You have probably already heard of the Obama Administration’s latest outrage — just one of many — against religious freedom in this country. The Department of Health and Human Services, in its latest formulation of the new requirements for health-care insurance offered by employers, has announced that there will be no religious exemption for those who find it immoral to provide insurance for contraception, sterilization or abortifacient drugs — that is, of course, all Catholic employers.
HHS Kathleen Sebelius did thoughtfully mention that the employers will have a whole year to comply, or, as Cardinal-designate Dolan has put it, to “learn to violate our consciences.” (Sebelius, is, by the way, Catholic).
More than 60% of all the bishops who are heads of dioceses in the U.S. have weighed in against this violation of the right to practice our religion unimpeded, and have urged people to write to the Presdient, HHS and their Senators and Congressional representatives. At least one bill to kill this mandate is already in the works.
There is much more excellent coverage at www.americanpapist.com., including a full list of bishops’ statements.
One thing everyone can easily do — petition the White House here The petition already has almost 7,000 signatures - it needs 25,000 to get noticed for government action.
The administration would apparently just really love for this to go away until after the election. We must not let them!
I have a few more thoughts on the wider implications of this particular mandate, but they will have to wait until tomorrow or the next day.
For starters she has her feast-days wrong. Today is not the feast of St. Joseph the Worker (that’s on May 1), but the feast of St. Joseph the Husband of Mary, not to mention protector of the Christ Child.
Just think of it: Joseph agreed to protect Mary and take her into his home as his wife when (for all the neighbors knew) she was carrying another man’s child. He watched over Mary as she gave birth. He took the Child and his Mother to Egypt when Herod was slaying the innocent babies of Bethlehem to try to get to Him.
In other words, Joseph protected Jesus against the threats on his infant life.
No wonder Madame Speaker “forgot” to mention this aspect of the feast and of St. Joseph’s life!! How on earth can she think it proper to suggest that St. Joseph might support the passing of a bill that will lead to more slaughter of the unborn? Even worse, she is proclaiming that the bill is “life-affirming!” I hope some bishop calls her out publicly on this.
Even though Pelosi has forgotten St. Joseph’s role, let’s not forget it ourselves.
St. Joseph, Patron of the Unborn, pray for our nation, and for all those babies now being sacrificed on the altar of self. Protect those unborn children who are in danger of abortion as you once protected the Son of God on earth. St. Joseph, pray for us!
Impossible you say? But nothing is impossible for God — excuse me I mean Nancy Pelosi.
But how is it possible? An obscure procedural rule called “deem and pass.” The House can pass a series of amendments to a bill and by doing so, the bill itself is “deemed to have passed.” It has actually been used before for budge items. But now Madame Speaker wants to use it for one of the most massive and controversial bills in Congressional history.
Wny would Pelosi want do do such a thing? Here’s what she says.
It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.
“It’s more insider and process-oriented than most people want to know,” the speaker said in a roundtable discussion with bloggers Monday. “But I like it,” she said, “because people don’t have to vote on the Senate bill.”
That’s right she wants members of Congress not to have to tell their constituents they voted for this bill. Nothing could illustrate better the sheer wanton madness the Democrats have now come to. They want this bill no matter what the American people want.
You may think you can hide folks, but November is coming fast.
Good old SNL! They have Obama’s smugness down pat.
Yet, at the same time they’re laughing at the health care debacle, they can’t or won’t admit what’s really at stake — which is human lives. The unborn, the old, the handicapped and the generally undesirable-because-unproductive are all in danger of death by government deathcare. Some joke.
An urgent message from Americans United for Life. President Obama is now trying to ram the abortion-filled Senate Health Care bill through the House. Everyone needs to act now!
Pausing to look at all the sights on our way to Jerusalem. . . Mainly about faith, the Church, film, writing, famous Christian authors, and anything else I'm interested in at the moment.
The photo above was taken at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome in March 2007.
Quote of the Month
"The conviction that there is a Creator God is what gave rise to the idea of human rights, the idea of the equality of all people before the law, the recognition of the inviolability of human dignity in every single person and the awareness of people’s responsibility for their actions. Our cultural memory is shaped by these rational insights. To ignore it or dismiss it as a thing of the past would be to dismember our culture totally and to rob it of its completeness. The culture of Europe arose from the encounter between Jerusalem, Athens and Rome – from the encounter between Israel’s monotheism, the philosophical reason of the Greeks and Roman law. This three-way encounter has shaped the inner identity of Europe. In the awareness of man’s responsibility before God and in the acknowledgment of the inviolable dignity of every single human person, it has established criteria of law: it is these criteria that we are called to defend at this moment in our history."
Pope Benedict XVI to the German Parliament, Sept 22, 2011.
