Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive! While this is attributed to Sir Walter Scott, but my cynicism and distrust of President Barack Obama lead me to think it applies to the president as he contrived and executed the firestorm he knew would occur by making it look like he would force the Catholic Church to pay for "preventative" health care for artificial birth control and then offer a deceptive "accommodation" that would shift the payment of these to Insurance companies. Then the president looks like he is flexible and gets all the praise, especially from the Catholic Hospital Association and Planned Parenthood.
But who is going to pay for the artificial birth control? The Church will still be doing that although the deception is that the insurance companies are.
Of course the Catholic Church is often using "self-insured" methods and while the Church doesn't provide artificial birth control, she does provide care for pregnancy and the child born to a woman no matter what the condition of that child. This is more expensive to the Church!
Keep this in mind, the insurance companies are in bed with the president on this one and won't squawk in the least about the deception they are paying for "preventative" health care. And here is the sinister reason why:
1. It will be cheaper for them to pay for birth control than it will be for them to pay for pregnancy care and birth, with the possibility of long term care for children born premature or with health issues!
2. The insurance companies have much more to gain and far more money to make if they simply provide birth control, sterilization and abortion services for free rather than paying for the "disease" of a child and her needs in womb and out of womb!
But the fundamental freedom of faith based groups to carry out their mission unimpeded by direct intervention of the government is what is in question.
This is not a Catholic issue it is an American issue! It is about the First Amendment!
I want to throw up!
And Cardinal Wuerl just asked a Fox News Reporter how the press would feel if President Barack Obama mandated and forced Fox News, NBC, CNN and the others to cover certain stories in direct opposition of the "freedom of the Press."
We all know the answer to that!
4 comments:
Actually, I don't think Obama anticipated this firestorm. I suppose that you could argue that a good political tactician would have hoped for an episcopal outburst followed strong pro-choice reaction from the pews that would give him a greater share of the Catholic vote in an election year (although 54%, which he got in 2008, wasn't too shabby from Obama's perspective). But I really don't believe that either Obama or anyone advising him knows enough about Catholicism to realize what they were doing. I doubt that there are any orthodox Catholics in his inner circle or available to him as an advisor. He certainly wouldn't understand the evils of birth control from talking to, hearing about, or observing the behavior of the average in-the-pew Catholic, since most laity have long since become mainstream and have lost any Catholic distinctiveness in this area. Archbishop Dolan would have told him during the meeting in November, but he's just one man who Obama could dismiss as an oddity, not understanding his role as a successor to the apostles.
In terms of raw political ability and shrewdness, Obama just doesn't have it. Compared to the skills Metternich, Bismarck, Lincoln, and the two Rossevelts, the man is a kindergartener, and certainly one who has no inkling of what Catholicism is about.
I think that, to the degree that he thought about this at all, and to the degree that he was advised by "pro-choice Catholics" such as Sebelius, he figured that for the great majority of so-called Catholics this wouldn't be an issue at all, and that it would put a stake in the heart of whatever faithful remnant there was out there.
So far that seems a miscalculation. The burning question remains, though: will the bishops back down? (And as I've said several times now, any compromise at all would amount to backing down.) if they do, he wins, and all is lost for the Church in America. Remember that Arian Christianity existed for centuries after Nicea. So, too, a heretical American Catholicism could linger on here for centuries, Catholic in name but modernest/heretical in fact.
Anonymous hits the target dead center. Obama isn't smart enough to have set this up this way. Well he may be smart enough, but he lacked the insight to believe he could have preducted this reaction.
The Church has drawn a line in the sand with this administration, and heaven help her if she yeilds and crosses over to the otehr side of the line. This is a fork in the road for the Church in America, either decision will leave her smaller as she sheds "left" or "right" handed Catholics.
I deleted by accident on my cell phone the following that I now copy here:
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> Templar has left a new comment on your post "TIME TO ADMIT IT, THE CATHOLIC CHURCH HAS ALWAYS B...":
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> I do not deny that the Church has always been right in it's position on Birth Control. Humanae Vitae was as Correct as it was Prophetic.
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> My question is why as a person born in 1962 did I have to discover this for myself? Why was this never forcibly preached from the Pulpits on Sundays? Where are the Spiritual Warrior Priests of Old? I don't do nuance yet I find myself adrift in a sea of nuance and spin doctors. Right and wrong are usch easy concepts that a 5 year old can grasp them. Where have we gone wrong?
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> Publish
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> Mark as spam
Father, that accidentally deleted post was meant for the Humanae Vitae thread, not this one.
Thank you.
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