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God's will be done and may He have mercy upon us all.

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A Catholic who follows Rome & the Magisterium. I'm against gay "marriage", abortion, embryonic stem cell research, euthanasia, human cloning. Altar girls, Communion in the hand, Eucharistic Ministers and "Protestant" music in the Church doesn't bother me at all. A proud American retired submarine sailor. Our borders should be secured with a 10 ft. high fence topped by concertina wire with minefields out to 20 yards on both sides and an additional 10 yards filled with warning signs outside of that Let's get energy independent NOW! Back Israel to the max, stop appeasing followers of the Pedophile Prophet. Pro 2nd Amendment, pro death penalty, Repeal all hate crime legislation. Back the police unless you'd rather call a hippie when everything hits the fan. Get government out of dealing with education, childhood obesity and the enviornment. Stop using the military for sociological experiments and if we're in a war don't micromanage their every move. Kill your television, limit time on the computer and pick up a book. God's will be done and may He have mercy upon us all.

Friday, February 03, 2012

Civil Disobedience for Catholics?

Civil Disobedience in Obama's Second Term
By George Neumayr on 2.3.12


Some of Barack Obama's useful idiots on the Catholic center/left say that his decree forcing religious organizations to pay for contraceptives amounts to a betrayal. No, it is not. Candidate Obama had telegraphed his plans to discriminate against the religious. Were Cardinal Mahony and company too busy burbling over "hope and change" to pay attention? You made Obama's bed; now lie in it.

And let's not kid ourselves: they will lie in it, even if a few of them have mumbled in recent days some words about "civil disobedience." Whatever civil disobedience materializes in the future, it will not come from these worldly weasels -- who don't even consider artificial birth control a mortal sin anyways -- but from orthodox priests and nuns uncowed by the state.

The ambitious sophist Doug Kmiec, before receiving his plum ambassadorial assignment to Malta, declared Obama a great friend of the Catholic Church. In a grotesque farce beyond the satirical imagination of Tom Wolfe, academics and administrators at Notre Dame, panting after the approval of the chosen one, gave him an honorary law degree. The obtuse semi-official newspaper of the Vatican, L'Osservatore Romano, liked the cut of Obama's jib too, pooh-poohing criticism of him as mere alarmism from Catholic yahoos in the States.

All the while Obama had made his secularist, anti-Catholic bigotry clear. A Health and Human Services order requiring most Catholic and religious employers to pick up the tab for their employees' sterilizations, birth control pills, and dashes for "emergency" contraceptives flows from the logic of this bigotry.

After all, as candidate Obama said in several speeches, religion is nothing more than a private and often odd "opinion," whereas secularism belongs to the privileged realm of "reason." For those scoring at home, this meant that Obama's understanding of what liberals call the "separation of Church and state" -- a phony concept and phrase nowhere found in the U.S. Constitution -- would entitle him as president to separate God and religious freedom from public life.

In one of his memoirs, Obama uses the Old Testament story of Abraham and Isaac to argue that secularism equals "reason" and religion equals crazy caprice. It was an odd example for a proponent of near-infanticide to cite. Unlike Abraham, who in the end put the knife down, Obama's subsidized butchers at Planned Parenthood keep theirs in daily use. But Obama proceeded with the analogy anyways, summing up his sermon on the superiority of secularism to religion by writing that the "best we can do is act in accordance with those things that are possible for all of us to know."

In other words, the lowest-common-denominator wisdom with which to organize public life should come from secularists. The logical upshot of this position is that in every nook and cranny of public life secularists will call the shots and the religious will be expected to submit.

Over the last fifty years or so, the bishops, desperate for approval in our "pluralistic" society and waffling in their faith, have largely accepted secularism's monopolistic ordering of society. Have I missed the battle? asks the craven son of Marcus Aurelius in the movie Gladiator. "You missed the war," Marcus Aurelius replies. The ineffectual squeaking from Mahony and company deserves a similarly acid response.

Obama likes to say that he is not at "war with Islam." This is true; he is not. But he is in a culture war with Christianity -- a war that a few brave orthodox bishops and Christians have been fighting for decades. It is long past time that they march on this godless presidency. Dare this secularist bigot to enforce his violation of religious freedom.

The bishops have spent a great deal of the Church's treasure on ignoble lawsuits, paying off the victims of pedophile priests. Obama's gestating secularist tyranny gives them an occasion to spend the faithful's funds on noble lawsuits for once.

What would Obama do if millions of Catholics, Jews, and Evangelicals practiced civil disobedience against Obamacare? It might shock him enough to sign a law from Congress rescinding the order. Then again, he might, if he escapes into the safety of a second term, dig in. He made sure to delay the order's binding effect until after the November election.

Obama's cynicism is impressive. He could have selected open pagans as his agents of anti-Catholic destruction. Instead, he found Catholics like Kathleen Sebelius and Joe Biden to do the dirty work. That's a nice touch. And let's not forget that these Catholics have received the blessing of Cardinal Mahony and his friends. Recall the petition signed by Catholic academics defending Sebelius during her confirmation hearings; recall Cardinal Mahony's invocation at the 2000 Democratic National Convention in Los Angeles to which a young and rising Obama traveled.

Mitt Romney, by the way, is no guaranteed savior in this scenario. Proof of his pro-life ambivalence is that after his supposed conservative conversion he supported a law in the Bay State that bullied Catholic hospitals into giving rape victims abortifacients. He, too, supported the secularist monopoly over public life -- a monopoly that, until it is busted by civil disobedience and a deep change in the culture, will make assaults on religious freedom unceasing and inevitable.

(End of story, my comments follow.)

I'll focus on that last paragraph and what the author said about Romney. Too true, for the problem isn't with any one man or political party. Yes, Obama personalized an ongoing trend in our culture, if you think he's an anomaly with his animus towards religious believers, then I'd suggest reading the letters to the editorial page of any major newspaper when a religiously related news story breaks. That hostility is prevalent AND growing.

So we Catholics, and by extension all other devout believers of whatever faith, have to stand up and be counted. Time to stop being so easy to get along with.

To illustrate how we should NOT behave, I'll relate a story from when I was a member of a Pentecostal church up north. This happened back in the mid 90's when a number of black churches were getting torched. If you recall, there was never any formal conspiracy proven. It seemed to be just a bunch of copycats throughout the nation setting fire to easy targets.

Up in New London, CT. where I lived, the local church elders of most denominations agreed to have an ecumenical get together in order to show solidarity with the churches getting torched. It was pretty diverse, the Bahai's were there, one of the leaders was a Jewish rabbi, etc.

Anyway in the planning of this event it was stressed that we were to focus on our similarities and not our differences. So the representative of the local Catholic church decided that their contribution would be a reading from the New Testament. During her recital at the planning meeting she admitted to having to "cut and paste" in order to avoid mentioning Christ specifically. Yeah, the result was pretty lame.

But that is an example of the "go along to get along" mindset we have to lose. We have to stop trying to blend in and go with the flow.

Hey, there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of in being a Catholic. Nada, zip, nyet. It's time we realized that and lived our Faith openly and without reserve.

To quote Ricky Nelson from "Garden Party";
"It's alright now, I've learned my lesson well. You see you can't please everyone, so you have to please yourself".

Yourself second and God first of course.

10 comments:

Doug Indeap said...

Some, including apparently the US Bishops Conference, have resorted to lies in their efforts to oppose the health care law. Notwithstanding wild-eyed cries to the contrary, IT DOES NOT FORCE EMPLOYERS TO ACT CONTRARY TO THEIR BELIEFS--unless one supposes the employers' religion forbids even the payment of money to the government (all of us should enjoy such a religion).

Questions about the government requiring or prohibiting something that conflicts with someone’s faith are entirely real, but not new. The courts have occasionally confronted such issues and have generally ruled that the government cannot enact laws specifically aimed at a particular religion (which would be regarded a constraint on religious liberty contrary to the First Amendment), but can enact laws generally applicable to everyone or at least broad classes of people (e.g., laws concerning pollution, contracts, fraud, negligence, crimes, discrimination, employment, etc.) and can require everyone, including those who may object on religious grounds, to abide by them. Were it otherwise and people could opt out of this or that law with the excuse that their religion requires or allows it, the government and the rule of law could hardly operate. When moral binds for individuals can be anticipated, provisions may be added to laws affording some relief to conscientious objectors.

Here, there is no need for such an exemption, since no employer is being "forced," as some commentators rage, to act contrary to his or her belief. In keeping with the law, those with conscientious objections to providing their employees with qualifying health plans may decline to provide their employees with any health plans and pay an assessment instead or, alternatively, provide their employees with health plans that do not qualify (e.g., ones without provisions they deem objectionable) and pay lower assessments.

The employers may not like paying the assessments or what the government will do with the money it receives. But that is not a moral dilemma of the sort supposed by many commentators, but rather a garden-variety gripe common to most taxpayers--who don't much like paying taxes and who object to this or that action of the government. That is hardly call for a special "exemption" from the law. Should each of us feel free to deduct from our taxes the portion that we figure would be spent on those actions (e.g., wars, health care, whatever) each of us opposes?

Subvet said...

Doug Indeap, you're full of shit. This isn't about paying money directly to the government, it's about providing health insurance coverage for medicines & services that are contrary to Catholic beliefs. What you term "an assessment" is actually a monetary penalty (fine) for religious observance. If this were another nation we'd be calling it persecution.

Doug Indeap said...

Again, no one says employers have to like paying money to the government or like what the government does with the money, but they can hardly claim they are forced to act contrary to their beliefs--any more so than any taxpayer who objects to this or that government action. As the law affords conscientious objectors these "outs," there is no valid call for a special exemption here.

Subvet said...

"Assessments" aren't an "out", they're a penalty. Catholic colleges, hospitals, etc. are being given a choice of acting in a manner contrary to Church teaching or being fined. Sounds like persecution to me.

ignorant redneck said...

If it's to be civil disobedience, does that mean that I shall have to say things like "On the whole Sir, and with considerable reflection, I rather think not."

Instead of "Hell no you tyrannous, liberty usurping Bastard?

Jordan said...

"We have to stop trying to blend in and go with the flow. [T]here is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of in being a Catholic. Nada, zip, nyet. It's time we realized that and lived our Faith openly and without reserve."

Ha ha, you're basically describing Catholic Pride! I guess can get behind that. :) Hurting anonymous strangers is a lot harder than hurting your friends, family, neighbours and colleagues, and you only have yourself to blame if you won't stand up and be counted.

Of course, I took my inspiration from Harvey Milk. That guy had real chutzpah; he even had a great rallying cry that you might like:

"Burst down those closet doors once and for all, and stand up and start to fight."

Our ends might be at odds sometimes, but perhaps our means aren't all that different. :)

Subvet said...

IR, it doesn't matter how it gets phrased. What matters is the conviction of whoever is saying it.

Subvet said...

Jordan, "...you only have yourself to blame if you won't stand up and be counted."

Amen to that. Yes, I DO like the rallying cry of Harvey Milk. Those same means for different ends may underscore the humanity common to us all. That would be another reason to put forth our beliefs with compassion for the opponents.

But I think you're already on board with that.

ABNPOPPA said...

So Subvet, what do you think of the new Chaplin controversy about them NOT being able to preach about how Obama care affects abortion.

Pops

PS
Thanks again for stopping by
Conservative Outrage, the blog.
Pops

Subvet said...

Pops, I am very sadly not surprised.

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