Word comes this week that Cardinal-elect Timothy Dolan received a telephone call from President Obama stating that the Catholic Church would not receive an exemption from the requirement to purchase contraception for its employees. Cardinal Dolan is less than enthused:
“It’s not about contraception. It’s about the right of conscience.”
“The government doesn’t have the right to butt into the internal governance and teachings of the church. This is not a Catholic issue, it’s an American issue. We’re strong on this issue of conscience, and that’s what’s at stake here.”
“While I appreciate his courtesy Friday morning to give me a call with the somber news, I had to tell him I was terribly let down, disappointed and disturbed.”
Yes, Eminence, it is about conscience where Obama and the Federal Government are concerned, but it’s about much, much more within the Catholic Church.
It’s about the contending issues of fidelity and narcissism that have torn the Church to pieces over the past fifty years, reducing a once-powerful and respected constituency to a laughingstock in many political circles. Obama’s actions and posture toward the Church, even the election of such a man, would have been unthinkable twenty-five years ago. His declaration to Cardinal Dolan was less a declaration of war than the final, sickening realization that we have had the terms of our self-incarceration dictated to us by the man who embodies all that we have become as a people.
In my 51 years, I have witnessed Mass attendance drop to 1/3 of what it was when I was a child. Since my twelfth year of life, we have butchered more than 54 million unborn babies, millions of them in their Catholic mothers’ wombs. My generation advanced the sexual revolution and spread AIDS like wildfire. Yes many of us have repented of our earlier sins and have pursued virtue, but many of us have not properly formed our children out of misplaced guilt and mistaken notions of what constitutes hypocrisy.
I can’t remember EVER hearing a homily on contraception or John Paul II’s Theology of the Body. I can count on two hands the number of homilies I have heard on abortion, and none, NONE on what makes for a sacramental marriage.
For as bad as it has been, the sex abuse scandal has been the LEAST damaging issue for the Church. That was a very small fraction of our priests, less than 4%. Our marriages are in free-fall, our children torn apart by divorce.
At every step of the way, rejection of what the Church teaches has been behind the disintegration. At every step of the way, we have elected increasingly radical politicians. There is a causal relationship in that pattern.
There is no “Catholic Vote.”
Enter Obama and Dolan.
Their contention, and our current condition, could be viewed as presaged by Abraham Lincoln nearly two-hundred years ago:
The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions:
Address Before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois
January 27, 1838
This task of gratitude to our fathers, justice to ourselves, duty to posterity, and love for our species in general, all imperatively require us faithfully to perform.
How then shall we perform it?–At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?– Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!–All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.
At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.
We are dying by suicide. We are killing our babies by abortion, and now our elderly in increasing numbers through passive and active euthanasia. The preservation of resources and lifestyle are the leading reasons offered up.
Malignant Narcissism and Hedonism.
That there is reason to believe Obama could actually be re-elected indicates we passed the conscience issue long ago. Conscience was determined in our last presidential election. We elected Obama knowing full-well his declared intent.
This election will determine whether or not we’re content with our chains.
Thank you, Gerard!
Did Obama call (only) Bishop Dolan, or did he call all the other denominations who feel as the Catholic Church does?
He would have to call 250,000 other churches then – as they all have differing views – but most all protestant views are for contraception…….
He better be calling on God himself, and kneel in prayer…..
If the Catholic Church actually believed, practiced, and preached it’s own doctrine, then there would be no need for the Church to purchase contraception for its employees even though they are under legal obligation to do so. Go back to your roots, re-establish morality, and the demand for contraception will go away. Supply chains always follows demand. Make the demand go away, and the legality of abortion and contraception will follow.
Is it not ironic that the very issue that Catholics skirted – i.e. contraception – by not teaching Humanae Vitae strongly, is the issue that is now coming back to bite us.
“…the Catholic Church would not receive an exemption from the requirement to purchase contraception for its employees.”
Not only that, the Church must refer employees to sites that provide it. According to the HHS statement, “hospitals with income-based support” are one such site. Don’t Catholic hospitals meet that description?
I wonder if the cardinal elect inquired whether Catholic hospitals and practitioners are expected to provide these services in addition to paying for them? Now that electives are defined as essential disease preventive care, can it be long until we are forced to choose between immorality and employment?
I’m encouraging every Catholic I know to familiarize themselves with “preventive care” as defined and promoted in Obamacare. The law pushes preventive care on multiple fronts. A hit in the wallet and a smackdown on conscience are only the beginning.
Let us pray for our bishops and our health care providers caught in the front line of this assault!
Dr. Nadal, I am supporting Rick Santorum for President and for Life (who are you supporting?) …many occurences in Rick’s life tell me he has been groomed for something quite important: 1. The death of Gabriel. 2. The birth of Isabella. 3. His loss in Pennsylvania. 4. Mother Teresa of Calcutta’s involvement in his wife’s book. 5. His daily Mass attendance since 1990. 6. His positive attitude. 7. His undying support for the unborn.
I would like to pass on an article I wrote that was published today in RenewAmerica and also in Spero News. http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/otoole/120125
I would also like to invite those of your readers who support Rick Santorum to our FB site, Silent Souls for Santorum. He needs prayers !! https://www.facebook.com/Silent.Souls.for.Santorum?sk=wall
Thank you for your passionate post ; I will move it along …
Excellent post! I have to say that we attend Masses said by the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter priests (Traditional Latin Mass), and I have heard homilies given on all of the subjects that you mentioned – evils of contraception, the nature of true Sacramental Marriage, evils of Divorce, evils of abortion, etc. My husband and I were very blessed to be prepared for marriage by one of these holy priests. If you are interested, their homilies are very often recorded and posted online at audiosancto.org. These are the homilies that we hear every Sunday. If only these were the homilies heard at every parish across the country (and world!) every Sunday! God bless you and thank you, again, for your excellent post!
Thank you, your Emmince. Obama, an aboration he will noot happen again. I pray that the aboration has not gone unnoticed.
Pray, fast — turn away from this culture and pull all our resources into separate health care systems that take not a penny of public money. Get the truth out about Obama.
I have asked archbishop Dolan to cancel the distribution of Faithful Citizenship. Do we really need to form our consciences after this latest low blow to Holy Mother Church? Can a Catholic vote for Obama and believe it is right and just? Four more years of ANY Democrat, we can wave goodbye to the Supreme Court and along with it another generation of children denied their right to be born.
Thank you for so this article. This indeed is NOT just a Catholic issue. This is a slap in the face to religion. They want to yell separation of church and state from an imaginative standpoint but yet do not want to abide by their own imaginations.
We are going to see things get much worse than this as the bible predicted. Let us not be found with empty lamps!