Catholic Culture Clash Links 8-7-11

The Dept. of Health and Human Services has put forth a proposal which mandates that insurance companies must provide free contraceptives to women. But some prescriptions covered under this mandate are not only contraceptives but early stage abortifacients - Ella and Plan B both cause abortions. This mandate would also include abortion inducing drugs like Ella and Plan B which would violate the conscience protections and religious beliefs of those who believe that contraceptives are immoral and that abortion is the intentional killing of an innocent human being. This is yet another example of the intolerance of liberals. This whole mandate is tyrannical in my opinion and violates our constitutional religious liberties. Hopefully after the Supreme Court hears the case challenging the constitutionality of Obamacare  it will be thrown out in the garbage heap of history. 
I found this response to the government mandate over at Fr. Z's blog, WTPRS. I always enjoy Father Z's commentary.

My emphases and comments:

HHS Makes In-Your-Face Effort to Undermine Constitution’s Religious Freedom

Health and Human Services must think Catholics and other religious groups are fools.

That’s all you can think when you read HHS’s recent announcement that it may exempt the church from having to pay for contraceptive services, counseling to use them and sterilizations under the new health reform in certain circumstances. As planned now, HHS would limit the right of the church not to pay for such services in limited instances, such as when the employees involved are teaching religion and in cases where the people served are primarily Catholic.

HHS’s reg conveniently ignores the underlying principle of Catholic charitable actions: we help people because we are Catholic, not because our clients are. [Do I hear an "Amen!"?] There’s no need to show your baptismal certificate in the hospital emergency room, the parish food pantry, or the diocesan drug rehab program. Or any place else the church offers help, either.

With its new regulation, HHS seeks to force church institutions to buy contraceptives, including drugs that can disrupt an existing pregnancy, through insurance they offer their own employees. This is part of HHS’s anticipated list of preventive services for women that private insurance programs must provide under the new health reform law.

The exemption is limited, to say the least. The pastor in the Catholic parish doesn’t have to buy the Pill for his employees, but the religious order that runs a Catholic hospital has to foot the bill for surgical sterilizations. And diocesan Catholic Charities agencies have to use money that would be better spent on feeding the poor tounderwrite services that violate church teachings.

Whatever you think of artificial birth control, HHS’s command that everyone, including churches, must pay for it exalts ideology over conscience and common sense.

Perhaps HHS is unduly influenced by lobbyists. No surprise there. Certainly a major lobbyist is Planned Parenthood, the nation’s chief proponent of contraceptive services. Contraceptive services make a lot of money for Planned Parenthood clinics, which (again no surprise) provide the “services” HHS has mandated.

HHS and Planned Parenthood are narrow in focus. Respect for religious rights isn’t likely a key concern for them. However, it ought to be a key concern for President Obama, who last year promised to respect religious rights as [wait for it....]he garnered support from the church community to pass the health care reform act. [Did you get that?  Remember that?] To assuage concerns, President Obama went so far as to issue an executive order promising that the health care reform act would not fund abortion or force people and institutions to violate their consciences. HHS is on its way to violating that promise. [What a surprise.]For the sake of basic integrity – the President’s keeping his word and for the protection of the right to religious freedom – President Obama needs to speak up now.

Cardinal Burke talked about the problem of moral relativism in our society during a speech at the Knights Of Columbus Convention. Here are some highlights from his speech.

From CatholicCitizens.org:

"We are witnesses of a society in which, in many respects, morality has ceased to exist," said Burke. "We are called ever more urgently to the new evangelization of our culture."

Cardinal Burke pinpointed the problem as "moral relativism," which he said "has even entered into the thinking of some theologians in the Church and which has provided an ideological foundation for a culture which is predominantly marked by violence and death."

The Pope, said Cardinal Burke, "described a moral relativism, called proportionalism or consequentialism in contemporary moral theology, which has generated profound confusion and deadly error regarding the most fundamental truths of the moral order."

He exemplified the erroneous thinking, saying:

We think, for instance, of the justification of the murder of the unborn child in the womb as the exercise of the right of the mother to choose, weighing other goods, whether to bring to term the baby she has conceived; the justification of the abhorrent practices of the artificial generation of human life and its destruction, at the embryonic stage of development, as the means to obtain supposed cures for crippling or deadly diseases; the justification of the so-called "mercy killing" of those who have the first title to our care, our brothers and sisters who have grown weak through advanced years, grave illness or special needs, as respect for the quality of their lives; and the justification of the sexual union of two persons of the same sex as tolerance of so-called alternative forms of human sexuality, as if there were a true form of human sexuality other than the form written in the human body and soul by God.

"Even as the first disciples faced a pagan world which had not even heard of our Lord Jesus Christ, so, we, too face a culture which is forgetful of God and hostile to His Law written upon every human heart," he said.

The "program leading to freedom and happiness" for each of us, said Burke, is "the holiness of life in Christ, in accord with our state in life and with careful attention to our 'time and culture'."

Burke described a holiness that would courageously proclaim Christianity despite the many voices seeking to exclude faith from public life.

"Religious faith and practice is important for the life of every nation, specifically for the right formation of the conscience of her citizens," he said. " When reason is not purified by faith in the political realm, the powerful and influential of the time exercise a tyranny which violates the fundamental rights of the very people whom political leaders are called to serve."

Bruke concluded: "Yes, we face a struggle with those who would falsely exclude the purifying and illuminating 8/service of faith to reason, those who would insist that, when it comes to civic life, we must bracket our religious faith, even to the point of violating our own conscience.

"But we know the truth about the critical service which our faith brings to political reasoning, and, therefore, we must remain steadfast in giving witness to it, even in the face of indifference and hostility."

Cardinal Burke is correct in emphasizing that moral relativism is a huge problem in our society with regards to abortion. The unborn child is an innocent human and under no circumstances is it permissible for the woman to murder her child intentionally.


   A priest made a bobble head doll of his bishop. This sounds kinda cool. Since the annual convocation was around Bishop Trautman's 75th birthday Father Detisch gave both the priests in attendance and Bishop Trautman each their own Bishop Trautman bobble head doll. The full story is here.