Tag: +Catholic+bishops

Mandate rubs Catholics’ noses in it. Yuck.

Responded last week to especially provocative local-paper column about the HHS mandate, “Who controls birth control?”  But no letters in the paper this week.  Thin paper and all.  A pity, that.  Here’s my letter, which addresses some more than parochial concerns:

2/17/2012 3:54:03 PM

Editor:

Ken Trainor, my excellent editor for many months of Wednesday Journal columns, laid an egg in his Feb. 14 column about the HHS mandate, ignoring the governmental intrusion-coercion factor in favor of lambasting bishops.

In so doing, he soared over the top, even for this sometime critic.  The bishops were “beside themselves with outrage” over the mandate.  They “thundered,” calling the issue “a matter of religious liberty!”  It’s time for them “to grow up.”

Plus, he makes a bit much of the “people of God” argument, as if the Vatican Council meant to dismantle or otherwise negate the church’s entire governing structure.  Where’d he get that idea?

Basically, he wants a referendum about what’s sin and what isn’t, something not even the pace-setting reformer Martin Luther had in mind.

Failing that, he wants bishops to shut up about some things, which is apparently what the feds want also and have hefty fines in store if they don’t.  Refusal to participate has an estimated $10 million a year fine for an institution the size of Notre Dame, for instance.  Not even the bishops have that kind of power.

The whole thing is really a rubbing of Catholics’ noses in the weltanschaung, a German word for the whole damn contemporary dumb view of things.  Ken doesn’t mind, because he stepped in it and can’t get himself out.

Before I go, one of Ken’s arguments has me fascinated.  It’s this: “The hierarchy doesn’t like the U.S. government telling them what to do. The Catholic laity . . . has refused to allow the hierarchy to tell them what to do.  What works for the hierarchy, . . . works for the [laity].”  Which I find as mysterious as a papal encyclical.  Can’t a good editor do better than that?

— Jim Bowman

Catholic responses to forced insurance

Fr. Robert Barron takes Sun-Times’s Neil Steinberg and Chi Trib op-ed writer Sara Paretsky to task in his amazing relaxed and easy-going manner in this video on “the HHS contraception mandate.”

The bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend in this “Catholic Resistance Must be the Response to the Unjust HHS Edict to Violate Conscience”: “We have to fight this.   . . . terrible injustice . . . time for all of us to stand up . . . . not just freedom of worship but also freedom to follow our conscience . . . “

The bishop of Lincoln: “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.”

The archbishop of Los Angeles: “. . . the government is imposing a narrow, radically individualistic idea of religion.”

His predecessor, Cardinal Mahony: “I cannot imagine that this decision was released without the explicit knowledge and approval of President Barack Obama. And I cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience than this ruling today.

“As Bishops we do not recommend candidates for any elected office. My vote on November 6 will be for the candidate for President of the United States and members of Congress who intend to recognize the full spectrum of rights under the many conscience clauses of morality and public policy. If any candidate refuses to acknowledge and to promote those rights, then that candidate will not receive my vote.” [italics added]

The bishop of Pittsburgh: “The Obama administration has just told the Catholics of the United States, ‘To Hell with you!’ There is no other way to put it.”

The bishop of Wichita: “My hope is . . . that we will contact our elected leaders and let them know that we do not want to be forced to act against our beliefs, we or anyone else, and that we want religious liberty and conscience protection restored.”

The archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, who also heads the bishops’ conference: Administration “on the wrong side of the constitution . . . a foul ball . . . never before . . .we can’t afford to strike out . . .”