But the fact that the Catholic bishops each election year dare to call Catholics to look at all the pro-life issues of candidates and then vote according to their conscience, a Catholic conscience that is well informed, this alarms those in the left wing of our country who do not want any public role for religion that might in any way derail or postpone their godless secular agenda for the nation.
What is this agenda? Birth control provided by the government as well as abortion on demand, even late term abortion. It is also about redefining marriage and making same sex marriage the law of the land. It is also about women's rights. In this secular agenda, in the minds of godless secularists and some religious people, the Catholic bishops are like Islamic extremists trying to keep the world from moving forward with all these human rights. Just look at who the Catholic bishops will ordain and won't. The bishops must be stopped and by law if necessary!
For the most part in the world of religion, it has only been those pesky Catholic bishops who have publicly challenged President Obama on his HHS health care mandate that every women, no matter who is providing their insurance policy, must have what is called euphemistically, "preventive health care" meaning artificial contraception, sterilization and abortifacients. By the way, the "pill" today causes a fertilized egg to be expelled and thus is an abortifacient.
For the administration this is not just about their understanding a women's rights, but the fact that preventing pregnancy is cheaper than providing pre-natal care and care for the infant and mother at the time of birth and any birth problems of either the mother or child that could be very costly. Insurance companies aren't going to complain about providing "free birth control" for in the long run it will be cheaper than providing actual health care to mothers and infants. How cynical the democrats have become!
So liberal democrats and the far left will by law make the Catholic Church do what the Catholic Church teaches her members they cannot do for it violates divine law revealed in natural law. But these godless secularists and some religious people will say to the bishops of the Catholic Church that they can still teach what is divinely revealed just keep it in the Church and away from the public square and leave it up to Catholics to decide if they will follow what is divinely revealed, so provide them the means to have birth control and help to fund it and we'll make you do so by making it the law of the land.
Nothing like government intrusion into the affairs of the Church. I wonder if there is a constitutional mandate against that?
2 comments:
Fr. McD,
With respect, I disagree with the first part of your analysis. I have seen precious little of the bishops bringing the faith to the public square when it comes to dogmatic theology. The voter guide that they issued, for instance, in 2004/2008 left a big door open for Catholics to vote pro-choice if they wanted to, and they've done precious little preaching on Humanae Vitae in the last 45 years, except for the last month or so. Their consistent refusal to excommunicate or even criticize high-profile pro-choice "Catholics," even when the possibility is discussed in the public square during a presidential election (Kerry 2004), also shows this. Finally, you have shameful examples such as Fr. Jenkins of Notre Dame openly pandering to Obama while dissing his own bishop and many other church leaders. Thus, their preaching of the true faith in the public square (and even within the Church) is quite limited and even more ineffective.
I think what's happening here, rather, is that the most left-wing president we've ever had by far is either sensing, or else being advised by the "Catholics" in his administration, that the Church--softened by decades of modernism, co-opted by secular values, populated by uncatechized laity, torn by internecine strife between modernists and orthodox believers, and led by weak, appeasing, and sometimes heretical bishops--is ready for the knockout punch.
Why bother punching it out, then? you may sak. Because on paper at least, it does run afoul of the secularist agenda of de-valuing human life (and is the largest and best-organized institution that does); it has deep pockets; a lot of folks (read: potential voters) still identify themselves as Catholics and are ripe for being plucked; and it has at least a potential to be strong friend or foe to the secular agenda. The time has come, the Obama folks have believed, to wrench the laity away from the Church.
Have they calculated correctly? Have they timed it right? That's what we're going to find out in the next few months. Already the bishops' voices on the HHS crisis are fading . . .
I agree that the bishops in the past have tried to toss out a wide net to keep Catholics in the fold when it comes to politics. The fact that there has not be one excommunication of a high profile Catholic who is rabidly pro-choice is a case in point, although more conservative bishops and cardinals have been asking other bishops to be more specific about denying at least these Catholics Holy Communion.
But Obama has chosen Catholics who can divide other Catholics from their bishops. I believe this is quite intentional on his part.
But yes, as far as Humanae Vitae is concerned and helping Catholics to understand that divine moral law is revealed through natural law, they have dropped the ball.
The bishops in many ways have self-inflicted a wound upon themselves that is only now being known in terms of its ramifications. The sex abuse scandal is primarily what has so weakened the bishop's moral influence in the public square and secularists are seizing upon this to promote just about anything that would ordinarily be opposed by the bishops; the HHS mandate being one and same sex marriage the other.
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