Catholibertarian

Last week after I learned that the Obama administration’s HHS had made a decision that the contraceptive mandate will go forward but they will give people a year to violate their consciences I relayed my thoughts in my post called Attack On Religious Liberty: Obama Administration Gives Non-Profits One Year To Violate Consciences.  I commented on this before my Bishop, Bishop Zubik of Pittsburgh, responded to the decision by the HHS to continue with the mandate.

One of the main tenets of the United States of America is religious liberty.  Bishop Zubik has correctly stated that the Obama administration has said “To Hell With You” to anyone who believes in religious liberty, that people have a right to follow their religious beliefs accordingly.  The Obama administration has in effect said screw you to religious Americans.  Obama has proven to be a dishonorable and unethical president.

It is no secret that progressives despise the Constitution.  They do all they can to undermine our constitutional rights and the constitutional principles that America was founded on.  Our Constitution recognizes that God has granted individuals certain unalienable rights.  Liberals believe that governments grant persons rights, not God.  Progressives deny the reality of moral absolutes.  Progressives have partaken in a war against the individual in which religious liberty has become a casualty of war.  The HHS mandate is one more example of just how intolerant progressives are to diversity of beliefs.

Bishop Zubik notes just how wrong this mandate is on so many levels.

A million things are wrong with this: equating pregnancy with disease;  mandating that every employer pay for contraception procedures including alleged contraceptives that are actually abortion-inducing drugs; forcing American citizens to choose between violating their consciences or providing health care services; mandating such coverage on every individual woman without allowing her to even choose not to have it; forcing every person to pay for that coverage no matter the dictates of their conscience.

Let’s be blunt. This whole process of mandating these guidelines undermines the democratic process itself.  In this instance, the mandate declares pregnancy a disease, forces a culture of contraception and abortion on society, all while completely bypassing the legislative process.

This is government by fiat that attacks the rights of everyone – not only Catholics; not only people of all religion.  At no other time in memory or history has there been such a governmental intrusion on freedom not only with regard to religion, but even across-the-board with all citizens. It forces every employer to subsidize an ideology or pay a penalty while searching for alternatives to health care coverage. It undermines the whole concept and hope for health care reform by inextricably linking it to the zealotry of pro-abortion bureaucrats.

The “religious exemption”  really isn’t a religious exemption at all.  How many church organizations or hospitals only serve Catholics?  None.   If organizations resorted to only serving Catholics because of this tyrannical mandate then the government or some other individual would charge discrimination.  So for this administration to claim that there is a real “religious exemption” is quite disingenuous.  The “religious exemption”  would only apply to Catholic institutions where the following can be applied:

• Only Catholics are employed;
• The primary purpose of the institution or service provided is the direct instruction in Catholic belief;
• The only persons served by the institution are those that share Catholic religious tenets. (Try to fit this in with our local Catholic Charities that serve 80,000 every year without discrimination according to faith. It would be impossible!)

Bishop Zubik expresses quite passionately that Kathleen Sebelius via the Obama administration has said “To Hell with You” to the Catholic faithful of the United States.

• To Hell with your religious beliefs,
• To Hell with your religious liberty,
• To Hell with your freedom of conscience.

More often than not the faithful’s requests for teaching on issues such as abortion, contraception, or euthanasia whether it be in the form of sermons or in other avenues   has been met with silence.  The Church has dogmas on these vitally important issues but if bishops, priests, religious education teachers et al. fail to discuss these central moral issues which are apart of our faith because they are afraid of offending the some of the laity how do they honestly expect the laity to be catechized properly?  Just because many Church officials have been negligent in their duty to teach the faith, including those controversial doctrines, thus having resulted in many Catholics not abiding by Church’s beliefs on contraception and other reproductive issues that doesn’t legitimize the Obama administration’s attack on religious liberty.  This decision by the Obama administration to mandate that all institutions must provide contraception, sterilization procedures and abortion-inducing drugs is an attack on the Constitution, religious liberty, and our conscience rights as citizens.