snead
Professor of Law, University of Notre Dame
Yuval Levin
Hertog Fellow, Ethics and Public Policy Center
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on President Obama’s revised healthcare plan as it affects Catholic institutions:
President Obama’s latest ploy just adds insult to injury. If the insurance plan of a Catholic institution must cover services it deems immoral, then such a healthcare plan is offensive, plain and simple.
The Catholic League, for example, uses Christian Brothers as its insurance carrier. So if a future employee of ours were to demand free abortion-inducing drugs, and she is allowed to request free drugs from Christian Brothers, then the rest of us would, in effect, be subsidizing her abortion. This is outrageous and will not stand judicial scrutiny.
When it comes to the First Amendment, there is no such thing as a half loaf. We want now, and in the future, the same rights we have enjoyed since the beginning of the republic.
The Obama ploy is also cynical: its effect is to peel off liberal Catholic opposition to Obamacare. In other words, the old divide and conquer strategy is in play. But it won’t work as nicely as they think: there are too many practicing Catholics who will only be impelled to revolt.
Obama has decided to turn up the heat. He’ll soon see how hot things get when Catholics team with Protestants, Jews, Mormons and others to recapture their First Amendment rights. Indeed, President Obama will now be remembered as the president who brought the culture war to a boil.
Bishops Studying Initial White House Movement On Religious Liberty
February 10, 2012
New opportunity to dialogue with executive branch
Too soon to tell whether and how much improvement on core concerns
Commitment to religious liberty for all means legislation still necessary
WASHINGTON— The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) sees initial opportunities in preserving the principle of religious freedom after President Obama’s announcement today. But the Conference continues to express concerns. “While there may b,e an openness to respond to some of our concerns, we reserve judgment on the details until we have them,” said Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of USCCB.
“The past three weeks have witnessed a remarkable unity of Americans from all religions or none at all worried about the erosion of religious freedom and governmental intrusion into issues of faith and morals,” he said.
“Today’s decision to revise how individuals obtain services that are morally objectionable to religious entities and people of faith is a first step in the right direction,” Cardinal-designate Dolan said. “We hope to work with the Administration to guarantee that Americans’ consciences and our religious freedom are not harmed by these regulations.”
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Even before Pres. Obama made the announcement that he is taking his “Plan B” pill, an exponent of the Magisterium of Nuns, Sr. Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association (which – against the US bishops – gave cover to Catholic democrats to vote for abortion providing Obamacare) made a statement that she is pleased with Obama’s compromise… er um… accommodation.
BEFORE the President’s announcement.
This suggests to me that someone in the White House contacted Keehan to make sure that she would back Obama on this even if the American bishops were not adequately appeased (read “duped”) by Obama’s compromise… er um… accommodation.
The American bishops had better figure out very soon that an alternate “magisterium” is being created against their own authority, and that the exponents of that false “magisterium” are in bed with those who would violate the 1st Amendment in order to get their way.
It sounds as if Pres. Obama is about to give “Plan B” a try in regard to his attacks on the Catholic Church and the first amendment. He may be close to aborting his aggressive mandate against religious liberty. A bitter pill for him to swallow.
It’ll be interesting to see what he conceives to be an “accommodation”.
UPDATE 17:30 GMT:
I watched the President a few minutes ago, and I am still mulling.
It was hardly a surprise that he would start out justifying what he did.
Again, I note the constant use of the Orwellian term “preventive services” and the incessant emphases on “access” (as if women can’t get what they want when they want it) and absolute dedication to make this all “free” (as if nobody has to pay for it anywhere along the chain), and their relentless use of questionable numbers/statistics to side-step the moral question by claiming a “majority” (as if there were no objective right or wrong).
For Pres. Obama, it seems contraception is an absolute good. It is so good, that he thinks some people have to violate their consciences in order to conform to his view.
Also, if this “accommodation” was already studied in the past, why was it not adopted in the first place? They reason is obvious: an ideological conviction that government can force Churches to conform to a policy.
For example: What if the Catholic institution/business is self-insuring and doesn’t use some outside insurance company?
And, even if the insurance companies are forced to provide whatever Pres. Obama chooses (and pass the cost on to people who pay premiums), will the Catholic institution be force to disperse what the insurer is forced to provide?
Moreover,
You will hear in the White House spin on this the word “women… women… women”.
This is not a “woman issue”. This is a 1st Amendment issue.
I also just heard Sec. Sebelius spinning the President’s change of tack. Again I am reminded of the phrase by Mary McCarthy back in the 70?s about Lillian Hellman:
“Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘and’ and ‘the.’”
UPDATE 18:00 GMT:
A correspondent writes with his reaction:
This will blow the cost of polices through the roof and then [Obama’s supporters and all liberals] will put the blame on bishops “who didn’t want to help the poor and forced us to do this” or on “greedy” companies which have a bottm line to keep an eye on and will have to find a way to recoup the added costs.
This is why slowly but surely the State remains as the sole provider.
The bishops must do their homework and understand why this is socialism, why it is immoral and why socialized medicne has always been a privileged means to institute socialism by maiking everybody dependent on graciously granted “rights”.
In looking for a quote by Pius XII, a reader directed me, us, to a speech of Ven. Pius XII delivered on 14 October 1953 (Acta Apostolicae Sedis 45 (1953) pp 679 ff.) at the opening of the North American College in Rome.
Here is the main part of the speech, after the intro and before the usual conclusions.
Pretty inspiring stuff.
My emphases.
[…]
[The completion of the North American College] lights a stronger flame of hope for the Church in the United States of America and in the world. All this, it seemed to Us, adds up to a grave and sacred responsibility that rests on you, Our dear young seminarians, and on those who are to follow you. Will the sacrifices cheerfully offered for your sake be repaid in kind and with interest? Will the hopes and plans cherished by your Bishops, cherished by Us, be fulfilled? Your eager hearts are quick to answer: yes. But reflect a moment. That will be true only under one condition, that you become priests worthy of the name.
In the priesthood man is elevated to an almost staggering height, a mediator between a world in travail and the celestial kingdom of peace. Christ’s ambassador, steward of God’s mysteries, he exercises a divine power. Heir to the priestly and kingly offices of the divine Redeemer, he is commissioned to carry on the task of salvation, bringing souls to God and giving God to souls. Never, then, unmindful of the supreme importance of such a vocation, the priest will not busy himself with useless things. Modeling his life on that of Him he represents he will gladly spend and be spent on behalf of souls. Souls he seeks everywhere and always, not what the world can offer him. «To be a priest and to be a man dedicated to work is one and the same thing», wrote Bl. Pius X; and he liked to quote the words of the synod presided over by St. Charles Borromeo: «let every cleric repeat again and again: he has been called not to a life of ease and leisure, but to hard work in the spiritual army of the Church».
Those words, beloved sons, recall another fact one dare not forget. We belong to the Church militant ; and she is militant because on earth the powers of darkness are ever restless to encompass her destruction. Not only in the far-off centuries of the early Church, but down through the ages and in this our day, the enemies of God and Christian civilization make bold to attack the Creator’s supreme dominion and sacrosanct human rights. No rank of the clergy is spared ; and the faithful—their number is legion—inspired by the valiant endurance of their shepherds and fathers in Christ, stand firm, ready to suffer and die, as the martyrs of old, for the one true Faith taught by Jesus Christ. Into that militia you seek to be admitted as leaders.
Imprisonment and martyrdom, We know, do not loom on the horizon that spreads before your eyes. In an atmosphere of untrammeled freedom, where «the word of God is not bound», the Church in your country has grown in numbers, in influence, in strength of leadership in all that makes for the good of the commonwealth. The college on the via dell’Umiltà has seen your priests increase from twenty-fìve hundred to forty-fìve thousand and more-proud and glorious tribute to the unselfìsh, clear-visioned Catholic family life that prevails among you; a mission country become a seminary of apostles for foreign fìelds. But the Church militant is «one body, with one Spirit … with the same Lord, the same faith, the same baptism».(Eph 4, 4 ff.) And that Spirit calls for more than a dash of heroism in every priest who would be worthy of the name, whatever the external circumstances of time and place.
The spirit of the martyrs breathes in every priestly soul, who in the daily round of pastoral duties and in his cheerful, unrelenting efforts to increase in wisdom and in grace, gives witness to the Prince of shepherds, who endured the cross, despised the shame «when He gave Himself up on our behalf, a sacrifice breathing out fragrance as He offered it to God». (Eph 5, 2.)
We raise a fervent prayer to Mary Immaculate, under whose patronage you have placed your country, to Mary gloriously assumed into heaven, whom you have wished to honour in your chapel here, that she would always show a mother’s loving care of the clergy of America, and guide you, beloved seminarians, bearers of such high hopes, along the way that leads to that holiness which will bring her to recognize in you a greater and greater resemblance to her own divine Son.
[…]
Pius XII describing the Church in the USA in 1953. My my how times have changed.
When I was in my gawdawful American seminary in 1980’s I was accused on more than one occasion of wanting the 1950’s back. Though I was born in 1959 and was a convert and never knew the Church of the 1950’s, what Pope Pius is talking about was the sort of vision I wanted for my Church and from my seminary and in my country.
And, animi caussa, some footage of Pius XII at the NAC. No sound, alas.
I sense that there is something of this spirit stirring in seminarians and young priests and new bishops in the United States.
Here is an old rant, slightly updated, about TV commercials before the deeply and stupidly commercialized “Valentine’s Day”.
The stupidest jinned up commercial “holiday” of the year is just around the corner. And you men are required by commercial advertisers to be as stupid as the advertisers think you should think women are. And don’t forget guilty if you don’t buy Teddy Bears or diamonds.
Do you recall my tirade against “Vermont Teddy Bears”?
Now there are leopard skin garments. I am not making this up.
These commercials really make me see red and think black thoughts.
I quote from my past rant:
These moronic commercials portray women as total idiots.
They deepen the distortion of a feast day of the Church!
I mean… how stupid do they think women are?
I’m just askin’
“She’ll think you’ve planned it for weeks!” Smarmy ********
Yah… and she hasn’t seen the commercial… maybe while sitting next to you on the couch.
This year they are playing again on the “give her this and you’ll get laid because she doesn’t have a brain in her head” message, which has usually been the message in previous years.
Year by year it’s the “women are really stupid” angle but it’s mainly about her enjoying time being warm and, apparently, mostly alone…. rolling around. I guess they are alone because they caught on to how stupid the men who bought this stuff are for having bought it because they thought women were stupid.
If any of you readers buy this stuff, you need psychological help. Then you will perhaps need a new membership to a Catholic singles service.
Here’s Father Z’s best advise.
Give your woman chapel veils . If she refuses to wear them at church, lock her in the back of the cave.
Err… um… see what happens? I became stupider just writing about this stuff!
I also once suggesting having a Giant Hissing Cockroach named after your gal. After all, “Nothing says ‘forever’ like a cockroach.”
The chapel veil might be a better idea. Especially if you tell her how beautiful she is when she wears it.
Remember in Star Trek how there’s anti-matter? What happens when they meet? FFFKCHPLOOOY! Get one of those and she’ll know immediately that you don’t think she is stupid or a total idiot when it comes to these commercial holidays. And a nice note along the lines of:
“I am really mad about catholic politicians causing scandal. Fr. Z says this thing is great. So, because I’m sure you know that I don’t think you’re stupid, here’s a mug with Latin on it. But… if your feeling romantic… I’m just sayin’ ….”
What gal could resist that?
Of course I expect to see a spike in coffee and mug sales because of this affirmation because you can’t be manipulated.
Please remember me when shopping online. Your use of my Amazon affiliate link is a major part of my income. It helps to pay for insurance, groceries, everything. Thanks in advance.
“This blog is like a fusion of the Baroque ‘salon’ with its well-tuned harpsichord around which polite society gathered for entertainment and edification and, on the other hand, a Wild West “saloon” with its out-of-tune piano and swinging doors, where everyone has a gun and something to say. Nevertheless, we try to point our discussions back to what it is to be Catholic in this increasingly difficult age, to love God, and how to get to heaven.” – Fr. Z
The most evident mark of God’s anger and the most terrible castigation He can inflict upon the world are manifested when He permits His people to fall into the hands of clerics who are priests more in name than in deed, priests who practice the cruelty of ravening wolves rather than the charity and affection of devoted shepherds.
St. John Eudes
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“Until the Lord be pleased to settle, through the instrumentality of the princes of the Church and the lawful ministers of His justice, the trouble aroused by the pride of a few and the ignorance of some others, let us with the help of God endeavor with calm and humble patience to render love for hatred, to avoid disputes with the silly, to keep to the truth and not fight with the weapons of falsehood, and to beg of God at all times that in all our thoughts and desires, in all our words and actions, He may hold the first place who calls Himself the origin of all things.”
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“He [Satan] will set up a counter-Church which will be the ape of the Church because, he the devil, is the ape of God. It will have all the notes and characteristics of the Church, but in reverse and emptied of its divine content. It will be a mystical body of the anti-Christ that will in all externals resemble the mystical body of Christ. In desperate need for God, whom he nevertheless refuses to adore, modern man in his loneliness and frustration will hunger more and more for membership in a community that will give him enlargement of purpose, but at the cost of losing himself in some vague collectivity.”
“Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops.”
“The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual.”
- C.S. Lewis
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As for Latin…
"But if, in any layman who is indeed imbued with literature, ignorance of the Latin language, which we can truly call the 'catholic' language, indicates a certain sluggishness in his love toward the Church, how much more fitting it is that each and every cleric should be adequately practiced and skilled in that language!" - Pius XI
"Let us realize that this remark of Cicero (Brutus 37, 140) can be in a certain way referred to [young lay people]: 'It is not so much a matter of distinction to know Latin as it is disgraceful not to know it.'" - St. John Paul II
Grant unto thy Church, we beseech Thee, O merciful God, that She, being gathered together by the Holy Ghost, may be in no wise troubled by attack from her foes. O God, who by sin art offended and by penance pacified, mercifully regard the prayers of Thy people making supplication unto Thee,and turn away the scourges of Thine anger which we deserve for our sins. Almighty and Everlasting God, in whose Hand are the power and the government of every realm: look down upon and help the Christian people that the heathen nations who trust in the fierceness of their own might may be crushed by the power of thine Arm. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, Thy Son, who liveth and reigneth with Thee in the unity of the Holy Ghost, God, world without end. R. Amen.
Here are links to posts which are scrolling along.
Even before Pres. Obama made the announcement that he is taking his “Plan B” pill, an exponent of the Magisterium of Nuns, Sr. Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association (which – against the US bishops – gave cover to Catholic democrats to vote for abortion providing Obamacare) made a statement that she is pleased with Obama’s compromise… er um… accommodation.
a 
