Is religious freedom truly a freedom afforded to all Americans? If government cannot step in and tell us how or what to believe, can it tell certain denominations how to run its businesses? Shouldn’t the rights of a religious-based organization be protected? Our country was founded on the principle of religious freedom, but can this freedom still be found?

Religious freedom is a phrase being bandied about today for all the wrong reasons. Not all legal defense teams or media types are causing it, but there is a smattering of confusion about it in the public eye these days.

I checked with a few friendly legal sources to see what religious freedom should mean. The Thomas More Law Center, for example, says it affirms http://www.thomasmore.org/qry/page.taf?id=38 “the right of Christians to publicly practice their religion and freely express their religious beliefs. Our Founding Fathers fought for a nation built on a foundation of religion and morality.”

The Alliance Defense Fund tells those visiting its web site that religious freedom is under attack in America today, explaining that the American Civil Liberties Union’s http://www.alliancedefensefund.org/ReligiousFreedom “targeted attacks on religious freedom are more serious and widespread than you may realize. In courtrooms and schoolrooms, offices and shops, public buildings and even churches…those who believe in God are increasingly threatened, punished, and silenced.”

And the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which recently announced a new project http://www.becketfund.org/index.php/article/1355.html to provide free defense to religious hospitals against government-ordered abortion, stands on this principle: http://www.becketfund.org/index.php/article/82.html “Freedom of religion is a basic human right that no government may lawfully deny; it is not a gift of the state, but instead is rooted in the inherent dignity of the human person.”

Here we have three consistent statements from legal groups that have not only talked the talk but have walked the walk. And I am positive that all would agree that when it comes to the media and the Obama administration, religious freedom does not mean the same thing for all religious organizations or groups. It appears to depend on whose agenda is being defended when decisions are made to discriminate against religious bodies or embrace their ideologies.

For example, when the “ground zero mosque” became a bone of contention in the media, President Obama boldly defended plans to build the mosque saying http://thinkprogress.org/2010/08/13/obama-mosque-defense “This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.”

Oh really? Isn’t this the same president whose administration has made it clear that health care reform equates with taxpayer financing for abortion and abortive birth control? This is why Cardinal Francis George stated in his March 23, 2010, letter to Congress, http://www.usccb.org/healthcare/cardinal-george-healthcare-statement.pdf “We as Catholic bishops have opposed its passage because there is compelling evidence that it would expand the role of the federal government in funding and facilitating abortion and plans that cover abortion.”

Indeed, it appears that the White House has a skewed view of religious freedom when the subject is Catholic principles that prohibit abortion and contraception. For example, in South Carolina, the Obama Administration went after Belmont Abbey College for refusing to cover birth control in the health insurance policy it provides employees. And while, at this juncture, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has ruled that the policy is discriminatory, the college has vowed to fight that ruling tooth and nail. http://www.osv.com/tabid/7621/itemid/5264/Ruling-College-discriminated-against-women-by-not.aspx

What’s occurring in South Carolina is not an isolated incident. In Wisconsin, and several other states, Catholic dioceses are being forced by law to provide birth control in their insurance policies as well.

http://wcfcourier.com/news/local/article_0b904262-a4e4-11df-bde9-001cc4c002e0.html While diocesan spokesmen have said that employees who avail themselves of the contraceptive benefit could be terminated, it does not take a Rhoads scholar to figure out how quickly the government would pounce on the Church upon learning of the first firing!

And that’s the irony, isn’t it? The media is up in arms over a mosque that is, to many Americans, an offense to every family affected by the tragedy of September 11, 2001. But the same media is eerily silent when Catholic health care institutions, Catholic educational facilities and other such entities are roundly discriminated against by pro-death government policies.

Religious freedom is an American principle that is being pulverized by the same political and media machine that has, for more than 30 years, protected the so-called woman’s “freedom of choice.” These death merchants have forgotten the one simple truth spoken by Pope John Paul II (Veritatis splendor #96): “There can be no freedom apart from or in opposition to the truth, the categorical—unyielding and uncompromising—defense of the absolutely essential demands of man’s personal dignity must be considered the way and the condition for the very existence of freedom.” http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_06081993_veritatis-splendor_en.html

Religious freedom? No! Slavery to evil? Yes!

Judie Brown

 

WesternFront America

In 2005, http://www.sacredchoices.org/is_abortion_murder.htm dissident Catholic theologian Daniel C. Maguire wrote in an essay:

There may be serious and justifying reasons for killing pre-personal, fetal life. The decision on that belongs naturally to the woman who carries that life. Women have a far better track record than men when it comes to cherishing and protecting life. Let’s leave abortion decisions up to them.

In other words, the man favored the direct taking of the life of a preborn child, whom he preferred to relegate to the status of non-person.

Of course, what he opined in this brief excerpt from his Sacred Choices tome is nothing new for those who refuse to accept the fact that a human being begins at his biological beginning. Maguire was merely following in the footsteps of others in his category, including Richard McCormick, SJ, the infamous theologian/priest who suggested that there were such things as nuanced positions, not only on abortion per se, but regarding the actual beginning of the life of a preborn person. It was he, among others, who coined the term “pre-embryo” http://www.uffl.org/irving/irvcihr.htm, which is simply a meaningless term designed to dehumanize the person prior to implantation.

It is in this vein that one particular theologian took issue recently with the actions of Bishop Olmsted of Phoenix, Arizona, who excommunicated Catholics at St. Joseph’s Hospital, including Sister Margaret McBride, for being involved in the abortion of an 11-week-old human being. Olmsted’s medical ethics director, Father John Ehrich, explained, “She consented in the murder of an unborn child. There are some situations where the mother may in fact die along with her child. But — and this is the Catholic perspective — you can’t do evil to bring about good. The end does not justify the means.”

Rushing to the nun’s defense came canon lawyer Father Thomas Doyle http://m.npr.org/news/front/126985072?page=1 :

[T]he bishop “clearly had other alternatives than to declare her excommunicated.” Doyle says Olmsted could have looked at the situation, realized that the nun faced an agonizing choice and shown her some mercy. He adds that this case highlights a “gross inequity” in how the church chooses to handle scandal.

The “gross inequity” to which this man refers pits the actions of a living human being against those that followed after her consent to the killing of another person. To my mind, it is the abortion that was the gross inequity, regardless of one’s title or perspective

But Doyle is—along with the likes of McCormick and Maguire—of that school of thought that often places compassion on a level with personal comfort, accommodation and compromise. Sadly, there are many who praise such liberal-minded views, rather than understand the core question, which is quite simply, is it ever permissible to take the life of a human being?

Those who have supported Bishop Olmsted, present company included, have been branded with all sorts of descriptive phrases such as “woman hating” and having an “undisguised preference for a woman’s death over abortion.” But the agenda of those who would come to Sister McBride’s defense is far more sinister than merely railing at the Phoenix case. As feminist commentator Carole Joffe explained to her audience, the pro-life agenda is bloodthirsty! She attacks any legislative effort that might crimp the availability of abortion including these misguided insights http://www.truthout.org/anti-choice-woman-hating-goes-mainstream59831:

Then there are the mandatory ultrasound laws. These are occurring in a number of state legislatures, but nowhere to date with such viciousness as the one recently passed in Oklahoma. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/28/us/28abortion.html?scp=2&sq=ultrasound&st=cse There the new law stipulates that one hour before her abortion, the patient must receive an ultrasound, with the monitor positioned so that she can see it, and the doctor must point to and describe the heart, limbs and organs of the fetus. There are no exceptions for victims of rape or incest.

The current Supreme Court has also shown an unprecedented and disturbing hostility to women with respect to abortion. In its most recent decision on the subject, the 2007 Gonzales v. Carhart case http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2006/2006_05_380/, which upheld a ban on a certain abortion technique (intact dilation and extraction, or so-called “partial birth abortion”), the Court, shockingly, for the first time upheld an abortion restriction which did not allow any exception for a woman’s health.

In other words, it is mean spirited and vicious to provide the expectant mother with the opportunity to see that the child who is about to be murdered is in fact her baby! And it is apparently callous and hateful to make an attempt, no matter how flawed, to protect some, but not all babies who are seconds away from being born.

Exactly who is being malevolent in these matters? Obviously, it all depends on who is grinding the axe. For as Joffe opines in her tirade, those of us who defend human rights without exclusion are people who thrive on attitudes of misogyny, extremism, demonization and blatant cruelty. And the reason for such a plethora of odious monikers? We are making some progress with the message that there is no such thing as a class of human beings who should be denied recognition for any reason, including the timeless culture of death mantra that abortion is a mere choice belonging exclusively to the female who exercises her rights regardless of the consequences imposed on the victim of her free will decision.

Such proponents of mass killing must be celebrating over the news that in Durango, Colorado, there is an abortionist, http://www.examiner.com/x-49245-Denver-Independent-Examiner~y2010m5d26-Dr-Grossman-a-Catholic-Funded-Abortionist-in-Colorados-Four-Corners Grossman by name, who is not only killing little babies prior to birth “every Wednesday of every week” at the Durango Planned Parenthood, but is also on staff at a Catholic hospital! While this might not shock many who read this commentary, it is nonetheless a heinous insult to Christ and His Church.

In writing of this atrocious fact, Gualberto Garcia Jones, who is also leading the Colorado personhood effort, tells readers http://www.examiner.com/x-49245-Denver-Independent-Examiner~y2010m5d26-Dr-Grossman-a-Catholic-Funded-Abortionist-in-Colorados-Four-Corners

Despite repeated entreaties to my bishops, I have not learned of any action being taken to end this scandalous situation. I have since learned that local pro-life activists (Catholic and Protestant) have been trying to get the Catholic Church to step in and stop Dr. Grossman for at least three years!

It should be noted, that while I realize that it is scandalous to point out this ongoing situation within the Catholic Church, it is a much more egregious scandal to let it continue unaddressed….

It seems that the Catholic Church is not capable of putting a stop to Dr. Grossman’s evil audacity. The reason, according to local activists, is that the hospital and the church fear federal employment discrimination lawsuits http://www.truegate.org/news/view_news.php?id=5026. There is, however, a valid basis to believe that this Catholic hospital would be within its right to fire a murderer such as Dr. Grossman, although it is more likely that the church would lose a lawsuit from Dr. Grossman.

When it comes down to it what makes a church like the Catholic Church great is its claim to be the repository of the Truth, not the health of its bank accounts.

Contrast, if you will, the difference between a diocese where a shepherd will not permit a killing on the premises of a Catholic hospital to go unaddressed and the alternative, which is to employ an abortionist who does not ply his trade IN a Catholic hospital but rather down the road. Having made the comparison, ask yourself, why the disparity?

So when news reporters and pro-death advocates feed on a media-created circus centered on the prudent, wise and consistent actions of a man like Bishop Thomas Olmsted, we can better understand their ultimate agenda. Nicholas Kristof, New York Times reporter, in writing about the Phoenix situation told readers http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/27/opinion/27kristof.html:

The Roman Catholic hierarchy is entitled to its views. But the episode reinforces perceptions of church leaders as rigid, dogmatic, out of touch—and very suspicious of independent-minded American nuns.

Vilification is nothing new, of course, among the media elite who despise all that is genuinely Catholic, but one has to wonder why the same media has not attuned itself to the Durango situation. Well, don’t give that a second thought. In Durango, the culture of death has cowed the Church into silence. Their job is done there so they can concentrate their venom on Phoenix and do so with as much revulsion as they can muster.

For these reasons, we ask you to

• Pray for Bishop Olmsted and his loyal advisors.

• Sign our open letter in support of Bishop Olmsted. http://supportolmsted.com/

• Encourage every Catholic bishop and priest to act decisively and with the armor of faith against the death peddlers.

© Judie Brown

 

WesternFront America

It’s really not that difficult to see why Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s repeated attempts to compromise the Church have not brought a resounding, united statement of outrage from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. After all, she used an errant group of nuns plus the Catholic Health Association’s own Sister Carol Keehan to her advantage in turning allegedly pro-life votes on to the draconian health care reform bill. http://culturecampaign.blogspot.com/2010/05/nancy-pelosi-thanks-god-for-nuns.html

ABC News was perhaps among the most colorful in a political briefing piece, writing http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/nuns-nancy-pelosi-rock-stars-progressive-catholics/story?id=10584299 ,

When Sister Carol Keehan arrives to speak at a “Washington Briefing” packed with progressive Catholics today, will the audience do back flips? In the final days of the contentious health care reform http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HealthCare/ debates, Keehan, head of Catholic Health Association, and nearly 60 other nuns and leaders of religious orders found the legislation’s numerous anti-abortion funding provisions — provisions which did not satisfy the Catholic bishops — were indeed sufficient. They came out in favor of the bill, saying it was “life affirming” legislation. This gave pro-life legislators enough cover to allow them to vote for the bill.

The use of the term “progressive” is simply a nice way of saying heretical or demonic. It’s not that the nuns themselves are demons, but rather that they have fallen prey to the age-old temptation of following the world rather than the Lord. But, for the life of me, I have to ask: Why were their fanatical actions enabled by the bishops?

Search as I did to find a united statement of condemnation from the shepherds of the Catholics of this country, there was nothing to be found. One has to wonder what could possibly be so intimidating about the woman that the bishops would merely move on with their agenda without taking note of this remarkable redefining of Catholic identity by a public figure who, as far as we can tell, is still claiming to be Catholic.

It was clearly a crowning achievement in Pelosi’s campaign to deconstruct the teachings of the Catholic Church—making it a good thing to kill babies and a bad thing to defend Christ in the Holy Eucharist—and she pulled it off without a single reprimand or announcement of excommunication from her beloved bishops. What a travesty.

And then, she turned around and used the bishops again. Pelosi reportedly told a Catholic audience that she had instructed the bishops to speak from their pulpits about immigration reform because support for such reform http://www.cnsnews.com/news/article/65513 “is a manifestation of our living the Gospels.”

When Jennifer Hartline of Catholic Online saw these remarks, she opined, quite accurately, in an “Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi, Master of Hypocrisy”: http://www.catholic.org/politics/story.php?id=36488

You stated with shocking audacity that “We have to respect that dignity and worth of the individual and recognize that the Church has an important role to play in that.” Your hypocrisy is simply staggering! You see no obligation to recognize the dignity and worth of the preborn child in the womb—only the dignity and worth of the post-born person who can applaud and cast a vote in your favor.

Where was your conviction that we must respect the dignity and worth of the individual when you insisted, “To me it isn’t even a question [of being a faithful Catholic while being pro-abortion].  God has given us free will.  We’re all responsible for our actions.  If you don’t want an abortion, you don’t believe in it, then don’t have one.  But don’t tell somebody else what they can do in terms of honoring their responsibilities.” http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/%0Amar/07030106.html (Newsweek magazine interview, Oct. 2006.) Funny. I never knew that honoring my responsibilities meant I could kill a baby. And I certainly never knew that it was a “choice” my Church and my God would support.

In case you’ve forgotten, here was Bishop Vasa’s reply to your errant statement: “It is categorically impossible for the same person to state that he or she believes simultaneously both what the Catholic Church teaches and that abortion is just a choice. Furthermore, it is an unjust choice which is diametrically opposed to the clear and consistent teaching of the Catholic Church as well as to the clear and consistent teaching of God Himself in the Ten Commandments. The direct, intentional taking of the life of an innocent human being is inhumane and unjust.  It is not just a choice!” http://amywelborn.typepad.com/openbook/2007/03/bishop_vasa_spe.html

The ongoing Pelosi pronouncements are mere aspects of the overall version of Pelosi cafeteria Catholicism. Or is it? In my diocese in California during the week before the final health care reform vote was to occur, the bishop required a reading at all Masses of his letter on why the nation needed to support immigration reform. Yes, that’s right. He did not press for further action to pressure Congress into stopping health care reform!

By that time, I guess the preborn babies and the imminent Stupak betrayal http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=35984 were hardly worth talking about any more. After all, it’s just the nation’s most pro-abortion piece of legislation ever, but who cares? Onward with that “progressive” agenda!

This entire chapter in the watering down of Catholicism has left me with a very sour taste in my mouth and an ache in my heart. But when I realized that Father Tom Euteneuer had put this in perspective in his recent commentary, I gave a silent prayer of thanks. Writing about “The hostile spiritual takeover of our nation” http://catholicforum.fisheaters.com/index.php/topic,3429905.0.html , he says:

I am not saying that our public officials are demons. I am saying that they are acting like demons. Demons lie, cheat and steal – obsessively. It is their nature. Once the demons rejected God, they fell into a dark world devoid of love and dominated by the ethic of the survival of the fittest where “might is right”. The human beings that serve them act in much the same way when they implement their agendas and policies. Whenever they are in control of institutions or governments, they lie, cheat and steal. In their minds, they are right because they have the might – and to the victors go the spoils.

Father Euteneuer then reassures us of what we already know as faithful Catholics, even in these, the darkest hours of our nation’s history and the Church hierarchy’s identity crisis, when he writes,

In time, the proper spiritual leadership will emerge which will bind us together and form us into a fighting force called the Church Militant – the only spiritual force that can truly resist the hostile spiritual takeover of our nation. Let us not forget, however, that we must get down on our knees and beg, plead, and implore God to restore our once-great nation to its grandeur. We will not see the dawn of a renewed nation without prayer and sacrifice. The momentum of righteousness, consisting of all the humble goodness taking place at the grass-roots level of the Church and society, will eventually build, and we will take back our nation – not only at the ballot box but above all in the hearts and minds of all those who love God and are doing their best to love their neighbor. We will then be able to cast out the unclean spirits that are destroying everything that we hold sacred, and society will once again be governed by righteous men. For such an end we place our deepest hope in Christ, our true and only Savior!

Christ, our Lord and King, have mercy on us. Our Lady of Life, intercede for us.

© Judie Brown

 

WesternFront America

While trying to catch up on some blog reading and commenting this morning, I ran across a post over at teresamerica urging people to not donate to the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) due to their willingness to donate to ACORN. I agree wholeheartedly.

Wanting a little more info, I came across an article written by Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media. Donating to ACORN is just the tip of the iceberg.

According to the article, George Soros, an avowed atheist, has been channeling money to certain Catholic groups via his Open Society Institute. The groups receiving funds from Soros have been groups of progressive Catholics who have been on the forefront in the Obamacare debate and the debate on amnesty for illegal aliens.

Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG) has received at least $200,000 from the Open Society Institute. This group backs Pope Benedict XVI’s mission of using religion to further a socialist agenda.

From their website comes this list of things that is in the latest encyclical by the Pope. Hold on to your lunch, folks.

• “Another important consideration is the common good. To love someone is to desire that person’s good and to take effective steps to secure it. Besides the good of the individual, there is a good that is linked to living in society: the common good.”
• “If we love others with charity, then first of all we are just towards them. Not only is justice not extraneous to charity, not only is it not an alternative or parallel path to charity: justice is inseparable from charity, and intrinsic to it.”
• “The dignity of the individual and the demands of justice require, particularly today, that economic choices do not cause disparities in wealth to increase in an excessive and morally unacceptable manner, and that we continue to prioritize the goal of access to steady employment for everyone.”
• “Economic activity cannot solve all social problems through the simple application of commercial logic. This needs to be directed towards the pursuit of the common good, for which the political community in particular must also take responsibility.”

Now we have an insight into exactly what the Pope thinks of socialism. He’s in favor of it. And since this group supports the mission of the Pope, George Soros and his Open Society Institute will continue to fund them. It’s disgusting to see a religion sell out to anyone let alone liberals.

Also receiving money from OSI is the Catholic Legal Immigration Network (CLINIC), a group who has been on the front lines of having Obamacare cover illegal immigrants. The group was established by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in 1988 and has received at least $530,000 from the Soros-backed OSI.

While celebrating the passage in the House of Pelosicare, CACG had this to say about the whole debacle.

“As Catholics, we applaud the efforts of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Bart Stupak, and others who helped extend current restrictions on federal funding of abortion to health plans participating in the public [health] exchanges.”

Not so fast, pal. According to Judie Brown of the American Life League, some of the provisions still in Pelosicare allow for federal funding of abortion and other life issues, something the Catholic Church is supposed to be dead-set against. Please read Mr. Kincaid’s article to see for yourself.

The CACG advisory council reads like a who’s who of leftist groups. Some of the groups that are represented on the advisory council: SEIU, AFL-CIO, Georgetown University, and Boston College. No wonder the Catholic Church has been throwing their support behind card check.

The SEIU representative on the advisory council of CACG is a man by the name of Tom Chabolla, assistant to SEIU president Andy Stern. Prior to this gig, Chabolla served as associate director of programs for CCHD, directing money to ACORN to the tune of $7.3 million over the past 10 years.

The Gamaliel Foundation, an interfaith group with a socialist agenda, still continues to receive money from CCHD. They’ve been pushing hard for continued financial support through CCHD and is citing that it is “under attack from those with a partisan agenda to de-fund groups committed to organizing for social justice.” It says: “Many Gamaliel Foundation affiliates rely on funding from CCHD to serve their communities.” Yeah. ACORN’s done a great job of that, eh?

Gamaliel says on its website that “Barack H. Obama, former Gamaliel organizer, is the 44th president of the United States,” and that this makes the organizing community proud. It also has a story about Obama friend and White House adviser Valerie Jarrett speaking to a Gamaliel event in Washington, D.C. of 2,500 activists. Jarrett is the official who said that “we” had recruited communist Van Jones to the White House. Another speaker was Melody Barnes, Obama’s Director of the Domestic Policy Council.

Before coming to the White House, Barnes was the executive vice president for Policy at the Soros-funded Center for American Progress (CAP). Van Jones also worked at CAP before going to the White House. CAP CEO and President John Podesta, who served as President Clinton’s chief of staff, is a major “progressive Catholic” and member of the ACORN advisory council, and served as a professor at Georgetown University.

Interestingly, Tom Chabolla of the SEIU and formerly of the CCHD was on the dinner committee for the 33rd Annual Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award Dinner, which was held on May 7, 2009 in Washington, D.C. One of the winners was none other than Van Jones.

While appealing for more funds through CCHD, the Gamaliel Foundation received $300,000 from OSI in 2008.

Let them continue to go to Soros for their funding as they seem to be of like minds. They’ll see not another dime from me.

Originally posted at The Right Stuff © Denise

 

WesternFront America