Perhaps it is not surprising that President Obama, a president who grew up abroad and paints himself as an international man in his self-promoting literature, does not identify with one of America’s most fundamental and cherished tenets — religious freedom.
Deeply embedded in each American’s spirit and psyche is the history and heritage of not only the freedom to worship as one chooses, but to do so without government intervention. The Obama administration’s tone-deaf approach regarding the moral dignity of both one’s individual religious beliefs, and those of religious institutions, is vulnerable with dangerous denial.
Obama is attempting to violate one of our most treasured First Amendment rights by relying heavily on the ignorance and apathy of American citizens. The liberal media helps the president with the imbalanced attention it pays to only half of the religious freedom right in the First Amendment — keeping religion out of government entities.
Obama is banking on his hopes that most Americans have forgotten the other, most cherished half, of the religious right in the First Amendment that was the impetus for the pilgrimages that birthed America: keeping government out of religion.
President Obama’s lack of reverence for keeping government out of religion expresses itself with such steamrolling techniques as the Health and Human Services, as part of his ObamaCare plan, invading the sacred space of religion, religious affiliations, and religious people. He is mandating in forums where he does not belong and penalizing where he has no right.
Obama has not only taken on the Catholic Church, he has taken on all religion because he is redefining religion. Obama is dictating where a religious people are religious and where they are not, where they have a right to be religious and where they do not. According to President Obama, religious morality and compassion only exist in the temple itself. Catholic-initiated outreaches and missions extended in schools, colleges, hospitals, social service institutions, and charities are not religious, according to Obama. This redefinition conveniently gives him the self-declared right to dictate how these Catholic institutions operate.
This is dangerous territory. This is an alarming precedent. With a thought process such as this, Jesus would have been considered only valid and religious while teaching in the temple. His actions in the desert, at weddings, at lakeside gatherings, and on mountaintops would have been considered not a religious teaching but simply a social service subject to government regulation.
Even the Roman Empire did not define Jesus’s teachings by his destinations of discipleship.
Yet Obama feels he can limit Christian outreach by redefining where that is allowed to take place. If Christians are ministering any place other than the church building itself, then they and their outreaches are vulnerable to government definitions, mandates, restrictions, and penalizations.
By this definition, President Obama grossly misunderstands the Christian faith. The best works of Christ were, and are today, performed outside of the temple walls. Chancellor Jane Belford states, “Our faith is more than on Sunday. We practice our faith when we put it into action.”
The new Health and Human Services law mandating that the Catholic Church provide abortifacients, sterilization, and contraception, a violation of the long-held Catholic tradition and faith, exposes the naiveté and reckless ego of the Obama administration, not to mention a grave misunderstanding of religious freedom.
Hence, Catholic institutions across the country filed massive lawsuits against the United States government on May 21, 2012.
To win public support of his penalization and violation of religion and religion entities, including but not limited to the Catholic Church, Obama is relying on a tornado-sized twist of truth — that women are being denied contraception. This can only happen if Americans fall into a deep sleep and enter the land of Oz. Women are free to get birth control all across the country — just not at the Catholic Church or its entities because the Catholic religion believes it is morally wrong. This is their religious right; this is their religious freedom.
As Chancellor Jane Belford elaborates in a video, “This lawsuit isn’t about contraception. With a prescription, birth control pills are readily available at major retailers for $9.00 a month and at no cost from various health-care clinics. … This lawsuit does not challenge women’s established legal right to contraception use nor does it challenge any employer’s right to provide and pay for it.”
The Catholic institutions that have filed lawsuits against the government have done so because of Obama’s blatant violation of religious liberty and morality, his determination to re-define religion, and his petulant penalization of Catholic institutions. The Catholic Church is battling an attack on religious freedom not unlike those that launched a new world in the 16th century and a new nation in the 18th. They are challenging a precedent that, if left unchecked, will open the gates of hell, unleashing a hungry government eager to control, manipulate, and persecute. It may seem subtle now, but the devil is in the details. The Catholic Church is protecting our great American legacy — religious liberty.
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