Bishops Issue Letters Objecting to HHS Mandate
“We cannot and will not comply with this unjust decree. Like the martyrs of old, we must be prepared to accept suffering, which could include heavy fines and imprisonment,” Bishop Bruskewitz wrote in a letter he ordered to be read at every Sunday Mass in his diocese on Jan. 29.
“Our American religious liberty is in grave jeopardy,” he warned, describing the impact of new rules that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has instituted as part of federal health-care reform.
Those rules, confirmed as final on Jan. 20, will require most religious employers to cover contraception and sterilization, including some abortion-causing drugs, in new health-care plans. Sebelius has given religious groups an extra year to comply, but rejected calls for a broader exemption clause.
“This means that all of our Catholic schools, hospitals, social-service agencies and the like will be forced to participate in evil,” Bishop Bruskewitz explained.
The bishop recalled that the Church “has pleaded with President Obama to rescind this edict, but all pleas have been met with scorn and have fallen on deaf ears.”
He described Secretary Sebelius as a “bitter fallen-away Catholic” and called her one-year deadline extension for non-exempt religious employers “an act of mockery” because, he noted, “during that year, they must ‘refer’ people to the insurance that covers wicked deeds.”
A proposed U.S. Senate bill, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, would amend the health-care law to let employers opt out of covering some services. Bishop Bruskewitz urged Catholics to call their elected representatives in support of the bill and to protest the “outrage” of the contraception mandate.
Meanwhile, he said, the faithful should “pray and do penance that this matter may be resolved.”
The bishop of Lincoln was one of a large number of U.S. Church leaders voicing alarm over the weekend in letters distributed to parishes and read at Mass regarding the Health and Human Services order.
In the Diocese of Phoenix, Catholics heard a message from Bishop Thomas Olmsted, who declared that people of faith would not be “made second-class citizens” and “stripped of their God-given rights.”
In Marquette, Michigan, Bishop Alexander Sample said that if the rule takes effect, “we Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences or to drop health coverage for our employees and suffer the penalties for doing so.”
New Orleans Archbishop Gregory Aymond stressed the need for action in his letter to the faithful over the weekend, as he decried the “unprecedented attack on religious liberty” by which the state was “violating our rights to make choices based on our morals and Church teaching.”
Archbishop Aymond is in Rome for meetings with Vatican officials as well as Pope Benedict XVI, who issued his own warning to the U.S. Church just before Health and Human Services finalized the mandate.
In remarks to bishops of the mid-Atlantic states on Jan. 19, the Pope said all U.S. Catholics must “realize the grave threats to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres.”
Jan. 27 story below.
Bishop James Conley of Denver is calling the Obama administration’s contraception and sterilization mandate “a death knell for religious liberty in the United States.”
“The bell is tolling for religious liberty in America. All of us should listen well,” Bishop Conley said in a Jan. 25 column.
Although religious leaders of many different faiths raised concerns when the plan was first proposed, their voices “fell on deaf ears” Bishop Conley said.
“Let’s be clear,” Bishop Conley wrote, “this plan does nothing to respect religious freedom.”
Rather than using this year to “adapt,” Bishop Conley said that Catholics must unify and fight the “flagrant disregard” for the constitutional protection of the First Amendment.
Catholics who believe that the conscience clause in the proposed health-care plan respects Catholic teaching and religious freedom must “face the facts” Bishop Conley said.
“Compromising with pro-choice, pro-contraceptive political agendas can have dangerous consequences.”
He warned that if the proposed health-care plan goes into effect unchanged, then the Catholic Church will no longer have legal protection for the unhindered expression of religion.
“The freedom to practice our religious faith is in jeopardy.”
The bishop said that all Catholics need to support the passage of the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act” that is currently before Congress. Christians, he said, should also “join us by praying for a return to justice” and begin contacting their representatives.
Every Christian “has an interest in defending liberty,” Bishop Conley said. “Now is the time. The bell tolls for us all.
Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Ill., has also asked parishes, schools, hospitals and religious houses to insert the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel into the intercessions at Sunday Mass to pray for Catholics’ freedom.
“It is God’s invincible archangel who commands the heavenly host, and it is the enemies of God who will ultimately be defeated,” the bishop said in a Jan. 24 letter to the Catholics of his diocese.
The prayer should take place in the general intercessions before the concluding prayer, Bishop Jenky said. He asked that the intention of the prayer be announced as “for the freedom of the Catholic Church in America.”
The St. Michael prayer was authored by Pope Leo XIII and was once commonly said in U.S. Catholic parishes as part of a petition for the freedom of Soviet Russia.
He said it is his duty to summon the local Church into “spiritual and temporal combat in defense of Catholic Christianity.”
“If these regulations are put into effect, they could close down every Catholic school, hospital and the other public ministries of our Church, which is perhaps their underlying intention,” Bishop Jenky said. “What is perfectly clear is that this is a bigoted and blanket attack on the First Amendment rights of every Catholic believer.”
Bishop Jenky stated that the president does not have the authority under the U.S. Constitution to “require our cooperation with what we consider to be intrinsic evil and mortal sin.”
“I am honestly horrified that the nation I have always loved has come to this hateful and radical step in religious intolerance.”
The bishop pledged that the Church will never abandon its commitment to the gospel of life and called on the faithful to “vigorously” oppose what he called an “unprecedented governmental assault upon the moral convictions of our faith.”
Bishop Jenky also struck an encouraging note.
“Have faith! Have courage! Fight boldly for what you believe!” he said. “I strongly urge you not to be intimidated by extremist politicians or the malice of the cultural secularists arrayed against us.”
Invoking the First Letter of John, he said Catholics should always remember that “the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”
The new federal contraception mandate is “like a slap in the face” that says “To hell with you” to Catholics and religious freedom, Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh said.
“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,” Bishop Zubik wrote in the Jan. 27 edition of the Pittsburgh Catholic.
“Kathleen Sebelius (Health and Human Services Secretary) and, through her, the Obama administration, have said, ‘To hell with you’ to the Catholic faithful of the United States,” he charged, adding that the administration has damned Catholics’ religious beliefs, religious liberty and freedom of conscience.
The mandate’s religious exemption is narrow and will not “practically speaking” apply to many Catholic health systems, educational institutions, charities and other organizations, the bishop said. It will apply in “virtually every instance where the Catholic Church serves as an employer.”
Bishop Zubik said the mandate treats pregnancy as a disease and “forces every employer to subsidize an ideology or pay a penalty while searching for alternatives to health-care coverage.” It also undermines health-care reform by “inextricably linking it to the zealotry of pro-abortion bureaucrats.”
He said the mandate tells Catholics “not only to violate our beliefs, but to pay directly for that violation,” as well as to “subsidize the imposition of a contraceptive and abortion culture on every person in the United States.”
The bishop asked Catholics to write to President Obama, Secretary Sebelius, their senators and members of Congress.
“This mandate can be changed by congressional pressure. The only way that action will happen is if you and I take action,” Bishop Zubik said.
“Let them know that you and I will not allow ourselves to be pushed around (or worse yet) be dismissed because of our Catholic faith.”
Jan. 25 article below.
Mandatory insurance coverage for contraceptives, sterilizations and abortifacient drugs is an “attack” on religious freedom that Catholics must oppose, Archbishop Robert Carlson of St. Louis said.
Mandatory insurance coverage for contraceptives, sterilizations and abortifacient drugs is an “attack” on religious freedom that Catholics must oppose, Archbishop Robert Carlson of St. Louis said.
“The Church cannot, and will not, be silent in the face of this grave threat to religious liberty and the sanctity of human life,” Archbishop Carlson said in his Jan. 23 column for the St. Louis Review.
“We bishops will speak out boldly, at every opportunity, in protest against all efforts to violate the right to life and the right to act according to one’s conscience.”
On Jan. 20, Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced that the administration would not expand a religious exemption for employers who object to its “preventative services” mandate (which the Register’s Joan Frawley Desmond reported on here).
Religious organizations continue to object to the rule.
Archbishop Carlson called on every pastor in the Archdiocese of St. Louis to urge the archdiocese’s Catholics to join the bishops in opposing the regulation and to write members of Congress.
“We will not be silent, but will the voice of the Church be heard? Only if you join us in giving witness to the right to life and the right to religious freedom!”
In his column, the archbishop said that the mandate’s religious exemption is “so narrowly crafted” that Catholic health-care providers, educational institutions and social-services agencies would have to be listed in the tax code as a church or similar entity, make the instruction of religious doctrine their organizational purpose, and generally refuse to hire or serve non-Catholics to qualify.
He cited Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan’s comments that the mandate violates freedom of conscience guaranteed by the First Amendment and several federal laws. Requiring those who object to purchase coverage for sterilization and contraceptives is “a radical incursion” into freedom of conscience.
Archbishop Dolan wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal on the subject, stating: “This latest erosion of our first freedom should make all Americans pause. When the government tampers with a freedom so fundamental to the life of our nation, one shudders to think what lies ahead.”
“The Catholic Church defends religious liberty, including freedom of conscience, for everyone,” the New York archbishop said.
With this decision, the cardinal-designate wrote, “the Obama administration has failed to show the same respect for the consciences of Catholics and others who object to treating pregnancy as a disease.”
“Even Jesus and his disciples would not qualify for the exemption,” Cardinal-designate Dolan noted, “because they were committed to serve those of other faiths.”
“Scarcely two weeks ago, in its Hosanna-Tabor decision upholding the right of churches to make ministerial hiring decisions, the Supreme Court unanimously and enthusiastically reaffirmed these long-standing and foundational principles of religious freedom,” he recalled.
The court, he said, made it clear that religious institutions had the right “to control their internal affairs.”
But the Obama administration “has veered in the opposite direction.”
“It has refused to exempt religious institutions that serve the common good, including Catholic schools, charities and hospitals, from its sweeping new health-care mandate that requires employers to purchase contraception, including abortion-producing drugs, and sterilization coverage for their employees.”
Cardinal-designate Dolan called the move “an unprecedented incursion into freedom of conscience” that forces an “unacceptable dilemma” on believers: “Stop serving people of all faiths in their ministries, so that they will fall under the narrow exemption, or stop providing health-care coverage to their own employees.”
Non-exempt religious groups have been granted an additional year to comply with the mandate, a concession the future cardinal ridiculed, “as if we might suddenly be more willing to violate our consciences 12 months from now.”
“Never before in U.S. history has the federal government forced citizens to directly purchase a product that violates their beliefs,” Archbishop Carlson said.
Lay Catholic action is particularly necessary, Archbishop Carlson stressed.
“All too often, the Pope and the bishops are not taken seriously. We are ‘expected’ to speak out on these issues, people say; it’s part of our job.”
“Only when the Catholic community as a whole joins us in refusing to accept the ‘radical secularism’ of government officials, legislators and judges, will the voice of the Church be heard in all its strength and moral clarity,” the archbishop wrote.
Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles also urged lay Catholics to defend the faith in the wake of the HHS decision.
“In this case, the government is imposing a narrow, radically individualistic idea of religion,” Archbishop Gomez said in a column published this week in his archdiocesan newspaper, The Tidings.
“As many have noted,” Archbishop Gomez said, the exemption for religious groups is so narrow that “much of what Jesus Christ did would not qualify as a ‘religious’ ministry.”
Everything the Church does, including health care, education and ministry to the poor, is “religious,” he emphasized. “All of our ministries and institutions are motivated by our love for God and our mission to spread the Gospel.”
“We don’t do these things,” he added, “because we are social workers or philanthropists. We do them because we are disciples.”
Archbishop Gomez said that what he finds most disturbing about the recent announcement is the government’s attempt to redefine Catholic charities, hospitals and colleges as non-religious institutions.
The administration is “presuming to have to competence and authority” to define what “religious faith is and how believers should express their faith commitments,” he warned.
“These are powers our government has never before assumed itself to have.”
He called on all Catholics, especially the laity, to “step up to their responsibilities for the Church’s mission” and “to be leaders in helping to shape the values and moral foundations of America’s future.”
The archbishop also noted the “prophetic advice” that Pope Benedict gave in his Jan. 19 address to U.S. bishops.
The Pope told the bishops of “the need for an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity” that has the “courage to counter a reductive secularism” which is determining “the future of American society.”
Archbishop Gomez encouraged Catholics to pray for the nation’s leaders and entrusted his intentions to Mary Immaculate, patroness of America.
U.S. Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., is also speaking out. He thinks that the Obama administration’s decision is an attempt to force “Catholic health care to cease to be.”
“That’s the end goal here. I think we have to be very blunt about it,” he said in a Jan. 23 interview with EWTN News.
The congressman also responded to President Obama’s Jan. 22 statement on the anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision, which legalized abortion in the United States.
President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to abortion, which he called a “fundamental constitutional right.” He added that the 1973 decision “also affirms a broader principle: that government should not intrude on private family matters.”
Smith said that President Obama’s statement reveals his “bigotry and prejudice against the unborn child,” whom he fails to include as a family member.
He also observed that the president’s professed commitment to avoid interfering with the private matters of citizens is inconsistent with his administration’s Jan. 20 decision. Smith said that the mandate violates the conscience rights not only of those who object to contraception, but also those who object to abortion. The congressman warned that the “misguided” policy might be a foreshadowing of further coercive abortion policies in the future.
He said that Americans must realize the significance of the threats being posed by the Obama administration’s attacks on conscience rights.
“The mask is off,” he said. “It’s about time we woke up.”
BY EWTN NEWS
1/31/12
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