IT IS A SIN

A leading Catholic cardinal at the Vatican has essentially said that complying the with Obama birth control mandate would have Catholics and Catholic organizations participating in sin.

The mandate compels religious employers to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions in health coverage for their employees and a revised mandate will compel them to refer employees for free coverage from their health insurance plans, which will eventually have the payment mandate.

In an upcoming episode of Catholic Action Insight hosted by Thomas McKenna to air on EWTN on Wednesday, Cardinal Raymond Burke speaks out for the first time on the controversial mandate.

I can't wait for the EWTN episode.

Speaking of sin, the clashing colors of His Eminence's vestments against the clashing green of the throne are surely an ecclesiastical fashion sin.  Help!

Further, His Eminence believes that the Roman Catholic Church is well on its way to being a persecuted church.

Yes, I think we’re well on the way to it," he said, pointing to areas of social outreach - such as adoption and foster care - where the Church has had to withdraw rather than compromise its principles.

This trend could reach a point where the Church, "even by announcing her own teaching," is accused of "engaging in illegal activity, for instance, in its teaching on human sexuality."

What about the red vestments?

H/T to Charles Pierce at The Politics Blog for the links to the latest on the 'Clan of the Red Beanie'.

UPDATE: Ann V sent me the link to a post by Armando at Daily Kos titled, 'Is Walgreens committing a sin by selling condoms?'  According to the words of His Eminence, I can't see how not.  Strip the shelves!

UPDATE 2: I asked my expert consultant on ecclesiastical vestments if the objects on either side of the Cardinal Raymond Burke's hat were pom-poms, and he replied that they were "the tassels that hang down the side of a cardinal's hat, apparently sutured into place on top of the hat". There you have it.  The cardinal's hat may be a galero.

Thanks to Lapin for the picture.  

ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS DON'T LIKE THE PRESIDENT'S TWEAK

The Vatican

From the New York Times:

The nation’s Roman Catholic bishops have rejected a compromise on birth control coverage that President Obama offered on Friday and said they would continue to fight the president’s plan to find a way for employees of Catholic hospitals, universities and service agencies to receive free contraceptive coverage in their health insurance plans, without direct involvement or financing from the institutions.

The Roman Catholic Church will take matters to the courts, and they will call upon Congress for relief from their oppression.

Already three lawsuits have been filed against the birth control mandate, two by religious colleges and one by a Catholic media outlet.

The bishops will also renew their call for lawmakers to pass the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act,” which would exempt both insurance providers and purchasers — and not just those who are religiously affiliated — from any mandate to cover items of services that is contrary to either’s “religious beliefs or moral convictions.”

Whoa! Internal divisions are developing.

However, the bishops are now facing a potential rift with some of their allies who welcomed the compromise yesterday — including Catholic Charities, the Catholic Health Association, which represents Catholic hospitals across the country and individual Catholic Democrats and liberals who had helped persuade the administration to make the change.

James Salt, executive director of Catholics United, a liberal advocacy group that is organizing support for the Obama administration, said, “The bishops’ blanket opposition appears to serve the interests of a political agenda, not the needs of the American people.”

It's about time!

Is it possible that President Obama will offer further concessions to bullying, celibate, old men, who experience nothing of the costs and difficulties of family life?

TO THE ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOPS: STOP CRYING PERSECUTION!

The Vatican

I've spoken of the heavy-handed tactics of the Roman Catholic Church in which the leaders and their true-believer followers, including Rick Santorum and the converted Newt Gingrich, accuse the Obama administration of waging war on Roman Catholics. I've written about their practice of deception by omission in never mentioning that they already provide health insurance coverage for contraceptives in 28 states that mandate coverage. Whatever reasoning the bishops use to square the coverage with their consciences, I'd suggest that they apply that same reasoning to the remaining 22 states and stop crying, 'Persecution!' Enough already!

However, should the bishops continue to prefer deceptive, political power plays to telling the truth, I recommend that the prelates and their true-believer followers visit their fellow Christians in countries in the Middle East and Africa, where real persecution of Christians is happening. Perhaps then they'd stop their pathetic braying. The group generates more heat and noise than their true numbers warrant. What they do is shameful.

Remember that RC bishops stand in obedience to the pope, a foreign head of state. Why should a foreign head of state have such great influence in the processes of government in the US?

For more light on the subject, I refer you to IT's post at The Friends of Jake and Rmj's post at Adventus.

Picture from Wikipedia.

HOW MANY TIMES MUST I SAY THIS?

From Ross Douthat in the New York Times on the evils of the new rules of Obamacare:

But sometimes the state goes further. Not content with crowding out alternative forms of common effort, it presents its rivals an impossible choice: Play by our rules, even if it means violating the moral ideals that inspired your efforts in the first place, or get out of the community-building business entirely.

This is exactly the choice that the White House has decided to offer a host of religious institutions — hospitals, schools and charities — in the era of Obamacare. The new health care law requires that all employer-provided insurance plans cover contraception, sterilization and the morning-after (or week-after) pill known as ella, which can work as an abortifacient. A number of religious groups, led by the American Catholic bishops, had requested an exemption for plans purchased by their institutions. Instead, the White House has settled on an exemption that only covers religious institutions that primarily serve members of their own faith. A parish would be exempt from the mandate, in other words, but a Catholic hospital would not.

Ponder that for a moment. In effect, the Department of Health and Human Services is telling religious groups that if they don’t want to pay for practices they consider immoral, they should stick to serving their own co-religionists rather than the wider public. Sectarian self-segregation is O.K., but good Samaritanism is not. The rule suggests a preposterous scenario in which a Catholic hospital avoids paying for sterilizations and the morning-after pill by closing its doors to atheists and Muslims, and hanging out a sign saying “no Protestants need apply.”

Ross, I ponder that, and I am not at all disturbed that the Roman Catholic hospitals and universities will need to provide all types of health care to all of their employees. Not one bit. Have you pondered that some communities have only a Roman Catholic hospital to serve them and that not all of their employees are members of the RCC? Why should everyone who works in the community hospital have to play by Roman Catholic rules? What about the common good?

Furthermore, Ross, have you pondered the fact that Roman Catholic hospitals and universities already provide coverage for contraceptives in health care packages? See below from NPR. How does the church square the coverage that is already offered in some states with their consciences? Whatever the reasoning of the powers in the case of the states which mandate coverage for contraceptives, the same powers should apply that reasoning to the hospitals and universities in the rest of the country under the new rules for health care coverage.

From NPR:

But while some insist that the rules, which spring from last year's health law, break new ground, many states as well as federal civil rights law already require most religious employers to cover prescription contraceptives if they provide coverage of other prescription drugs.

While some religious employers take advantage of loopholes or religious exemptions, the fact remains that dozens of Catholic hospitals and universities currently offer contraceptive coverage as part of their health insurance packages.

"We've always had contraceptive birth control included in our health care benefits," said Michelle Michaud, a labor and delivery nurse at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, Calif. "It's something that we've come to expect for ourselves and our family."

Dominican is part of the Catholic Healthcare West System. A spokeswoman for the 40-hospital chain confirmed that it has offered the benefits since 1997.

Ross takes it further. The way of Obamacare is a slippery slope that leads to what? Armageddon? A dark future surely.

The White House attack on conscience is a vindication of health care reform’s critics, who saw exactly this kind of overreach coming. But it’s also an intimation of a darker American future, in which our voluntary communities wither away and government becomes the only word we have for the things we do together.

Ross, I doubt that. I doubt much of what you write.

That Douthat, along with David Brooks, writes for the Yew Nork Times, the newspaper of record, continues to amaze me. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but I believe the paper could hire better opinion writers from the freshman class of a school of journalism.