Supreme Court upholds Obama health care law

It's time to get serious about defending our rights, our freedom and our faith.


By David Jackson, USA TODAY

The Supreme Court upheld President Obama's health care law today in a splintered, complex opinion that gives Obama a major election-year victory.

Basically, a bare majority of the justices said that the individual mandate -- the requirement that most Americans buy health insurance or pay a fine -- is constitutional as a tax.


Chief Justice John Roberts -- a conservative appointed by President George W. Bush -- provided a key vote to preserve the landmark health care law, which figures to be a major issue in Obama's re-election bid against Republican opponent Mitt Romney.

Obama is expected to comment on the decision within the next two hours.

The government had argued that Congress had the authority to pass the individual mandate as part of its power to regulate interstate commerce; the court disagreed with that analysis, but preserved the mandate because the fine amounts to a tax that is within Congress' constitutional taxing powers.

The justices decided the tax question on a 5-4 vote, with four Republican appointees in dissent: Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito.

Roberts, also a GOP appointee, joined four Democratic appointees in upholding the mandate: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Obama appointed justices Sotomayor and Kagan.

The announcement will have a major impact on the nation's health care system, the actions of both federal and state governments, and the course of the November presidential and congressional elections.

As lawyers examined the details of the various opinions, political analysts quickly predicted at least a short-term political boost for Obama.

Peter A. Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said "you can hear the sigh of relief at the White House" over a big plus for Obama.

"It allows the president's signature achievement to stand," Brown said. "Since politics is the ultimate zero-sum game, what's good for Obama is bad for Gov. Mitt Romney."

Brown also noted that the ruling allows the Republican "to continue campaigning against the law and promising to repeal it."

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, vowed to step up efforts to repeal what they call "Obamacare," should they win control of Congress in the November elections.

"The president's health care law is hurting our economy by driving up health costs and making it harder for small businesses to hire," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. "Today's ruling underscores the urgency of repealing this harmful law in its entirety."The law's individual mandate had been the key question for the court.

Critics called the requirement an unconstitutional overreach by Congress and the Obama administration; supporters say it is necessary to finance the health care plan.

While the individual mandate remains 18 months away from implementation, many other provisions of the health care law already have gone into effect, such as free wellness exams for seniors and allowing children up to age 26 to remain on their parents' health insurance policies.

Other impacts will sort themselves out over the next several years:

-- Health care millions of Americans will be affected – coverage for some, premiums for others. Doctors, hospitals, drug makers, insurers, and employers large and small all will feel the impact.

-- States -- some of which have moved ahead with the health care overhaul while others have held back -- now have decisions to make. A deeply divided Congress could decide to re-enter the debate with legislation.

-- The presidential race between Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney is sure to feel the repercussions. Obama's health care law has proven to be slightly more unpopular than popular among Americans.

Not since the court confirmed George W. Bush's election in December 2000 -- before 9/11, Afghanistan and Iraq, Wall Street's dive and Obama's rise -- has one case carried such sweeping implications for nearly every American.

Passed by Democrats along strictly partisan lines and still 18 months short of full implementation, the law is designed to extend health coverage to some 32 million uninsured people, ban insurers from discriminating against those with expensive ailments, and require nearly all Americans to buy insurance or pay penalties.
Its passage on March 23, 2010, marked the culmination of an effort by Democrats to overhaul the nation's health care system that dates back to Harry Truman's presidency. The most recent effort by President Bill Clinton in 1994 fell victim to Republican opposition. Since then, lesser changes have been enacted, including creation of a separate Children's Health Insurance Program in the states.

Inter-Faith Prayer Service June 28th At St. Mary's Cathedral

by Chris Albracht

June 19, 2012

Amarillo—Bishop Patrick J. Zurek encourages all Catholics in the Diocese of Amarillo to attend Evening Prayer Thursday, June 28 at 7:00pm at St. Mary’s Cathedral, 1200 South Washington.

“This will be an Inter-Faith Prayer Service, in which we have invited our brothers and sisters of our non-Catholic Christian denominations and people of the Muslim and Jewish communities to join us,” he said. “I encourage all the Catholic people in the Diocese of Amarillo to please join me for that evening.”

Among the ministers scheduled to join Bishop Zurek for the prayer service will be Gene Shelburne of Anna Street Church of Christ, Amarillo; Jimmy Witcher of Trinity Fellowship Church, Amarillo; and, Ty Jones of Arena of Life, Amarillo.

The prayer service is being conducted in conjunction with a Fortnight of Freedom, a 14-day period from Thursday, June 21 to Wednesday, July 4, Independence Day, established by U.S. Bishops as a great hymn of prayer for our country. This special period of prayer, study, catechesis and public action will emphasize both our Christian and American heritage of liberty.

“The most crucial aspect in this debate is the extremely narrow definition of what it means to be a Religious Ministry that has been handed down by the present administration,” said Bishop Zurek. “Historically, the government has always taken a very broad view in regard to Religious Ministries. What is needed at this time in our history is for the government to return to the previous broad definition of what a Religious Ministry actually is.

“Each faith community should be free to determine what is and what is not Religious Ministry. For example, the health care ministry, the educational ministry and the charitable ministries have been defined by Christian communities as essential to continuing the mission of Jesus Christ. Let us come and pray together, as varying communities of Faith and give a powerful witness to our love for God. Let our presence be an essential part of this witness.”

“As Catholic Christians, we are charged with being the conscience of our local communities,” said Father Tony Neusch, pastor of St. Patrick’s Church, Shamrock and Our Mother of Mercy Church, Wellington. “We have a moral responsibility to participate in the political process of the country in which we live. This is an opportunity to pray for our country and her leaders with men and women of good will.”

Additional Inter-Faith Prayer Services will be scheduled throughout the summer and early fall in the Texas Panhandle, according to Father Neusch.

Waiting and Watching: Updates on HHS Mandate

The update below is from our friends at the St. Gianna Molla Physician's Guild:

Dear Friends, Today I write to share a few very significant developments and to urge you to watch for some upcoming events regarding the threats to our religious freedom. 1.)  The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to release their ruling sometime this week or next week on the constitutionality of President Obama's mandatory Healthcare Plan.  In the past the court has waited for the last day (which will be Thursday, June 28) to release decisions that have sweeping impact on our nation.  Please pray for the Holy Spirit to work on the hearts of all nine justices so they will have the courage to do the right thing and rule to protect our freedoms against Obamacare. 2.)  Sister Carol Keegan, President and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, has changed her position on Obamacare or has she?  Many were shocked and horrified when Sister Carol Keegan opposed the official position of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and instead supported President Obama's empty "accommodations" in the HHS Birth Control Mandate.  That made it all the more surprising when the news reported yesterday that she had reversed her position.  At first glance one may think that this is good news but, as LifeSiteNews reported yesterday, the criteria suggested by Catholic Health Association could actually further limit those who would qualify to opt out of the birth control mandate. In the article, the Cardinal Newman Society explains "...the Catholic Health Association's own solution could worsen matters beyond the President's worse plan...to read more click here.    This is an important reminder to look beyond what is said and interpreted through the media.  What appears to be a positive move by the Catholic Health Association may very well make the situation worse for all of us.  3.)  The USCCB has initiated an awareness effort inviting us all to pray, fast, and actively stand together to resist the attack on our religious liberty.  "Fortnight for Freedom" will take place in diocese throughout the country from June 21 to July 4.  We ask you to join us here at St. Gianna Physician's Guild to stand in solidarity with the efforts of our bishops by checking to see what is happening in your diocese to commemorate "A Fortnight to Freedom".  To learn more click here or to find out what is happening on the local level in your diocese click here.    Finally, I wanted to share something that a friend of the Guild sent us.  It is a suggested prayer to say from June 21 until July 4 during the "Fortnight for Freedom": Lord God, You are the Author of Life and Freedom. In your Spirit, we have the freedom of the children of God, And in your Name, we promote the freedom of all To seek, embrace, and live the truth of your Word. In that freedom, Lord, we your people stand with Life And reject whatever destroys life Or distorts the meaning of human sexuality. In that freedom, Lord, we your people live our lives In a way that advances your Kingdom of Life, And we refuse to cooperate in what is evil. At this moment, therefore, when our government has decided To force us to cooperate in evil, We pray for the grace to be faithful to you And to oppose the unjust laws and mandates That have been imposed upon us and our institutions. We pray for the conversion of those in civil authority Who fail to appreciate the demands of conscience? We pray for the complete reversal of all policies That permit the destruction of life Or coerce the cooperation of your people In practices that are wrong. Bring us to a Culture of Life. We pray through Christ our Lord. Amen

The Catholic Health Association rejects Obama’s HHS accommodation

By Josh Mercer
Catholicvote.org

Even Sister Carol Keehan’s group is saying no to the HHS mandate. The Washington Post reports:

In a letter Friday to the government, the Catholic Health Association says the administration’s proposal to have insurers bear the cost would be “unduly cumbersome” and “unlikely to adequately meet the religious liberty concerns” of its members.

The hospital group was a key ally of Obama’s in the battle to win congressional approval of his health care overhaul, defying the opposition of church bishops. But it does not believe church-affiliated employers should have to provide birth control as a free preventive service, as the law requires.

The letter says the government should either broaden an exemption for religious employers, or pay directly for the birth control coverage.

In politics especially, symbolism reigns. You know what would have been the perfect touch to sending this letter to President Obama?

If Sr. Keehan returned this prize:

June Meeting

Our next meeting will be this Tuesday, June 19th, at 7:00pm at the Southwest Library in Amarillo. We are continuing our efforts to raise awareness of the HHS mandate issued by the Obama Administration and other threats to our religious freedom. 

Come out to learn more or to get involved.

Freedom Is Worth Defending

LORD, TO WHOM SHALL WE GO? Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan

It’s the evening of Memorial Day as I write this column.

Never can we forget those patriots who gave their all in service to our beloved country.

Earlier, I took a stroll outside around St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and chatted with some of our men in uniform, sailors in for Fleet Week. As I try to do when I meet our men and women in the Armed Forces, I thanked them for their service to our nation. That seems especially appropriate on Memorial Day.

“You’re welcome,” one of the men replied. “But, freedom is worth defending.”

Bravo!

Maybe some folks are a little tired of hearing or talking about it, but our priests who are there “on the ground” tell me I should not flag in presenting and explaining the Church’s high profile posture in our defense of religious freedom.

We’ve prayed about it—and will intensify our prayers during the upcoming Fortnight for Freedom—written about it, spoken of it, given endless interviews on it, and brought our case to the White House, Congress and, now, to the courts.

It’s not a struggle we asked for. I wish it would end. And it could so very easily.

All the government has to do is acknowledge that it has no business defining what a Church considers to be its essential ministry. That means creating an exemption based on federal laws dating back at least 40 years. These broader exemptions keep the government from deciding who is “religious enough” to enjoy religious freedom protection, instead covering all stakeholders who object in conscience.

The President himself has recognized that a church can and should receive an exemption from a mandate of the government that a church considers contrary to its conscience. But it is not only churches that enjoy religious freedom—religious schools, charities, hospitals, and other ministries do as well. If he would include those as well, there’d be no religious freedom controversy. He’d have his program, and religion would have its freedom.

Trouble is, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has refused to do this. It has adopted as its own a definition of “religious employer” that was drafted by the ACLU in California, and has never been adopted at the federal level. Under that definition, the federal government has presumed to define just what “hoops” a community of faith must “jump through” to “earn” the right to an exemption!

You know what those hoops are? Well, to be exempt, you have to serve primarily people of your own faith; employ primarily people of your own faith; and have as your purpose the inculcation of religious beliefs (rather than, say, service, charity, education, or healing)!

So, to “earn” the exemption, our soup kitchens will presumably have to ask those in line for their baptismal certificates, and if there are too many, to turn away non-Catholics!

Our inner-city schools, which so often serve more non-Catholics than Catholics, I guess will have to start expelling or turning down kids who are not Catholic!

Our homeless shelters will have to give catechism lessons in the Catholic faith to those who show up for a shower, fresh clothes, a hot meal, and a cot for the night!

You see why we’re worried?

The HHS definition apparently only accepts the right of worship, but not the freedom to serve those in need and bring religious values to society that flows from such worship. As Father Larry Snyder, the director of Catholic Charities USA, remarked, even Jesus feeding the 5,000 would not qualify for an exemption according to the HHS!

All Washington has to do is say, “Any entity that finds these mandates morally objectionable is not coerced to do them,” and leave it there. Don’t get into the red tape in trying to mandate for us how our good works should be defined.

How simple! How constitutional! How American!

The government gets the mandate it wants, even though we still disagree whether the mandate actually promotes health and prevents disease. But the difference is, those with moral and religious objections are not forced to participate.

And this is all the difference in the world, since those who can’t do it for reasons of conscience are at peace, as they would not have to violate their deepest convictions.

That’s all it’s really about: religious freedom.

It’s not about access to contraception, as much as our local newspaper—surprise!—insists it is. The Church is hardly trying to impose its views on society, but rather resisting the government’s attempt to force its view on us.

Vast and unfettered access to chemical contraceptives and abortifacients—all easier to get, they tell me, than beer and cigarettes—will continue. If you think it’s still not enough, then subsidize them if you insist. Just don’t make us provide them and pay for them!

It’s hardly a “Republican” or “Democrat” issue, or “conservative–liberal” one. The dignity of immigrants, service to refugees and victims of human trafficking, the definition of a Catholic college (just ask my friends at the Christian Brothers’ Manhattan College about their protest of the government’s verdict that they no longer meet the government’s definition of what a “Catholic college” really is!), or, coerced provision and subsidizing of abortifacients. None of those are partisan or ideological issues.

It’s not even a Catholic issue. The Lutherans who argued—and won—that the government had no business deciding that their teachers in a Lutheran school did not qualify as “ministers” of their faith will tell you that.

It’s sure not an obsession of the bishops, as is clear from the wide variety of grassroots charities, health care services, and schools who brought suit against HHS last week.

It’s not “anti-President Obama,” as he himself laudably recognizes that people of faith have a right to an exemption, and has promised that he would respect the freedom of religion and the rights of conscience.

Nope—it’s about freedom of religion. Our opponents are much slicker in the PR battle, knowing that, if they can reduce this to a “woman’s health” issue, they’ve got a chance, but that they have none at all when they debate what it really is—the Constitution and the premier freedom, that of religion.

As that sailor on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral reminded me on Memorial Day, “Freedom is worth defending.”

Obama’s grand miscalculation with Catholics

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FoxNews.com

By Maureen Malloy Ferguson

The news Monday that 43 different Catholic entities across the country are suing the Obama administration, in response to the Health and Human Services’ (HHS) rule mandating employer health care coverage of contraception, abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization, comes as a blow to the president’s strength among Catholics, a demographic that helped carry him to victory in 2008.

This news comes on the heels of the the latest CBS News/New York Times poll which finds Mitt Romney now leading President Obama among women, yet another demographic that he previously commanded.

If Mr. Obama was hoping to once again rely on Catholics and women to help carry him to electoral success in 2012, it appears as though he is miscalculating.

A recent survey by the Pew Research Center shows that, despite the administration’s self-portrayal as the champion of “women’s issues” amidst a supposed Republican “war on women,” the president’s reelection advantage among women has declined in recent months as well as with another key demographic — Catholics.

Obama was ahead among Catholics by 9 points in early March, and is now trailing by 5 points.  

The Pew survey finds that, among Catholic voters with an opinion, 47% would today vote for President Obama, and 52% for former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.  

That same margin, were it to hold on Election Day, would mark a swing of 18 million voters away from Obama.  

The loss of these Catholic votes alone would remake the 2008 electoral map, delivering Florida to Governor Romney and leaving the president no margin for error in Colorado or Ohio.

Women appear to be unimpressed by the Democratic strategy of alleging a “war on women,” with the president in the role of their defender.  And that very strategy to turn women against Republicans has only served to alienate Catholic voters – including, of course, Catholic women.

The “war on women” narrative was a strategic shift, invented after polls revealed strong public support for exempting religious employers and charities from the heavy-handed HHS mandate.

The Obama administration no doubt knew it would lose some support with Catholics in the mandate. But they surely did not anticipate the strong and unified voice with which Catholic leaders, in particular bishops, responded even after the administration offered a compromise widely rejected as an accounting gimmick. 

In the most comprehensive survey conducted on the issue yet, Washington-based public opinion firm QEV Analytics recently found that some 50% of regular churchgoing Catholics heard a statement during Mass setting forth the bishops’ serious misgivings about the insurance mandate. Of all the Catholics who heard this statement, most apparently agreed with it.

The administration likely gambled that minor losses with the Catholic vote would be more than compensated for by surging support from women, in particular young, single women. But the QEV findings indicate that this was a major miscalculation. 

Even among women under age 45, the survey found that a majority – 54% – support the Church’s position that religious institutions should not be required to violate their own teachings. 

Among women age 45 or older 58% felt the same; they question the wisdom of a mandate that would leave many faith-based charities no choice but to curtail their services to the needy, or close down altogether. 

As for whether the government should single out birth control to be mandated and cost-free when so many other drugs are not, again a clear majority of women — sixty-three percent — say “no.” After all, is your mother’s blood pressure medication or your child’s asthma medicine free by federal decree?

When all of the QEV findings are added up, the mandate has yielded no advantage for the administration among the young female voters it was presumably targeting: only 17% of women under 45 say they are more likely to vote for Obama because of it, while 26% say they are less likely. 

And among every other category of women, the issue turns out to be a loser, while also carrying a very tangible cost among Catholics: Twenty-nine percent say they are now less likely to vote for the president because of this issue, more than double the 13% who say it makes them more likely to support him. 

For its part, reading only the approving editorials of the secular press, the Obama political team may view its election tactics with religious groups and women as working. 

The administration will no doubt feel emboldened to assert yet more federal power over religious groups in a second term. 

If the quickly changing sentiments among Catholics and women are any indicator of things to come, however, the administration is not going to get that chance.

Ashley McGuire is a Senior Fellow with The Catholic Association and the editor-in-chief of AltCatholicah.

U.S. Bishops Prepare Catholics for Civil Disobedience: ‘We May Need to Witness to the Truth by Resisting the Law’

By Terence P. Jeffrey

May 27, 2012

Pope Benedict XVI makes New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan a cardinal on Feb. 18, 2012 at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)

(CNSNews.com) - Having organized 43 plaintiffs—including the archdioceses of New York and Washington and the University of Notre Dame—to file 12 different lawsuits against the Obama administration last Monday alleging the administration is violating the religious freedom of Catholics, the Catholic bishops of the United States are now preparing Catholics for what may be the most massive campaign of civil disobedience in this country since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and early 1960s.

“Some unjust laws impose such injustices on individuals and organizations that disobeying the laws may be justified,” the bishops state in a document developed to be inserted into church bulletins in Catholic parishes around the country in June.

“Every effort must be made to repeal them,” the bishops say in the document, which is already posted on the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “When fundamental human goods, such as the right of conscience, are at stake, we may need to witness to the truth by resisting the law and incurring its penalties.”

The bulletin insert reminds Catholic parishioners that the bishops have called for “A Fortnight of Freedom”—which they have described as “a special period of prayer, study, catechesis, and public action”—to take place from June 21 to July 4.

St. Thomas More (Portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, Wikimedia)

The bishops have noted that June 21, when this fortnight will begin, is the Vigil of the Feast of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More. Fisher was a Roman Catholic cardinal  whom the English monarch Henry VIII beheaded in 1535 after he refused to act against his conscience and take an oath asserting that Henry was the supreme authority over the church in England. That same year, Henry VIII also beheaded Thomas More, his former chancellor, for the same reason.

The sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate is set to go into effect for most health-care plans on Aug. 1, about four weeks after the bishops' "Fortnight of Freedom."

In campaign speeches delivered this week after the Catholic dioceses and organizations filed their 12 lawsuits, both President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama indicated that the administration intends to move forward and enforce the mandate.

Mrs. Obama  brought it up in a stump speech in Cleveland on Monday afternoon, less than three hours after the Catholic bishops had announced their lawsuits.

"You can tell people how, because we passed health reform, insurance companies will now have to cover preventive care--have to," said Mrs. Obama. "Things like contraception, cancer screenings, prenatal care--and they have to do it at no extra cost. People have to understand that’s what that fight was for."

President Obama signaled his personal commitment to enforcing the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate, using virtually identical language about it in back-to-back campaign speeches Wednesday and Thursday in California and Iowa.

"We don’t need another political fight about ending a woman’s right to choose, or getting rid of Planned Parenthood or taking away affordable birth control," Obama said. "We don’t need that. I want women to control their own health choices, just like I want my daughters to have the same economic opportunities as my sons. We’re not turning back the clock. We're not going back there."

Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (AP Photo)

The bulletin insert the bishops have prepared to distribute in parishes around the country in June specifically references the late Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who was imprisoned in Birmingham, Ala., on Good Friday 1963 for marching without a permit to protest the racist segregation laws enforced in Alabama in that period.

While detained, King, who was a Baptist minister, wrote his “Letter from the Birmingham Jail,” in which he said the moral justification for civil disobedience against Alabama’s segregation laws was derived from the writings of the Roman Catholic saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas.

“During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Americans shone the light of the Gospel on a dark history of slavery, segregation, and racial bigotry," the Catholic bishops say in their bulletin insert. “The civil rights movement was an essentially religious movement, a call to awaken consciences.

“In his famous ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’ in 1963,” the bishops says, “Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. boldly said, ‘The goal of America is freedom.’ As a Christian pastor, he argued that to call America to the full measure of that freedom was the specific contribution Christians are obliged to make. He rooted his legal and constitutional arguments about justice in the long Christian tradition: ‘I would agree with Saint Augustine that ‘An unjust law is no law at all.’… A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law.’”

The bishops have argued that elements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—AKA Obamacare—including the so-called “preventive services” mandate, would force faithful Catholics to act against their consciences and the teachings of their church. The mandate requires that virtually all health-care plans in the United States cover, without any fees or co-pay, sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions.

The bishops also object to the manner in which Obamacare deals with abortion generally. In April, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a background paper explaining how Obamacare not only would use tax dollars to fund abortions but would also force Americans to pay for abortions with the premiums they would pay to purchase health insurance—which under Obamacare they are mandated to do. The backgrounder was titled, “The New Federal Regulation on Coerced Abortion Payments.”

Additionally, the bishops object to the so-called “religious” exemption to the mandate that requires all health-care plans cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients. That exemption only applies to “religious” organizations that are primarily focused on inculcating religious tenets and that serve and employ primarily members of their own denomination. This “religious” exemption would not extend to Catholic schools, universities, hospitals, and charitable organizations—and, the bishops argue, it violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by empowering federal bureaucrats to determine which religious institutions are truly “religious” and which ones are not.

In their bulletin insert, the bishops unequivocally state that the administration’s sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate would force people to act against their consciences.

“This is a matter of whether religious people and institutions may be forced by the government to provide such coverage even when it violates our consciences,” say the bishops.

“What we ask is nothing more than the right to follow our consciences as we live out our teaching,” they say.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius first announced the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation last August. At that time, the bishops submitted formal comments to HHS, calling the regulation an "unprecedented attack on religious liberty" and asking the administration to rescind it in its entirety.

After Sebelius finalized the regulation in January, many Catholic bishops around the country asked their priests to read a letter from the pulpit at Sunday Masses that said: "We cannot--we will not--comply with this unjust law."

Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who leads the Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services wrote a letter that he asked all Catholic chaplains to read at Sunday masses at U.S. military facilities across the globe. Broglio's letter not only said "we will not" comply with the law, it also said: "It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle."

As reported by CNSNews.com, the Army told Army chaplains not to read this letter in Mass, a move that Archdiocese for the Military Services described as a violation of the First Amendment rights of Archbishop Broglio and Catholic chaplains.

In the April backgrounder, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop said that another regulation issued by the Obama administration in March of this year confirmed what the bishops had said about Obamacare when it was up for a vote in 2010 and they opposed its passage.

“While some have misunderstood or misrepresented the Act’s role in funding abortions, the new rule confirms that analyses by the Catholic bishops’ conference were accurate on this point,” said the backgrounder.

“Under this Act," it says, "millions of American taxpayers will be forced to help support abortion coverage, in two ways:  (1) Through their tax dollars all taxpayers will be forced to subsidize overall health plans that cover elective abortions, contrary to the policy of the Hyde amendment and every other major federal program, and (2) Many of these Americans will also be forced to pay directly for other people’s abortions. Some will say this is technically not ‘tax funding of abortions,’ because the required surcharge will be a premium payment rather than a tax payment as such. But what the payment is called is less important than what it actually does.”

The day after releasing this analysis, the bishops issued “A Statement on Religious Liberty,” that explained the Catholic belief that “an unjust law cannot be obeyed” and called for Catholics to join in what the bishops called “A Fortnight of Freedom” that will run from June 21 to July 4.

St. John Fisher (Portrait by Hans Holbein the Younger, Wikimedia)

June 21, the bishops pointed out, is the vigil of the Feasts of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More.

“We suggest that the fourteen days from June 21—the vigil of the Feasts of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More—to July 4, Independence Day, be dedicated to this ‘fortnight for freedom’—a great hymn of prayer for our country,” said the bishops.

“Our liturgical calendar celebrates a series of great martyrs who remained faithful in the face of persecution by political power—St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More, St. John the Baptist, SS. Peter and Paul, and the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome,” said the bishops. “Culminating on Independence Day, this special period of prayer, study, catechesis, and public action would emphasize both our Christian and American heritage of liberty.”

“It is a sobering thing to contemplate our government enacting an unjust law,” the bishops said. “An unjust law cannot be obeyed. In the face of an unjust law, an accommodation is not to be sought, especially by resorting to equivocal words and deceptive practices. If we face today the prospect of unjust laws, then Catholics in America, in solidarity with our fellow citizens, must have the courage not to obey them. No American desires this. No Catholic welcomes it. But if it should fall upon us, we must discharge it as a duty of citizenship and an obligation of faith.”