Congressman Gowdy Grills Secretary Sebelius on HHS Mandate

Catholics urged to imitate St. Thomas More in Religious Freedom Battle

Fr. Paul Scalia. Credit: Christendom College.

Catholics should follow the example of St. Thomas More in their current conflict with the Obama administration, said Fr. Paul D. Scalia, son of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

More's faithful witness and willingness to sacrifice his life rather than violate his conscience “are instructive for us in this present crisis,” said Fr. Scalia, who serves as pastor of St. John the Beloved Parish in McLean, Va.

In an April 4 article for the Catholic Herald, the diocesan newspaper of Arlington, Fr. Scalia reflected on the life of St. Thomas More, the well-known 16th-century lawyer, author and martyr who served as the chancellor of England under King Henry VIII.

He observed that More was faced with a moral dilemma when the Catholic Church would not allow King Henry to divorce his wife, and the king responded by simply redefining the Church.

More could not support the king’s decision in good conscience and therefore resigned from public life. He did not voice his opposition to the king, but merely attempted to live as a private citizen in silence.

“But King Henry’s rebellion against the Church inevitably trampled on the conscience of individuals as well,” said Fr. Scalia, explaining that even though he had resigned from his position, More was commanded to take an oath affirming the king’s divorce.

When he refused to violate his conscience by taking the oath, he was imprisoned and then beheaded.

The years that followed were filled with persecution of Catholics, who were fined and imprisoned for their religious beliefs.

Fr. Scalia compared More’s struggle with the king to that of Christians against a new U.S. mandate that will require private health insurance plans to cover contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, regardless of whether those providing the plans object to such coverage.

He said that the similarities between King Henry’s decree and the mandate issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services “are striking and instructive.”

Just as King Henry redefined the Church in England, the Obama administration “seeks to do likewise in the United States” with its recent mandate, he said.

The administration and some Congressmen have even “lectured the bishops about what the Church should do or think.” In doing so, he explained, they have violated the Church’s right to self-governance of internal affairs.

Fr. Scalia also noted that just as King Henry’s actions affected both the Church as an institution and private individuals such as More, the  mandate threatens not only the rights of Church organizations but those of individual citizens, who will also be penalized if they do not obey the mandate.

Fr. Scalia advised that if history is repeating itself in the current persecution of the Church, the faithful must “deliberately choose to imitate” St. Thomas More’s witness. 

We should reflect More’s “integrity and holiness of life,” he said, observing that the saint’s silence on the issue of the king’s divorce spoke volumes because he was known to be a man of integrity.

Although we currently “do not have the luxury of remaining silent,” we must still follow in More’s path of integrity, uniting our words and actions to present the truths of our faith, he said.

Fr. Scalia emphasized that we should also imitate More’s joy, which he maintained even in the midst of oppression. This joy may not always be externally visible, but should remain steadfast inside of us, because we know “that no suffering or persecution in this world can separate us from the love of Christ.”

We should also imitate More’s patriotism, said Fr. Scalia, recalling More’s famous statement before his death, “I die the king’s good servant, but God’s first.”

In the same way, he said, we will be good Americans by defending the First Amendment’s promises and “being devout Catholics first.”

Read More

Obama taking ‘similar path’ as Hitler and Stalin: Illinois bishop

(I know I'm late in posting this, but late is better than never!)

by Patrick B. Craine

• Tue Apr 17, 2012

PEORIA, Illinois, April 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a stunning homily on the weekend, an Illinois bishop slammed President Obama for his “radical pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda” and said Catholics must line up against that agenda at the ballot box in November or else lose all her dearly-held institutions.

 

“This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries—only excepting our church buildings – could easily be shut down,” said Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria at a gathering of Catholic men on Saturday.

 

“Because no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the intrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb,” he continued.

 

The bishop warned that with the Obama administration’s mandate for forcing religious employers to fund contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs, America is on a path leading to the state of past dictatorships when Christians were forced to “huddle and hide,” such as Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, Hitler’s Nazis, and Stalin’s Communists.

 

“Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care,” he said.

 

“In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path,” he added.

The bishop acknowledged that Christians could lose the battle against Obama’s mandate, but insisted that “before the awesome judgement seat of Almighty God this is not a war where any believing Catholic may remain neutral.”

 

“No Catholic ministry – and yes, Mr. President, for Catholics our schools and hospitals are ministries – can remain faithful to the Lordship of the Risen Christ and to his glorious Gospel of Life if they are forced to pay for abortions,” he said.

 

The faithful, he said, “can no longer be Catholics by accident, but instead be Catholics by conviction.”

 

“The days in which we live now require heroic Catholicism, not casual Catholicism,” he continued. “In our own families, in our parishes, where we live and where we work – like that very first apostolic generation – we must be bold witnesses to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We must be a fearless army of Catholic men, ready to give everything we have for the Lord, who gave everything for our salvation.”

 

“As Christians we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, but as Christians we must also stand up for what we believe and always be ready to fight for the Faith,” he added.

Bishop Jenky emphasized that for 2,000 years the Church has withstood the “terrible persecution” from the Roman Empire, to the age of revolution, to Nazism and Communism.

 

“And in the power of the resurrection, the Church will survive the hatred of Hollywood, the malice of the media, and the mendacious wickedness of the abortion industry,” he said.

 

“The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate,” he added.

 

“May God have mercy on the souls of those politicians who pretend to be Catholic in church, but in their public lives, rather like Judas Iscariot, betray Jesus Christ by how they vote and how they willingly cooperate with intrinsic evil.”

Find the full text of the talk at The Catholic Post.

1,400 Lutherans tell Catholic bishop: we’re standing with you for religious liberty

By Ben Johnson

FORT WAYNE, Indiana, April 19, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com)

In a sign of growing solidarity and Christian unity, leaders of the Lutheran Church presented a Roman Catholic bishop with letters from nearly 1,400 Lutherans supporting the Catholic Church’s fight against the HHS mandate.

Leaders of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod (LCMS) presented 112 letters from congregations and church institutions to Bishop Kevin Rhoades of the Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend as part of a “Stand Together for Religious Liberty” event on Tuesday. Some 1,396 Protestants from as far as Iowa signed the letters to the Catholic prelate.

On Tuesday, participants marched the one block from St. Paul’s Lutheran Church to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, where a crowd of 250 people gathered shortly after noon Mass.

Dr. Charles Gieschen.

Rev. Daniel P. May, Indiana LCMS district president, said the Lutherans undertook the gesture to assure religious freedom remained “unobstructed by government intrusion or coercion, as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States of America.”

The Rev. Dr. Charles Gieschen, professor of exegetical theology at Concordia Theological Seminary-Fort Wayne – of the denomination’s two seminaries – told LifeSiteNews.com he spoke at the event, then took part in delivering “letters of encouragement and support in light of the challenges the compromising of religious freedom has brought the Roman Catholic community.”

“It was organized primarily by a Lutheran layman who just saw this as an opportunity for Lutheran Christians to support other Christians,” Dr. Gieschen said. “In terms of sacred things we gather together with people of our communion, but on things like moral issues, such as the sanctity of human life, we seek to stand together with those who are lending their voices to address these issues in our wider society.” 

Bishop Rhoades “just thought it was a beautiful ecumenical outreach,” Tim Johnson, editor of the local diocesan newspaper, Today’s Catholic News, told LifeSiteNews.com. “I walked back with him to the cathedral, and you could tell he was so pleased at how it came out.”

Rev. Peter Cage, senior pastor at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, told a local television station, “We want to make it clear that this mandate is a concern not only for Catholics. It is an attack on freedom of religion. This controversy is not about contraception, or women’s rights, or anything other than freedom of religion.”

The bishop, who is a consultant to the Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, spoke last, calling the contraceptive and abortifacient mandate “an unprecedented coercive action by the federal government to force religious institutions and individuals to facilitate and to fund products that are contrary to our moral teaching.”

“Religious liberty is more than freedom of worship,” he said. “It includes the freedom to practice our faith in society without coercion from the government to violate our consciences. We stand together as Lutherans and Catholics today in opposing the attack on our religious liberty by the federal government.”

He told the mixed Protestants and Catholics at the event, “You give me hope that, with the help of God’s grace, we will see a new birth of freedom in our beloved country.”

“My heart is filled with gratitude to you, my brothers and sisters of Lutheran congregations of the Missouri Synod here in Fort Wayne,” the bishop said.

The outpouring of unity was the latest joint action the two historically estranged churches have taken together against the Obama administration’s encroachments on the freedom of religion.

The denomination’s president, Dr. Matthew Harrison, testified alongside a Catholic bishop at an often hostile hearing on religious freedom before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in February. He estimated the mandate could cost his denomination tens of millions in fines if it refuses to comply and expressed his willingness to go to jail over his beliefs.

In February, the Fort Wayne seminary faculty posted a statement on the HHS mandate that said, “While we do not share with the Catholic Church the same teaching on contraceptives, we do honor their right, according to the First Amendment, to practice their beliefs according to their conscience. Furthermore, we do stand with them entirely on the matter of abortifacients, which we hold to be the taking of human life.”

“Furthermore, this mandate from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is by no means an isolated incident,” the statement held, “but is part of a troubling trend in which governmental entities are demanding that religious institutions abandon their own biblical principles or else discontinue their works of charity.”

The Obama administration intervened in Hosanna v. Tabor, a Supreme Court case attempting to eliminate the ministerial exemption. The Christian school being sued is affiliated with the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod.

Catholic adoption agencies have closed rather than violate their consciences. Chicago’s Francis Cardinal George has warned all Catholic hospitals will close in two years if the HHS mandate is not rescinded.

“Do we want to live in a world where social activities informed by religious conscience are systematically exterminated?” the seminary statement asked. “Do we want to live in a world where the social fabric is torn apart, and an overreaching government harasses the very people who knit together our society through acts of charity and mercy? Do we want the public landscape wiped clean of religious hospitals, schools and charitable organizations?”

Dr. Gieschen told LifeSiteNews, as theologically distinct as Lutherans and Catholics remain, they will always fight shoulder-to-shoulder to maintain religious liberty and to preserve the sanctity of human life.

Read More

Prayer for Religious Freedom

The catholic bishops offer the following prayer for religious freedom. Feel free to use it and share it as you deem appropriate.

Almighty God, Father of all nations,

For freedom you have set us free in Christ Jesus (Gal 5:1).

We praise and bless you for the gift of religious liberty,

the foundation of human rights, justice, and the common good.

Grant to our leaders the wisdom to protect and promote our liberties;

By your grace may we have the courage to defend them, for ourselves and for all those who live in this blessed land.
We ask this through the intercession of Mary Immaculate, our patroness,
and in the name of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the unity of the Holy

Spirit, with whom you live and reign, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/our-first-most-cherished-liberty.cfm

Meeting Reminder

The next meeting for the High Plains Freedom Coalition will be Tuesday April 17th. The meeting will be held at the Southwest Library in Amarillo at 7:00pm. The Southwest Library is on 45th, between Bell and Coulter.

We will be discussing our action items and developing plans to put those into action. Come out to learn how you can help defend our religious freedom!

Bishops Issue Call To Action To Defend Religious Liberty

WASHINGTON—The U.S. bishops have issued a call to action to defend religious liberty and urged laity to work to protect the First Freedom of the Bill of Rights. They outlined their position in “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty.” The document was developed by the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), approved for publication by the USCCB Administrative Committee March 13, and published in English and Spanish April 12.

The document can be found at http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/our-first-most-cherished-liberty.cfm.

“We have been staunch defenders of religious liberty in the past. We have a solemn duty to discharge that duty today,” the bishops said in the document, “… for religious liberty is under attack, both at home and abroad.”

The document lists concerns that prompt the bishops to act now.Among concerns are:

• The Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate forcing all employers, including religious organizations, to provide and pay for coverage of employees’ contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs even when they have moral objections to them. Another concern is HHS’s defining which religious institutions are “religious enough” to merit protection of their religious liberty.

• Driving Catholic foster care and adoption services out of business. Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia and Illinois have driven local Catholic Charities adoption or foster care services out of business by revoking their licenses, by ending their government contracts, or both—because those Charities refused to place children with same-sex couples or unmarried opposite-sex couples who cohabit.

• Discrimination against Catholic humanitarian services. Despite years of excellent performance by the USCCB’s Migration and Refugee Services in administering contract services for victims of human trafficking, the federal government changed its contract specifications to require USCCB to provide or refer for contraceptive and abortion services in violation of Catholic teaching. Religious institutions should not be disqualified from a government contract based on religious belief, and they do not lose their religious identity or liberty upon entering such contracts. Recently, a federal court judge in Massachusetts turned religious liberty on its head when he declared that such a disqualification is required by the First Amendment—that the government violates religious liberty by allowing Catholic organizations to participate in contracts in a manner consistent with their beliefs on contraception and abortion.

The statement lists other examples such as laws punishing charity to undocumented immigrants; a proposal to restructure Catholic parish corporations to limit the bishop’s role; and a state university’s excluding a religious student group because it limits leadership positions to those who share the group’s religion.

Other topics include the history and deep resonance of Catholic and American visions of religious freedom, the recent tactic of reducing freedom of religion to freedom of worship, the distinction between conscientious objection to a just law, and civil disobedience of an unjust law, the primacy of religious freedom among civil liberties, the need for active vigilance in protecting that freedom, and concern for religious liberty among interfaith and ecumenical groups and across partisan lines.

The bishops decry limiting religious freedom to the sanctuary.

“Religious liberty is not only about our ability to go to Mass on Sunday or pray the Rosary at home. It is about whether we can make our contribution to the common good of all Americans,” they said. “Can we do the good works our faith calls us to do, without having to compromise that very same faith?”

“This is not a Catholic issue. This is not a Jewish issue. This is not an Orthodox, Mormon, or Muslim issue. It is an American issue,” they said.

The bishops highlighted religious freedom abroad.

“Our obligation at home is to defend religious liberty robustly, but we cannot overlook the much graver plight that religious believers, most of them Christian, face around the world,” they said. “The age of martyrdom has not passed. Assassinations, bombings of churches, torching of orphanages—these are only the most violent attacks Christians have suffered because of their faith in Jesus Christ. More systematic denials of basic human rights are found in the laws of several countries, and also in acts of persecution by adherents of other faiths.”

The document ends with a call to action.

“What we ask is nothing more than that our God-given right to religious liberty be respected. We ask nothing less than that the Constitution and laws of the United States, which recognize that right, be respected.” They specifically addressed several groups: the laity, those in public office, heads of Catholic charitable agencies, priests, experts in communication, and urged each to employ the gifts and talents of its members for religious liberty.

The bishops called for “A Fortnight for Freedom,” the two-week period from June 21 to July 4—beginning with the feasts of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher and ending with Independence Day—to focus “all the energies the Catholic community can muster” for religious liberty. They also asked that, later in the year, the feast of Christ the King be “a day specifically employed by bishops and priests to preach about religious liberty, both here and abroad.”

Members of the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty include:
Archbishop-designate William E. Lori of Baltimore, chairman;
Cardinal Donald Wuerl of Washington;

Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, OFM Cap, of Philadelphia;

Archbishop Wilton D. Gregory of Atlanta;
Archbishop John C. Nienstedt of St. Paul–Minneapolis;
Archbishop Thomas J. Rodi, of Mobile, Alabama:

Archbishop J. Peter Sartain of Seattle;

Bishop John O. Barres of Allentown, Pennsylvania;

Bishop Daniel E. Flores of Brownsville, Texas;
Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted of Phoenix;

Bishop Thomas J. Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois.

Consultants include:

Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles,

Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton. California;
Bishop Joseph P. McFadden of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania;

Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, Iowa and

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne–South Bend, Indiana.

Latest on the Mandate: Cardinal Burke Says It’s a Sin to Cooperate & More Evidence Pres. Obama is Losing this War

By Thomas Peters

Catholicvote.org

First, the most significant news — Cardinal Raymond Burke has shared his thoughts for the first time about the HHS mandate:

Jenn Giroux, the former Executive Director of HLI America, profiles some excerpts from the interview:

Thomas McKenna: “It is beautiful to see how the faithful have rallied behind the Hierarchy….How does your Eminence comment on the union of solidarity of our bishops?”

Cardinal Burke: “Yes, I have received emails and other communications from lay faithful who say that they are supporting their bishops 100% and they have communicated to their bishops their gratitude and assured them that they want them to continue to be courageous and not to be deceived by any kind of false accommodations which in fact continue this same kind of agenda which sadly we have witnessed for too long in our country which is totally secular and therefore is anti-life and anti-family. I admire very much the courage of the bishops. At the same time I believe they would say it along with me that they are doing no more than their duty. A bishop has to protect his flock and when any individual or government attempts to force the flock to act against conscience in one of its most fundamental precepts then the bishops have to come to defend those who are entrusted to their pastoral care. So I am deeply grateful to all of the bishops who have spoken about this and who are encouraging the members of their flock to also speak up because our government needs to understand that what is being done with this mandate is contrary first of all to the fundamental human right, the right to the free exercise of one’s conscience and at the same time contrary to the very foundation of our nation.”

Thomas McKenna: “So a Catholic employer, really getting down to it, he does not, or she does not provide this because that way they would be, in a sense, cooperating with the sin…the sin of contraception or the sin of providing a contraceptive that would abort a child, is this correct?”

Cardinal Burke: “This is correct. It is not only a matter of what we call “material cooperation” in the sense that the employer by giving this insurance benefit is materially providing for the contraception but it is also “formal cooperation” because he is knowingly and deliberatelydoing this, making this available to people. There is no way to justify it. It is simply wrong.”

Responding to the comments, Giroux says, “This comment by a high ranking Cardinal is the clearest explanation to date on the issue of an employer’s culpability when providing contraception, sterilization, and abortion inducing drug options in the insurance plans for employees.” [Steven Ertelt]

On the ground here in the U.S., it’s becoming more evident that along with the Catholic bishops and faithful solidifying their opposition to the mandate, the President is beginning to lose the messaging war with the wider public, as Peggy Noonan mentioned in her syndicated column for the Wall Street Journal last week:

“We know what criticisms and avenues of attack have pierced [the President]. At the top of the speech [to the Associated Press] he lauded, at some length and in a new way, local Catholic churches and social service agencies. That suggests internal polling shows he’s been damaged by the birth-control mandate.

Further research done by Steve Wagner of QEV Analytics agrees with Noonan’s assessment:

Steve Wagner of public opinion research firm QEV Analytics has taken a private poll, also of swing-state voters, specifically on the mandate, for the Catholic Association, a nonprofit. When he broke down the numbers for women under 50, he told me that he found two striking results.

The first is that nearly half of women under 50 attend religious services weekly. The second is that a majority oppose in principle what the administration is doing.

When asked, for example, whether the federal government has the right to force morally objectionable coverage on religious institutions, 52% of these women say “No.” An even larger percentage, 59%, say that insurance companies should handle contraceptives the way they do other drugs (instead of having to provide them free). All of which suggests that Republicans who advance a religious liberty argument when asked about the contraception mandate will find a receptive audience. [Bill McGurn in the WSJ]

President Obama continues to not do himself any favors, if he hopes to win back the Catholics he has alienated over this mandate. Just look at who he invited to the White House for Easter (emphasis mine):

The other guests disclosed by the White House were Kirbyjon Caldwell, senior pastor of Windsor Village United Methodist Church in Houston; Peg Chemberlin, president of the National Council of Churches; Sharon Watkins, president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); Julius Scruggs, president of the National Baptist Convention of America; Israel Gaither, national commander of the Salvation Army; Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association; and Nancy Wilson, moderator of Metropolitan Community Churches. [Baptist Press News]

Once again, the President invites Sr. Keehan as the “Catholic” representative. This is probably because no Catholic bishop would allow the President to use them as political cover.

All this reinforces two simple points for all Catholics to absorb: we are winning and don’t let up.

Read More

WHITE HOUSE MISREPRESENTS ITS OWN CONTRACEPTIVE MANDATE

The following is taken from a document issued by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), issued February 3, 2012:

The Obama administration, to justify its widely criticized mandate for contraception and sterilization coverage in private health plans, has posted a set of false and misleading claims on the White House blog (“Health Reform, Preventive Services, and Religious Institutions,” February 1).  In what follows, each White House claim is quoted with a response.

Claim: “Churches are exempt from the new rules: Churches and other houses of worship will be exempt from the requirement to offer insurance that covers contraception.”


Response: This is not entirely true.  To be eligible, even churches and houses of worship must show the government that they hire and serve primarily people of their own faithand have the inculcation of religious values as their purpose.  Some churches may have service to the broader community as a major focus, for example, by providing direct
service to the poor regardless of faith.  Such churches would be denied an exemption
precisely because their service to the common good is so great.  More importantly,   the
vast array of other religious organizations – schools, hospitals, universities, charitable
institutions – will clearly not be exempt.

*

Claim: “No individual health care provider will be forced to prescribe 
contraception: The President and this Administration have previously and continue to
express strong support for existing conscience protections.  For example, no Catholic
doctor is forced to write a prescription for contraception.”


Response:  It is true that these rules directly apply to employers and insurers, not
providers, but this is beside the point:   The Administration is forcing individuals and
institutions, including religious employers, to sponsor and subsidize what they consider
immoral.  Less directly, the classification of these drugs and procedures as basic
“preventive services” will increase pressures on doctors, nurses and pharmacists to
provide them in order to participate in private health plans – and no current federal
conscience law prevents that from happening.  Finally, because the mandate includes
abortifacient drugs, it violates one of the “existing conscience protections” (the Weldon
amendment) for which the Administration expresses “strong support.”

*

Claim: “No individual will be forced to buy or use contraception: This rule only
applies to what insurance companies cover.  Under this policy, women who want contraception will have access to it through their insurance without paying a co-pay or deductible.   But no one will be forced to buy or use contraception.”


Response: The statement that no one will be forced to buy it is false.  Women who want
contraception will be able to obtain it without co-pay or deductible precisely because
women who do not want contraception will be forced to help pay for it through their
premiums.  This mandate passes costs from those who want the service, to those who
object to it.

*

Claim: “Drugs that cause abortion are not covered by this policy:  Drugs like RU486 are not covered by this policy, and nothing about this policy changes the President’s firm
commitment to maintaining strict limitations on Federal funding for abortions. No
Federal tax dollars are used for elective abortions.”


Response: False.  The policy already requires coverage of Ulipristal (HRP 2000 or
“Ella”), a drug that is a close analogue to RU-486 (mifepristone) and has the same
effects. RU-486 itself is also being tested for possible use as an “emergency
contraceptive” – and if the FDA approves it for that purpose, it will automatically be
mandated as well.

*


Claim:“Over half of Americans already live in the 28 States that require insurance 
companies cover contraception: Several of these States like North Carolina, New York,
and California have identical religious employer exemptions.  Some States like Colorado,
Georgia and Wisconsin have no exemption at all.”


Response: This misleads by ignoring important facts, and some of it is simply false.  All
the state mandates, even those without religious exemptions, may be avoided by selfinsuring prescription drug coverage, by dropping that particular coverage altogether, or by taking refuge in a federal law that pre-empts any state mandates (ERISA).  None of
these havens is available under the federal mandate.   It is also false to claim that North
Carolina has an identical exemption.  It is broader:  It does not require a religious
organization to serve primarily people of its own faith, or to fulfill the federal rule’s
narrow tax code criterion.  Moreover, the North Carolina law, unlike the federal mandate,
completely excludes abortifacient drugs like Ella and RU-486 as well as “emergency
contraceptives” like Preven.

*


Claim: “Contraception is used by most women: According to a study by the
Guttmacher Institute, most women, including 98 percent of Catholic women, have used
contraception.”


Response: This is irrelevant, and it is presented in a misleading way. If a survey found
that 98% of people had lied, cheated on their taxes, or had sex outside of marriage, would
the government claim it can force everyone to do so? But this claim also mangles the data to create a false impression.  The study actually says this is true of 98% of “sexually
experienced” women.  The more relevant statistic is that the drugs and devices subject to
this mandate (sterilization, hormonal prescription contraceptives and IUDs) are used by
69% of those women who are “sexually active” and “do not want to become pregnant.”
Surely that is a minority of the general public, yet every man and woman who needs
health insurance will have to pay for this coverage.  The drugs that the mandate’s
supporters say will be most advanced by the new rule, because they have the highest copays and deductibles now, are powerful but risky injectable and implantable hormonal
contraceptives, now used by perhaps 5% of women.  The mandate is intended to change
women’s reproductive behavior, not only reflect it.

*


Claim: “Contraception coverage reduces costs: While the monthly cost of
contraception for women ranges from $30 to $50, insurers and experts agree that savings more than offset the cost.  The National Business Group on Health estimated that it would cost employers 15 to 17 percent more not to provide contraceptive coverage than to provide such coverage, after accounting for both the direct medical costs of potentially unintended and unhealthy pregnancy and indirect costs such as employee absence and reduced productivity.”


Response: The government is violating our religious freedom to save money?  If the
claim is true it is hard to say there is a need for a mandate: Secular insurers and
employers who don’t object will want to purchase the coverage to save money, and those
who object can leave it alone.  But this claim also seems to rest on some assumptions:
That prescription contraceptives are the only way to avoid “unintended and unhealthy
pregnancy,” for example, or that increasing access to contraceptives necessarily produces significant reductions in unintended pregnancies.  The latter assumption has been cast into doubt by numerous studies. see http://old.usccb.org/prolife/issues/contraception/contraception-fact-sheet-3-17-11.pdf).

*


Claim: “The Obama Administration is committed to both respecting religious beliefs and increasing access to important preventive services. And as we move forward, our strong partnerships with religious organizations will continue.”


Response: False.  There is no “balance” in the final HHS rule—one side has prevailed
entirely, as the mandate and exemption remain entirely unchanged from August 2011,
despite many thousands of comments filed since then indicating intense opposition.
Indeed, the White House Press Secretary declared on January 31, “I don’t believe there
are any constitutional rights issues here,” so little was placed on that side of the scale.
The Administration’s stance on religious liberty has also been shown in other ways.
Recently it argued before the Supreme Court that religious organizations have no greater
right under the First amendment to hire or fire their own ministers than secular
organizations have over their leaders– a claim that was unanimously rejected by the
Supreme Court as “extreme” and “untenable.”  The Administration recently denied a
human trafficking grant to a Catholic service provider with high objective scores, and
gave part of that grant instead to a provider with not just lower, but failing, objective
scores, all because the Catholic provider refused in conscience to compromise the same
moral and religious beliefs at issue here.  Such action violates not only federal conscience laws, but President Obama’s executive order assuring “faith-based” organizations that they will be able to serve the public in federal programs without compromising their faith.

View Document

When the Archbishop Met the President

Cardinal Dolan thought he heard Barack Obama pledge respect for the Catholic Church's rights of conscience. Then came the contraception coverage mandate.

By James Taranto

The Wall Street Journal

The president of the U.S. Conference of Bishops is careful to show due respect for the president of the United States. "I was deeply honored that he would call me and discuss these things with me," says the newly elevated Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York. But when Archbishop Dolan tells me his account of their discussions of the ObamaCare birth-control mandate, Barack Obama sounds imperious and deceitful to me.

Cardinal Dolan

Mr. Obama knew that the mandate would pose difficulties for the Catholic Church, so he invited Archbishop Dolan to the Oval Office last November, shortly before the bishops' General Assembly in Baltimore. At the end of their 45-minute discussion, the archbishop summed up what he understood as the president's message:

"I said, 'I've heard you say, first of all, that you have immense regard for the work of the Catholic Church in the United States in health care, education and charity. . . . I have heard you say that you are not going to let the administration do anything to impede that work and . . . that you take the protection of the rights of conscience with the utmost seriousness. . . . Does that accurately sum up our conversation?' [Mr. Obama] said, 'You bet it does.'"

The archbishop asked for permission to relay the message to the other bishops. "You don't have my permission, you've got my request," the president replied.

"So you can imagine the chagrin," Archbishop Dolan continues, "when he called me at the end of January to say that the mandates remain in place and that there would be no substantive change, and that the only thing that he could offer me was that we would have until August. . . . I said, 'Mr. President, I appreciate the call. Are you saying now that we have until August to introduce to you continual concerns that might trigger a substantive mitigation in these mandates?' He said, 'No, the mandates remain. We're more or less giving you this time to find out how you're going to be able to comply.' I said, 'Well, sir, we don't need the [extra time]. I can tell you now we're unable to comply.'"

The administration went ahead and announced the mandate. A public backlash ensued, and the archbishop got another call from the president on Feb. 10. "He said, 'You will be happy to hear religious institutions do not have to pay for this, that the burden will be on insurers.'" Archbishop Dolan asked if the president was seeking his input and was told the modified policy was a fait accompli. The call came at 9:30 a.m. The president announced the purported accommodation at 12:15 p.m.

Sister Carol Keehan of the pro-ObamaCare Catholic Health Association immediately pronounced herself satisfied with the change, and the bishops felt pressure to say something. "We wanted to avoid two headlines. Headline 1 was 'Bishops Celebrate . . . Accommodations.' . . . The other headline we wanted to avoid is 'Bishops Obstinate.'" They rushed out a "circumspect" statement, which Archbishop Dolan sums up as follows: "We welcome this initiative, we look forward to studying it, we hope that it's a decent first step, but we still have very weighty questions."

Within hours, "it dawned on us that there's not much here, and that's when we put out the more substantive [statement] by the end of the day, saying, 'Whoa, now we've had time to hear what was said at the announcement and to read the substance of it, and this just doesn't do it.'"

Having rushed to conciliate, they got the "Bishops Obstinate" headlines anyway.

Archbishop Dolan explains that the "accommodation" solves nothing, since most church-affiliated organizations either are self-insured or purchase coverage from Catholic insurance companies like Christian Brothers Services and Catholic Mutual Group, which also see the mandate as "morally toxic." He argues that the mandate also infringes on the religious liberty of nonministerial organizations like the Knights of Columbus and Catholic-oriented businesses such as publishing houses, not to mention individuals, Catholic or not, who conscientiously object.

"We've grown hoarse saying this is not about contraception, this is about religious freedom," he says. What rankles him the most is the government's narrow definition of a religious institution. Your local Catholic parish, for instance, is exempt from the birth-control mandate. Not exempt are institutions such as hospitals, grade schools, universities and soup kitchens that employ or serve significant numbers of people from other faiths and whose main purpose is something other than proselytization.

"We find it completely unswallowable, both as Catholics and mostly as Americans, that a bureau of the American government would take it upon itself to define 'ministry,'" Archbishop Dolan says. "We would find that to be—we've used the words 'radical,' 'unprecedented' and 'dramatically intrusive.'"

It also amounts to penalizing the church for not discriminating in its good works: "We don't ask people for their baptismal certificate, nor do we ask people for their U.S. passport, before we can serve them, OK? . . . We don't serve people because they're Catholic, we serve them because we are, and it's a moral imperative for us to do so."

To be sure, not all Catholics see it that way. Archbishop Dolan makes an argument—which he prefaces with the admission that "I find this a little uncomfortable"—that federal intrusion bolsters those who are more selfishly inclined: "Some Catholics . . . are now saying, 'Fine, we'll get out of all that. It's dragging us down anyway. Rather than be supporting 50 Catholic schools in the inner city where most of the kids are not Catholic, and using a big chunk of diocesan money to do that, we'll just use it for the schools that have all Catholics, and it'll serve us a lot better.' . . .

"I find that, by the way, to be rather un-Catholic," he continues. "I don't know what that would say to the gospel mandate to be 'light to the world' and 'salt of the earth.' It's part of our religion to be right out there in the forefront, right there in the nitty-gritty."

An insular attitude, Archbishop Dolan suggests, plays into the hands of ideologues who favor an ever-more-powerful secular government: "I get this all the time: I would have some people say, 'Cardinal Dolan, you need to go to Albany and say, "If we don't get state aid by September, I'm going to close all my schools."' I say to them, 'You don't think there'd be somersaults up and down the corridors?'"


Another story comes from the nation's capital: "The Archdiocese of Washington, in a very courteous way, went to the City Council and said, 'We just want to be upfront with you. If this goes through that we have to place children up for adoption with same-sex couples, we'll have to get out of the adoption enterprise, which everybody admits we probably do better than anybody else.' And one of the City Council members said, 'Good. We've been trying to get you out of it forever. And besides, we're paying you to do it. So get out!'"

What about the argument that vast numbers of Catholics ignore the church's teachings about sexuality? Doesn't the church have a problem conveying its moral principles to its own flock? "Do we ever!" the archbishop replies with a hearty laugh. "I'm not afraid to admit that we have an internal catechetical challenge—a towering one—in convincing our own people of the moral beauty and coherence of what we teach. That's a biggie."

For this he faults the church leadership. "We have gotten gun-shy . . . in speaking with any amount of cogency on chastity and sexual morality." He dates this diffidence to "the mid- and late '60s, when the whole world seemed to be caving in, and where Catholics in general got the impression that what the Second Vatican Council taught, first and foremost, is that we should be chums with the world, and that the best thing the church can do is become more and more like everybody else."

The "flash point," the archbishop says, was "Humanae Vitae," Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical reasserting the church's teachings on sex, marriage and reproduction, including its opposition to artificial contraception. It "brought such a tsunami of dissent, departure, disapproval of the church, that I think most of us—and I'm using the first-person plural intentionally, including myself—kind of subconsciously said, 'Whoa. We'd better never talk about that, because it's just too hot to handle.' We forfeited the chance to be a coherent moral voice when it comes to one of the more burning issues of the day."

Without my having raised the subject, he adds that the church's sex-abuse scandal "intensified our laryngitis over speaking about issues of chastity and sexual morality, because we almost thought, 'I'll blush if I do. . . . After what some priests and some bishops, albeit a tiny minority, have done, how will I have any credibility in speaking on that?'"

Yet the archbishop says he sees a hunger, especially among young adults, for a more authoritative church voice on sexuality. "They will be quick to say, 'By the way, we want you to know that we might not be able to obey it. . . . But we want to hear it. And in justice, you as our pastors need to tell us, and you need to challenge us.'"

As we talk about sex, Archbishop Dolan makes a point of reiterating that his central objection to the ObamaCare mandate is that it violates religious liberty. In their views on that subject, and their role in politics more generally, American Catholics have in fact become "more like everybody else." When John F. Kennedy ran for president in 1960, he found it necessary to reassure Protestants that, in the archbishop's paraphrase, "my Catholic faith will not inspire my decisions in the White House."

"That's worrisome," Archbishop Dolan says. "That's a severe cleavage between one's moral convictions and the judgments one is called upon to make. . . . It's bothersome to us as Catholics, because that's the kind of apologia that we expect of no other religion." But times have changed. Today devout Catholic Rick Santorum is running on the promise that his faith will inform his decisions—and his greatest support comes from evangelical Protestants.

The archbishop sees a parallel irony in his dispute with Mr. Obama: "This is a strange turn of the table, that here a Catholic cardinal is defending religious freedom, the great proposition of the American republic, and the president of the United States seems to be saying that this is a less-than-important issue."


Religious freedom has received a more sympathetic hearing at the U.S. Supreme Court—which, coincidentally, has had a Catholic majority since 2006. In January, in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC, the court ruled unanimously in favor of an evangelical Lutheran church's right to classify teachers as ministers and therefore not subject to federal employment law. Archbishop Dolan sums up the decision: "Nowhere, no how, no way can the federal government seek to intrude upon the internal identity of a religion in defining its ministers."

But whether the government has the authority to define a ministry—excluding, as the ObamaCare mandate does, church-affiliated institutions like hospitals and schools—is a separate legal question, one that may be resolved in litigation over the birth-control mandate.

It's possible that the Supreme Court or a new president will render the issue moot. After our interview, the archbishop has a question for me: If the high court rules against ObamaCare, will that be the end of the birth-control mandate? Probably not, I tell him—though such an outcome seems much likelier now than it did early in the week when we met. The justices could end up striking a blow for religious liberty without the question even having reached their docket.

Read More