Cardinal Dolan Reaffirms Commitment to Oppose HHS Mandate, Protect Conscience ~ reblog

Cardinal Dolan Reaffirms Commitment to Oppose HHS Mandate, Protect Conscience
catholic.orgUsccbSeptember 19th, 2013 view original

We are united in our resolve to continue to defend our right to live by our faith, and our duty to serve the poor, heal the sick, keep our apostolates strong and faithful, and insure our people. I remain grateful for your continued unity in response to this matter of deep concern to us all. (Timothy Cardinal Dolan)

WASHINGTON, DC (USCCB) – The U.S. bishops continue to study the legal and moral implications of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate in the Affordable Care Act, and to “develop avenues of response that would both preserve our strong unity and protect our consciences,” Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan said in a September 17 letter to bishops. His letter followed the September 10-11 meeting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Administrative Committee, the top ranking USCCB body outside a plenary session.

The bishops’ “efforts are proceeding apace, and, as you know, include a careful legal and moral analysis of the final rule,” Cardinal Dolan said. Further discussion will take place at the bishops’ fall plenary, Nov. 11-14 in Baltimore. “We are united in our resolve to continue to defend our right to live by our faith, and our duty to serve the poor, heal the sick, keep our apostolates strong and faithful, and insure our people,” he said.

The full text of Cardinal Dolan’s letter follows.

The HHS mandate requires virtually all employers to facilitate access to sterilization and contraception, as well as drugs and devices that may cause abortion, even if doing so violates deeply-held religious beliefs. Despite serious religious liberty concerns expressed by believers of many faiths, the Administration finalized its mandate with only minor changes. The final rule, Cardinal Dolan said, “still suffers from the same three basic problems”:

1) “Its narrow definition of ‘religious employer’ reduces religious freedom to the freedom of worship by dividing our community between houses of worship and ministries of service,”

2) “Its second-class treatment of those great ministries – the so-called ‘accommodation’ – leaves them without adequate relief,” and

3) “Its failure to offer any relief to for-profit businesses run by so many of our faithful in the pews.”

Cardinal Dolan stressed the bishops’ longstanding advocacy of policies that advance the goal of affordable health care. “Now we are being burdened because of the same Catholic values that compel us into these ministries,” he said.

Cardinal Dolan emphasized that the members of the Administrative Committee “were unanimous in their resolve to continue our struggle against the HHS Mandate.” He likewise voiced concern regarding the Catholic Health Association’s “hurried acceptance of the accommodation” which he called “untimely and unhelpful.”

“We highly value CHA’s great expertise in their ministry of healing,” Cardinal Dolan said, “but as they have been the first to say, they do not represent the Magisterium of the Church.”

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The full text of Cardinal Dolan’s letter

September 17, 2013
Year of Faith

My brother bishops,

I write at the request of our brother bishops on the USCCB Administrative Committee, who asked me to update you, as I have now grown accustomed to doing, on the tough and delicate matter of the HHS Mandate, and our ongoing response to it. You won’t be surprised to hear that, at our meeting last week, we spent a great deal of time focused on this matter of major concern to us all.

I have to tell you first that we took the occasion to vent. The Catholic Church in America has long been a leader in providing affordable health care, and in advocating for policies that advance that goal. The bishops on a national level have been at it for almost one hundred years, and our heroic women and men religious have done so even longer. Yet, instead of spending our time, energy, and treasure on increasing access to health care, as we have done for many decades, we’re now forced to spend those resources on determining how to respond to recently enacted government regulations that restrict and burden our religious freedom. Catholics – our parents and grandparents, religious sisters, brothers and priests – were among the first at the table to advance and provide health care, and now we are being burdened because of the same Catholic values that compel us into these ministries! All this in a country that puts religious liberty first on the list of its most cherished freedoms. As I’ve said before, this is a fight that we didn\’t ask for, and would rather not be in, but it’s certainly one that we won’t run from.

It might be helpful if we keep in mind our recent history on the HHS mandate and our efforts regarding it. Last February 1, the Administration announced its updated “accommodation.” We immediately said that we needed time to analyze it, but that our initial read indicated that, regrettably, not much had changed, and our objections remained. Nonetheless, we took the administration at its word when it said it would consider our concerns, and after a detailed analysis, our Conference again submitted extensive comments, as invited to do by HHS.

On June 28, we got our answer: despite our grave concerns – concerns we share with believers of many other faiths, and with so many of the 400,000 others who commented on the rule – the “accommodation” was finalized with only minor changes. While the administration gave us a much-needed extra five months to determine how to respond, the final version of the mandate still suffers from the same three basic problems we have highlighted from the start: its narrow definition of “religious employer” reduces religious freedom to the freedom of worship by dividing our community between houses of worship and ministries of service; its second-class treatment of those great ministries-the so-called “accommodation”-leaves them without adequate relief; and its failure to offer any relief at all to for-profit businesses run by so many of our faithful in the pews.

As you know, we are continuing our efforts in Congress and in the courts, and we are confident that our rights under the Constitution and other laws protecting religious freedom will eventually be vindicated. While much remains uncertain, it is plain that the HHS Mandate lessens the ability of our ministries to give full-throated witness to our faith, a central mission of all Catholic apostolates.

At the Administrative Committee meeting, the members were unanimous in their resolve to continue our struggle against the HHS Mandate, and they asked me to convey that firm resolve to you. If there\’s any perception that our dedication to this fight is flagging, that’s dead wrong.

That perception may come in part from the Catholic Health Association’s hurried acceptance of the accommodation, which was, I’m afraid, untimely and unhelpful. We highly value CHA’s great expertise in their ministry of healing, but as they have been the first to say, they do not represent the Magisterium of the Church. Even in their document stating that they could live with the “accommodation” they remarked that we bishops, along with others, have wider concerns than they do.

We continue to follow the excellent process established at the meeting of the body of bishops in June, to develop avenues of response that would both preserve our strong unity and protect our consciences. Those efforts are proceeding apace, and as you know, include a careful legal and moral analysis of the final rule. We will then have another opportunity to discuss the rule at our November plenary assembly.

We are united in our resolve to continue to defend our right to live by our faith, and our duty to serve the poor, heal the sick, keep our apostolates strong and faithful, and insure our people. I remain grateful for your continued unity in response to this matter of deep concern to us all. I’ll try my best to keep you posted.

With prayerful best wishes, I am,

Fraternally in Christ,

Timothy Cardinal Dolan
Archbishop of New York
President
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops

President Obama’s Belfast Blarney – American Thinker Re-Blog

President Obama’s Belfast Blarney – American Thinker

By Ken Blackwell and Bob Morrison

The fact is that in Northern Ireland, the religious schools have been leaders in reconciling historic antagonisms.

Reuters/Reuters - U.S. President Barack Obama speaks to guests at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast June 17, 2013. REUTERS/Paul Faith/Pool

President Obama’s recent trip to the G-8 Summit in Belfast, Northern Ireland, included an address at the Waterfront hall. There, he criticized Catholic and Protestant schools and compared them to segregated schools in the U.S. when he was a boy. His remarks were hailed by British atheists. They took his speech for what it was: an attack on faith-based education everywhere.

Mr. Obama told an audience in Belfast’s Waterfront hall:

Because issues like segregated schools and housing, lack of jobs and opportunity — symbols of history that are a source of pride for some and pain for others — these are not tangential to peace; they’re essential to it. If towns remain divided — if Catholics have their schools and buildings, and Protestants have theirs — if we can’t see ourselves in one another, if fear or resentment are allowed to harden, that encourages division. It discourages cooperation.

We cannot hear him liken Catholic and Protestant schools to racial segregation in America without a sense of alarm. Clearly, President Obama dismisses religious freedom as a basis for parents’ choosing different schools for their own children.

Mr. Obama’s own grandparents exercised their choice in sending him to Honolulu’s prestigious Punahou Academy. This pricey ($20,000/year) prep school was founded by Congregationalist missionaries. With roots in the faith-based community, it hardly qualifies as a segregation academy.

Similarly, the president and Mrs. Obama have chosen Washington, D.C.’s very tony Sidwell Friends school for their daughters. They have every right to do so, but no one would credit this Quaker-founded school as part of a segregation system.

Mr. Obama has been zealous in trying to block other parents’ exercise of education choice. His administration has been eager to shut down Washington, D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarships. This program permits low-income parents of area students to choose a private or parochial school for their kids. Most of these scholarships go to minority students and many of them choose Catholic schools where a majority of their classmates are non-Catholic.

It is a shocking thing for the President of the United States to show such open hostility to faith-based schooling. As their motto goes, these are “schools you can believe in.” And the record of religious schools in America is a great one.

Continue reading “President Obama’s Belfast Blarney – American Thinker Re-Blog” →

Religious freedom is not a ‘second-class right’ – WaPo Re-Blog

A rosary is held in the hand of a walker during a “Rosary Walk” rally supporting religious freedom. Over 100 people from through out the Belleville Diocese participated in the walk and mass at St. Peter’s Cathedral in Belleville, Illinois. The walk was in response to the recent U.S. Department of Health and Human Services mandate that requires private health care plans to provide coverage of contraceptives. (AP)

by Mary Ann Glendon, m.washingtonpost.com

The recently-erupted scandal over efforts by IRS officials to penalize conservative organizations has taken Washington and the country by surprise. Few scandals in recent decades have captured the public discourse so quickly or completely.

But careful observers of this “new” scandal will see that it fits a larger pattern of governmental efforts to use state power to enforce ideological conformity. Nowhere is that pattern more evident than in the realm of religious freedom where recent years have seen efforts, both subtle and overt, to squelch diversity of ideas.

No one in the United States is at risk of being tortured or killed by the government on account of his or her religious beliefs, as is the case in many other countries. But as the old Woody Guthrie song goes, “Some rob you with a six gun and some with a fountain pen.”

Today, millions of Americans whose religious convictions conflict with government-favored policies on abortion and same-sex marriage are increasingly subjected to penalties and classified as enemies of government policy. And official insistence that religious providers of health, educational and social services cooperate with government’s ideological programs threatens a death blow to the diversity that has made our vibrant civil society one of the wonders of the world.

The gravity of the situation is clear from the fact that religious freedom itself is in danger of becoming a second-class right.

Continue reading “Religious freedom is not a ‘second-class right’ – WaPo Re-Blog” →

Catholic Archbishop: Wake Up! Religious Liberty at Risk in USA (CNS Re-Blog)

Peanut Gallery: Archbishop Chaput of Philadelphia issued a wake-up call to all Christians. Full text may be found here.

“[T]he latest IRS ugliness,” he wrote, “is a hint of the treatment disfavored religious groups may face in the future, if we sleep through the national discussion of religious liberty now. The day when Americans could take the Founders’ understanding of religious freedom as a given is over. We need to wake up.”

By Terence P. Jeffrey

Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

(CNSNews.com) – Roman Catholic Archbishop Charles J. Chaput is calling on Americans to wake up and recognize that the Founding Fathers’ vision of religious freedom is now threatened by the federal government.

“The day when Americans could take the Founders’ understanding of religious freedom as a given is over,” said the archbishop. “We need to wake up.”

Chaput, who leads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Philadelphia, pointed to Obamacare’s sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation as one example. The regulation, issued by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, requires almost all health-care plans in the United States to provide coverage for sterilizations, artificial contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs to all women of reproductive age–even if the person or employer providing the insurance coverage and even if the female beneficiaries themselves do not want the coverage and believe it is morally wrong and violates their religious beliefs.

“[T]he HHS mandate can only be understood as a form of coercion,” the archbishop wrote in a recent column posted on the website of the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. The column is entitled, “Religious Freedom and the Need to Wake Up.”

Last year, the Catholic bishops of the United States unanimously approved a statement describing the HHS regulation as an “unjust and illegal mandate.” The unanimous bishops said the regulation not only violated the religious freedom of religious institutions but also the “personal civil rights” of individual Americans who will be forced to comply with it either as employers or employees.

Archbishop Chaput noted that the bishops believe “basic medical care is a matter of social justice and human dignity.” That principal, however, does not empower the government to force Americans to violate their moral and religious convictions.

“But health care has now morphed into a religious liberty issue provoked entirely–and needlessly–by the current White House,” the archbishop wrote. “Despite a few small concessions under pressure, the administration refuses to withdraw or reasonably modify a Health and Human Services (HHS) contraceptive mandate that violates the moral and religious convictions of many individuals, private employers and religiously affiliated and inspired organizations.”

The archbishop noted that the administration’s disregard for religious liberty in the enforcement of this regulation is in line with its refusal to defend the Defense of Marriage Act and its advocacy in the Hosanna-Tabor case.

The Defense of Marriage Act says that a state cannot be forced to recognize a same-sex marriage contracted in another state and that for federal purposes marriage is between one man and one women. The Supreme Court is now considering the constitutionality of DOMA, and the administration has asked the court that the law be thrown out, arguing that opposition to same-sex marriage (which is the position of the Catholic Church and many other religious denominations) is the constitutional equivalent of racial discrimination.

In the Hosanna-Tabor case, the administration argued unsuccessfully in the Supreme Court that the government could tell a Lutheran school it must restore as a “commissioned minister” a person who violated the teachings of the Lutheran faith.

“Coupled with the White House’s refusal to uphold the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, and its astonishing disregard for the unique nature of religious freedom displayed by its arguments in a 9-0 defeat in the 2012 Hosanna-Tabor Supreme Court decision, the HHS mandate can only be understood as a form of coercion,” wrote the archbishop.

“Access to inexpensive contraception is a problem nowhere in the United States,” he said. “The mandate is thus an ideological statement; the imposition of a preferential option for infertility. And if millions of Americans disagree with it on principle–too bad.”

The archbishop went on to observe that abortion advocates use fraudulent language in describing their position.

“The fraud at the heart of our nation’s ‘reproductive rights’ vocabulary runs very deep and very high,” he wrote. “In his April 26 remarks to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the president never once used the word ‘abortion,’ despite the ongoing Kermit Gosnell trial in Philadelphia and despite Planned Parenthood’s massive role in the abortion industry.”

The archbishop noted that the scandal “involving IRS targeting of ‘conservative’ organizations … also has a religious dimension.”

“But the latest IRS ugliness,” he wrote, “is a hint of the treatment disfavored religious groups may face in the future, if we sleep through the national discussion of religious liberty now. The day when Americans could take the Founders’ understanding of religious freedom as a given is over. We need to wake up.”

“Religious Freedom Day” – not so much!

Peanut Gallery: “Words mean things.” And President Obama choses his words very carefully. That’s why his substitution of the word worship for freedom in his Religious Freedom Day proclamation (Jan 16) was important – and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty called him on it.

Perhaps this mismatch between words and deeds can be explained by the phrase “freedom of worship,” which the President uses in the first sentence of his proclamation. Religious freedom certainly includes worship, but it extends beyond the four walls of a church. If it is not to be an empty promise, religious freedom must also include acting on one’s deepest religious beliefs when one is feeding the poor, caring for the sick, educating the young, or running a business.

The Becket Fund focused on the HHS mandate affecting churches and religious institutions but the word switch (worship for religion) would also limit evengelism beyond the four walls of a church.

So what is he up to? Maybe he thinks if he says it often enough and long enough people will accept the change… and stay in their place? Out of sight and out of mind.

I don’t think God is going to go for that.
_______________________________________________

The report from Christianity Today is found below –

Becket Fund Pushes Back on Obama’s ‘Religious Freedom Day’ Proclamation

by Jeremy Weber, blog.christianitytoday.com

Today (Wed, Jan 16), President Barack Obama continued the tradition of observing Religious Freedom Day with a presidential proclamation. But this year, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty critiqued his use of “freedom of worship” rhetoric—a debate that first arose in 2010.

“Foremost among the rights Americans hold sacred is the freedom to worship as we choose,” begins Obama’s proclamation (full text at bottom), which later asserts “religious liberty … is a universal human right to be protected here at home and across the globe. This freedom is an essential part of human dignity, and without it our world cannot know lasting peace.”

Becket challenged the president’s statement in light of the Affordable Care Act’s contraception mandate, which currently faces 43 legal challenges (many led by Becket) based on religious freedom concerns. Continue reading ““Religious Freedom Day” – not so much!” →

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