Catholic Rebellion Against Obama Overreach Grows
Secretary Sebelius and President Obama were foolish to make war on a church whose members represent such a significant percentage of Democratic voters.
February 6, 2012 - 5:57 pm
Catholic Vote org. reports that bishops representing 90% of the Catholic Dioceses in the U.S. have issued statements in opposition to the Administration’s demand that the heath insurance they provide employees of Catholic institutions covers contraception, abortion and sterilization and that their hospitals provide these services. The site lists the 167 bishops who have spoken out against the HHS mandate.
This isn’t just the Catholics that are up in arms about Obama’s egregious stomping of religious liberty. Virtually every Protestant denomination is in agreement with the Catholic Church. I even know a few of the completely secular type that think this ruling is an outrage.
And frankly, if I were running a Catholic hospital (and some of them are as good as they get in the country), I would tell the Jackbooted Hypocrite for President, we’ll shut every hospital affiliated with the Catholic Church if you don’t back off. And mean it.
Better yet, they should just ignore the ruling and let his administration enforce it.
Correct. Unfortunately, the one year delay in enforcement is intended to prevent an immediate court challenge. But the church should be looking for a way to force the issue. Sibelius has already been forced into a weak response to USA Today’s negative editorial opinion.
More than the church, I’m surprised that some of these super-Pac’s not beholden to the RNC or to specific candidates aren’t hammering the administration on this issue, to ever growing list of scandals and idiotic policy moves like Fast and Furious, Keystone, Solyndra, and on and on. A concerted blitz would force the media narrative in directions which have so far been resisted.
My, my, my. So the fools who voted for him are starting to learn what the rest of us figured out when he first showed up on the national scene.
Let’s hope he continues this “change”.
Heck of it is (for him) had he waited he would have had a strong chance of winning, and we would be up the creek.
To be fair the 53% registered Democrat Catholic voters who voted for Obama and his satanic Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are slowly losing their faith in the Democrat Party. In 2011 these voters dropped to a whopping 48%!
http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2012/02/shock-people-of-all-religions.html
Let’s hope the bishops don’t cave. They’re a liberal bunch, but this display of federal power is beyond the pale, and they seem to be finally waking up. To me, this is the worst thing this administration has done. Outrageous, I am like so pissed.
Only 90% ?
It may already be 100%..the site relies on reports from the field I think
The other 10% are people like Nancy Pelosi: CINOs (Catholics in Name Only) who are Nancy Pelosi,under the delusion that the majority of Catholics will stand with the Administration.
Most of these people live in the lefty enclaves of San Francisco and New Yahk City, where they’re safely insulated from the reality of life in what they refer to as “flyover country.”
– from Father “But I’m entitled!” Phleger?
(Thank you for keeping on this story; others are finally picking up the Golden Thread.)
It’s my pleasure. An historic event.
I am a cradle Catholic, and I would love to believe there is a monolithic Catholic vote. Like the Jewish vote, sadly, there is not. I’ve been disappointed repeatedly by my fellow Catholics, who lean heavily on the sin of Pride as their excuse for “independence.” I hope God does not visit retribution on their immortal souls, but I have no evidence He won’t.
Meanwhile, the signs are everywhere to see that this is a President who has placed himself above everyone. We need to take him down. Let him enjoy the illusion of winning another term until the people vote him out. PLEASE, people, do the right thing.
“Catholic Rebellion Against Obama Overreach Grows”
Good. Glad to see folks standing up against the liberal Democrats’ attempt to turn this country into a national socialist police state.
guess we will all need to convert to islam. they were long ago given an exemption from this obomination. along with congress & staffs, seiu unions, and all who follow the teachings of the obomination. all hail the grate one. hedaboss.
guess you just gotta be mo closer to the new deity on the block.
and all the courts go (silence). ethics really is like virginity. you can’t get it back, can you?
They’ll roll over. Soon as the race card shows up. And it will.
I don’t think so. I am no expert on Catholic theology but it is my understanding that anyone who funds or performs an abortion is automatically excommunicated. I do not see how the bishops can not fight this law.
There are reports that the White House spokesman is hinting at a retreat of sorts. I think whatever happens now it’s a lose-lose for the White House. This has been IMO a major miscalculation.
Wasn’t the Catholic contingent instrumental in helping to get ObamaCare passed in the first place?
Clarice-
My favorite response so far is that of Bishop Zubik: “To Hell with You”
http://diopitt.org/bridging-gap/hell-you
The good Bishop sees more clearly than most and his message carries well beyond his diocese.
This directive had little to do with the Catholic vote and everything to do with consolidating a demographic that the administration cares about much, much more deeply.
Axelrod and the rest know that Obama’s most loyal demographic after the black community is college educated white women, particularly those who majored in the humanities, arts, and social sciences. (Yes, I know that some in that group aren’t supporting him, but they are statistically irrelevant.) This demographic is in fact his great core. They are the bulk of the audience of NPR and PBS. They are the overwhelming bulk of the education industry. They are a plurality of the public sector workforce, particularly the unionized public work force. And almost to a woman they are deeply AND broadly bigoted against all but the most emasculated and exsanginated manifestations of Christianity, authentic Catholics and evangelical Protestants in particular. This directive is, therefore, bleeding red meat for them, and will endear them to their fearless leader even more than they already are. Count on it.
The administration and their advisors have already made their calculations – accurate or not – that the increase in loyalty and fervor amongst college educated anti-Christian bigot white women will offset or more than offset any erosion of support from Catholics in November.
That’s what this is about. Period. It may be that they miscalculated, we shall see.
Given the moral confusion in the Roman Catholic Church, I’m not sure that my fellow ‘Christians’ will erect barricades over this federal abuse of power and resist the usurpations.
Nice troll.
Tempest in a teapot. Comrade Zero doesn’t really have anything to lose in this battle…and a great deal to win. His base loves this kind of stuff (“Yeah, baby, stickin’ it to the Catholics!”), and anyone that’s outraged by this probably wasn’t going to vote for him in the first place. I expect that the Bishops will eventually, very quietly, cave in on this. The majority of American Catholics may not support abortion, but they DO support contraception, and a hierarchy that has spent decades (or much, much longer!) protecting pedophile Priests isn’t exactly holding any moral high ground, so I doubt that they’re going to choose to die on this hill. In any event, this isn’t really about insurance, it’s about paying waivers and/or fines, it’s all about the $
I suggest you keep watching because I think you are dead wrong.
Isn’t this also about workers’ rights. They can choose whether to work for another organization that includes contraception in their health insurance or they can choose to buy their pills themselves if they want them.
I think much of what you say is true as it is about $ and those $ might be tied to charitable contributions and tax policy. With some potential tax changes coming in the future, especially the buffet rule where anyone making over $1 million per year in AGI will have a minimum tax of 30% (although some say they may have a charitable exemption – but then are religious organizations charities?).
Curious why with 28 states (all the ones with big Catholic populations) already having these very same provisions for awhile why now?
The Catholic Church has long supported the growth of big-government in the guise of ‘social justice’. It is incredulous to me that the Church was not aware of the harm caused to others due to their support of rough shod government intervention in our individual affairs.
What are the chances that they will seek an only an individual exemption and continue to encourage the practice of forced charity upon all others?
Poor Clarice and the other individuals who think this will be a big issue in November – it won’t. Why? Because independents and members of the Democratic party aren’t religious wacknuts or stupid that’s why.
Today 28 states already had these provisions in their laws AND 8 states have no exemptions for religion whatsoever. Most posters here are clueless as it appears you are as to what this actually does as it forces the “church to do nothing” as there are exemptions for churches and schools where most of the employees are of the same religion.
The big issue where it appears you are having a hissy fit is in Colleges and Hospitals. It does not require in spite of all the hand wringing here any doctor to prescribe birth control nor does it force any hospital to perform an abortion nor does it cover any morning after pill. Nor does it force any good Catholic to purchase birth control.
Now why were the Bishops silent when 28 states already require this? It’s not like this is new to them. I would have been more impressed with the Bishop’s reciting a letter of apology for looking the other way for decades and more when their priests diddled little boys and girls. I would have preferred if the Bishops read a letter saying how they are trying to control rapes of nuns by priests in Africa and S. America. I would have preferred the Bishops writing a letter about things that really matter to their flock like combating poverty and hunger. But then old white men are pretty predictable now aren’t they.
“independents and members of the Democratic party aren’t religious wacknuts or stupid that’s why.”
You could have fooled me.
Your post is an utter distortion of the facts and you are clearly too prejudiced to bother trying to disabuse you of your errors.
Oh? So where am I wrong little flower? I know facts are a terrible thing to waste but please can you look a but deeper on why the Bishops came out now when 28 states already have these very same positions? Or maybe you are just regurgitating talking points and don’t know much of what you write about.
The 28 states meme is something I suppose you picked up from Think Progress which links that claim to HHS’ statement which says something quite different: “An interim final rule was released alongside the women’s prevention guidelines to give religious organizations the choice of buying or sponsoring group health insurance that does not cover contraception if that is inconsistent with their tenets. This proposal is modeled on the most common exemption available in the 28 states that already require insurance companies to cover contraception. We invite the public to comment on this proposal as we work to strike the balance between providing access to proven prevention and respecting religious beliefs. In the event that this exemption is modified, it would remain effective on August 1, 2012.”
That is to say, an interim rule was promulgated which ALLOWED religious organizations an exemption as 28 states do.
The fuss respecting the final regs is because that exemption has been taken away by HHS.
The exemption was not taken away – what are you talking about. This forces nothing on a church or any institution in which most of their employees are of the same faith. It does say that Hospitals and Colleges (the prime focal point) offer insurance that covers birth control as many of their employees are not of their faith.
There’s no majority/minority religious test in the HHS regulation, FL. If a Catholic Hospitial offers health insurance to its employees, then, a year hence, it must include a standard package of what HHS deems to be preventive care which is to include contraceptive, abortifaciants, and abortion services. In otherwords, the church through it’s employer match subsidizes the devices, and procedures. Now you may think this good – clearly the Obama administration does – but the employer match will be a subsidy and constitute a violation of conscience for the church.
Dear flaming liberal the one who is a wacknut is you, by the looks of it you probably like nuts period. you are a fool and a bigot.
It is essential to expose the false media narrative that (1) this issue is Catholics vs Obama, and (2) that this is about birth control. This is an attack on the religious freedom of all faith-based institutions, regardless of their faith tradition or their stance on birth control. Leaders of other faith traditions have spoken out forcefully against the HHS mandate, but the media silence on this fact has been deafening. For a great resource detailing religious freedom issues, I recommend IRFAlliance.org.
JusticeThinking – Italy has the same coverage and the Pope said squat. Heck the 8 states that have no religious exemption today will now have the ability to stop offering this type of insurance within their churches and schools.
The Catholics are going to see this for what it is – Bishops trying to continue to control women and their womb. The Bishops would like to go back to the Rhythem Method that proved so successful for those large Catholic families.
Again, this is not narrowly about birth control or women’s health or the Catholic church. It is about government intrusion into the inner life of non-government institutions. In this instance, intrusion into faith-based organizations. It is an attack on religious freedom and the rights of faith-based organizations to enforce their own institutional standards. This is a First amendment, not a health-care issue. Health care is just the arena for this First-Amendment fight.
JusticeThinking – of course it’s not an attack on religion. Did Gov Pataki in NY who signed their law into effect attack religion. Even the supreme court agreed with him. Fordham, Georgetown, DePaul, BC – in four different states offer their employees the very same coverage today. Caritas which are 6 Catholic Hospitals recently purchased by Stewart also have offered the same coverage initiated by Romney. 28 States have already implemented this so just cut the crap about it being an attack on religion.
So I suppose if these Bishops were Muslim and saying Sharia Law forbid this the conservatives would support them. What a bunch of frauds you are including the author.
Next time the ‘tolerant’ left tells you how it is the Religious Right that is ‘Enforcing’ their opinions and morality on everyone else and flippantly says to you, “Don’t like Abortions? Don’t have one.”
Let them know that the converse axiom should be, “Don’t like Abortions, Don’t provide one.” yet the administration is ‘Forcing’ their Morality on the Church by Forcing them to Provide Abortions.
They are always so Live and Let Live right up until you don’t do what They want you to do.
So where is this administration “Forcing’ their Morality on the Church by Forcing them to Provide Abortions”
That’s just plain not true. You are seriously misguided and uniformed which seems par for the course at PJM and their rabid conservative posters.
You’re being disingenuous again Flaming Liberal. The exemption is so narrow it would preclude religious organizations from serving any but their co-religionists if they hoped to avoid automatic self excommunication by funding abortions.
Tell you what, place your fortune on a bet the administration will not back down. It will. Or it will lose big time in November.
Funding abortions? Are you crazy? Where does any of these regulations fund abortions? As a writer of this article you either need to know what the heck this topic is about or you need to stop spreading lies.
This does not even force Catholic doctors to issue birth control scripts if they choose not to and it certainly doesn’t force any catholic hospital to perform any abortions. You are just plain wrong. Heck it doesn’t even cover the morning after pill.
Your knowledge of this it pitifully shallow.
By requiring these employers (the church) to provide health insurance that covers contraceptives, abortions and sterilization the Administration is requiring them to fund these activities. The alternative before Obamacare becomes effective is for the church to confine its outreach services to co-religionists or cancel all employee health insurance. After the effective date, the alternative is to pay huge fines which detracts from the ability of the church to provide these social services or forces them out of them altogether.
What you are saying is just not true. The insurance does not have to cover abortions nor does it have to cover morning after pills and why are you talking about sterilizations? Is that against Catholic dogma now?
I don’t think that they have any other choices other than cave in or pay the extortion money. Unless Obamacare is struck down by the court, or is repealed next year, this would eventually come down to the Supremes. If O gets re-elected, we’ll have a court loaded with Ginsburgs (very, very bad!), if we elect Willard Weathervane, we’ll get a court full of Souters (hardly any better!), either way, I don’t see this ending well for the CC.
I think Obama felt that by extending the interim regulations until 2013 the Catholic church would be unable to litigate this until after the election..Surely they know it is inconsistent with the Constitution They did not figure on this rebellion.
Maybe like Flaming, they failed to realize that our constitution guarantees religious freedom and Americans of all faiths respect that or that the Pope’s armies are stronger than he imagined.
Secretive, don’t forget the recent unanimous ruling by the Supremes in the Tabor case denying the Administration the right to impose anti-discrimination employment rules to a religious institution.http://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/hosanna-tabor-evangelical-lutheran-church-and-school-v-eeoc/
Why does Romney have Bork as one of his advisors?
Finally, some waking-up of America!
It’s about time this slumbering, amorphous glob of christians wakes-up to the fact Judeo-Christian heritage of We The People’s USA is under frontal assault.
Until 2008, this was a small, nipping around the edges effort. Now, it’s a full fledged frontal assault…the last ‘putch.’
NDAA in place, every Roman Catholic opposing this administration runs the risk of a “krystal nacht.” Yes, they’ll be labeled “terrorists,” investigated, followed, wire-tapped, tailed everywhere and have every financial document ever signed by them copied and filed in a thick dossier. Who knows, may even have a “cross” plasterd on their homes and businesses.
This is Saul Alinsky’s and Bill Ayers and Francis Fox Piven’s play book fully evident and unfolding right before our eyes…and nobody is saying “Boo!”
This is the play book: first, goes religion; second, education; third, governance; fourth, capitalistic-financial system in the USofA. Then collapse!
Enter “The Savior!” US’s President of the USA…Mr. Obama freshly re-elected to a second term. Ready to finish what was already underway in the first term.
Cass Sustein has ready, at the get go, reams, upon reams of rules and regulations designed to choke and stall everything capitalistic in the US. Every fellow traveler in Mr. Obama’s administration (already working overtime) will hit the “full speed ahead, damn the torpedos” mentality to bring the US to its knees.
Past Empires and regimes have been thru these very same events, to wit:
1) from bondage to spiritual faith
2) spiritual faith to great courage
3) courage to liberty
4) liberty to abundance
5) abundance to complacency
6) complacency to apathy
7) apathy to dependence
8) dependence back into bondage
History teaches us, today’s events are time worn and self evident. USA is in step 7). If Americans continue slumbering, their wake-up moment will be a true shocker! God Bless America!Amen!
Doug Kmiec, prominent Obama Catholic supporter and his Ambassador to Malta, admonishes the President on the HHS regulations:http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=44667&page=1
It’s to bad Mittens your eventual nominee proposed even tougher sanctions in MA under Romneycare.
Here’s a case by case example for your edification – notice how the Bishop didn’t say anything then. Oh and it also doesn’t cover abortion or the morning after pill like you falsely claim. So when you deliberately lie do you immediately go to confession or do you wait until piling up a whole bunch before you wipe your slate clean and start over again?
https://s3.amazonaws.com/obama.3cdn.net/aef442e7efcfca6682_6nvamv3si.pdf
You might be wasting your valuable time attacking Catholics and me/ Your fearless leader appears to be backing down from the directive that requires” religious groups, principally the Catholic church, to include no-cost contraception and some abortion-related services in the medical insurance programs they provide to their employees outside churches.”
http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/06/obama-spokesman-hints-at-concession-over-church-health-care-mandate/#ixzz1ljA40Q48
Weekly Standard http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/dem-rep-kathy-dahlkemper-i-wouldnt-have-voted-obamacare-if-id-known-about-hhs-regulation_626302.html
“Former Democratic congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper, a Catholic from Erie, Pennsylvania, cast a crucial vote in favor of Obamacare in 2010. She lost her seat that November in part because of her controversial support of Obamacare. But Dahlkemper said recently that she would have never voted for the health care bill had she known that the Department of Health and Human Services would require all private insurers, including Catholic charities and hospitals, to provide free coverage of contraception, sterilization procedures, and the “week-after” pill “ella” that can induce early abortions.
“I would have never voted for the final version of the bill if I expected the Obama Administration to force Catholic hospitals and Catholic Colleges and Universities to pay for contraception,” Dahlkemper said in a press release sent out by Democrats for Life in November. “We worked hard to prevent abortion funding in health care and to include clear conscience protections for those with moral objections to abortion and contraceptive devices that cause abortion. I trust that the President will honor the commitment he made to those of us who supported final passage.”
Of course, most abortion opponents disagree with Dahlkemper that the HHS regulation is Obamacare’s only moral problem. Under Obamacare, each state’s federally subsidized health care exchange is required to offer a health insurance plan that covers elective abortions unless the state passes a law opting out of the requirement. “
Clarice here is some more information about Catholics and what has already happened in our courts. Maybe you prefer our courts adopt Sharia or Catholic laws over our own as it seems you are crying out for that
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/02/07/catholics-enraged-response-to-obama-birth-control-policy-is-misplaced.html
“Time and again, when these laws were being considered, Catholic bishops and their sympathizers made the same sort of hysterical arguments we’re hearing today. “We will not be daunted by the abortion and contraception extremists whose aggressive agenda includes putting the Catholic Church out of the business of providing health care and social services throughout the state of New York,” Cardinal Edward M. Egan said at an Albany press conference in 2002, when New York was considering the Women’s Health and Wellness Act.
Nevertheless, the law passed—it was signed by Republican Gov. George Pataki—with exactly the same sort of exemptions we’re now seeing at the federal level. There’s a conscience clause that applies to Catholic churches, grade schools, and parishes, but not institutions that serve the broader community, such as universities and hospitals. The church sued, but New York’s State Court of Appeals ruled against it; in 2007, the Supreme Court let the ruling stand. Likewise, California’s Supreme Court upheld that state’s version of the mandate.
And yet, somehow, Catholic institutions have continued operating. Nationwide, major Catholic universities including Fordham, Georgetown, and DePaul all offer birth-control coverage. So does Dignity Health, until recently known as Catholic Healthcare West, the fifth-largest health system in the country. In Massachusetts, the six former Caritas Christi Catholic hospitals, which were recently acquired by Steward Health Care System, all complied with the state law.”
Time magazine details what it thinks is the Administration’s political calculus:Retaining the votes of single, secular women whom they imagine like this policy.http://news.yahoo.com/politics-contraception-health-insurance-controversy-could-shape-election-100500241.html
Weighing it against the constitution seems unnecessary to them –although postponement of its implementation until after the election reflects to my mind an awareness they are on paper thin ice.
They assumed no Catholic opposition like this, because what gaineth Obama to retain these women voters and lose the Catholic vote?
I have answered most of this in response to a similar comment you posted on another thread.
You need to post the citations to those cases BTW if you expect a reasonable discussion on this. Unlike liberal arts colleges, courts are supposed to decide matters on the facts presented and tested in court and the exact words of statures and prior decisions. It is a pet peeve of mine that media–and the general public–often look only at the result and not the road that got there to decide if something was “correctly decided”. I think you make the same mistake. I expect, for example, there was in place a self-insurance program available by which such institutions had an easy way out of the offending legislation.
There may have been a self insurance program and in some cases some Catholic institutions did take advantage of self insurance but not all and not the ones mentioned. Their biggest insurance provider Dignity Insurance also covers this in their policies.
Oh and Obama will not lose the Catholic vote that would not already vote for him. He certainly will not lose it to Romney. Wait until those Catholics find out that Romney and his faith have baptized their dead and converted them to Mormons. Now that’s going to piss them off especially when they did it to their Saints and Pope’s.
Two can play that game.
It’s difficult to debate with someone who tosses out so many red herrings and dead ends. My view is that this move is unconstitutional, reflects an Administration calculation that single pro-abortion women will count for more at the polls than the 25-27% of the American Catholics and that the former will be more charged up to vote for Obama because of this action.
No one can truly predict the outcome. Who predicted a rich Russian capitalist would in 2011 be the owner of a major US basketball team and running for president of his native land?
But for sure Obama never believed there would be this rebellion by the Church and other religions and in my view the Administration’s cynical calculus is going to hurt it. Your mileage may vary.
I must say this – “Catholic Democrat” is an oxymoron. I hope you are reading this if you voted Democrat in the last 50 years. Don’t you understand that the Democrats advocate unconditional abortion in their “Democratic Platform”. If you voted democrat in any way shape or form you cannot call yourself a Catholic.