Obama and Freedom of Religion

Published on June 9, 2012 By lulapilgrim In Current Events

In my blog entitled, For Greater Glory, https://forums.joeuser.com/426259, I wrote that I think the release of this film is very timely and may help us gain a better understanding of the seriousness of the current Obama administration's attack on our freedom of religion in the form of his HHS mandate.

Denver archbishop: HHS mandate an attempt to remove religion from society

By Hillary Senour

Denver, Colo., Jun 1, 2012 / 04:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Denver's newly-appointed archbishop says the federal contraception mandate is the result of a larger push to remove religion from the public sphere.

“Essentially what people are saying to us is, 'We want you to pretend you're agnostic or atheist like us, and that is the way society should be,'” Archbishop Samuel J. Aquila explained to CNA on May 28, as he assessed the thinking that made the mandate possible.

“Today what is happening is that those who do not want faith in the public square are really saying, 'It's our lack of faith, our unbelief that we want you to follow,'” he said.

Archbishop Aquila, who was announced as the new Archbishop of Denver on May 29, called the federal mandate a direct infringement on the First Amendment that is simply another example of “the erosion of religious liberties” which has been occurring for some time.

“It's the violation of our consciences and it is the violation of religious liberty,” he said.

In its current form, the federal contraception mandate would force employers to purchase health insurance to cover birth control, sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs even if doing so violates their religious beliefs.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, announced a narrow “exemption” from the mandate for religious organizations that serve and employ only members of their own faith on Feb. 10.

Since then, 43 Catholic organizations across the country, including dioceses, charities, hospitals and universities, have filed lawsuits against the Obama administration on the grounds of religious liberty.

Bishops from every diocese in the U.S. have spoken out against the mandate, warning that it poses a serious threat to religious liberty and could force such organizations to shut down.

Archbishop Aquila said that he would “continue to speak out” against the mandate and will “ help people to recognize the violation that is taking place.”

Christians, he said, should do the same, even if doing so is unpopular.

“If we become martyrs, so be it,” he said. “It is for the Lord that we do it.”

Although such comments may sound pessimistic, the archbishop said that history has already proved that the Catholic Church is able to withstand such opposition.

Throughout the 2,000 year history of Christianity, “there have been the rise and fall of many governments,” Archbishop Aquila said, “but the Church is still here.”

Comments (Page 6)

lulapilgrim

on Oct 18, 2012

GirlFriendTess

reply 73

Because it is ridiculously expensive but still way underpriced, is too burdensome on the healthcare system they are actively trying to completely brake and because it forces people to buy something the government doesn’t have the moral or constitutional right to sell. Doesn’t mean they can't or won’t though because they are giving it their all.

I agree. You just about nailed it here.

Jythier

on Oct 19, 2012

I think that's the first reasonable answer GFT has ever given me.

lulapilgrim

on Nov 05, 2012

Bread, Circuses and the War on the Unborn.

The US Presidential Elections in an Historical Context

By Elizabeth Lev

As we enter into the final days of the presidential election in the United States, the constant mantra from the entertainment industry for the reelection of President Barack Obama has been the promotion of “reproductive rights.” Starlets and aging glamour queens have come out of the woodwork to tout the importance of Planned Parenthood (the world’s largest abortion provider), the necessity of taxpayer-funded contraception (including abortifacients and sterilization), and the supposed “war on women” of the Republican party.

In a country faced with real terrorist threats (including the recent murder of US ambassador Chris Stevens), a severe economic crisis and a natural disaster in the form of hurricane Sandy, this fixation on sex and entertainment is bizarre—yet, for students of history, strangely familiar. A similar campaign was waged by Emperor Vespasian in 70 AD, when he sought to distract the Romans from fire, ruin and invasion with the games of the Coliseum.

The Coliseum, more precisely known as the Flavian Amphitheater, is probably the best known monument from Ancient Rome. Millions of people flock to its skeletal remains every year, delighting in the tales of the gladiators, marveling at its size, and posing for photographs with costumed Roman soldiers in the arena of death.

The Flavian amphitheater, however, much like the colossal remains of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, would be much less pleasant if it were still active today. The building should not only serve to delight, but also to teach.

The Coliseum was built during a very precarious era for the Empire. Nero had proved himself not only unworthy of his exalted title of “Augustus,” but had left the city depleted of men and money after the great fire of Rome. His Golden House parked in the middle of Rome’s prime real estate had been the final straw for an exasperated population, which rioted and forced the emperor out of the city, where he ultimately killed himself.

Thus the next Emperor, Vespasian, inherited an angry Empire. Businesses had been lost, life savings dissipated and many lives gone. It would be very difficult indeed to convince the Romans that the Empire was a better solution than the recently extinct Republic. Vespasian, whose greatest gift seems to have been an ability to appear as a “people’s emperor” (history records many down-to-earth quips that still bring a smile today), found a way to quell the rising dissatisfaction: the entertainment industry.

This was not entirely original with him. The Roman Republic had outlawed theaters, claiming they were breeding grounds for rebellion, which captivated the idle with tragic stories designed to incite dissent. Pompey the Great circumvented this law in 52BC, becoming the darling of the people, and Julius Caesar, not one to lose an advantage, quickly built another theater, which he never lived to see completed.

The successful demagoguery of the proto-Emperors was not lost on Vespasian, who knew that, more than appealing to piety or philanthropy (two qualities highly prized by the Romans) the quickest way to make the populace succumb to his will was to give them entertainments, which, in the Empire, were called “munera” or gifts.

Juvenal, a Roman poet who witnessed the first years of the Coliseum, saw clearly the teetering moral foundations of the Empire. In Satire X, he laments,

“The public has long since cast off its cares; the people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions and all else, now meddles no more and longs eagerly for just two things----Bread and Games!”

This was the Rome of Vespasian, a people turned inward to its own desires, ignoring the good of the nation and its nobler pursuits, and seeking only to be fed and amused. In this world, a gladiator could rise to sway the populace as did Spartacus, whose prowess in the arena was equated with the ability to lead the polity.

Our modern age does not throw condemned criminals and prisoners of war into the ring to die for our amusement, although, thanks to cinema and video games, this human appetite is still fully appeased.

Our era, like the Romans, looks to sex for its ultimate entertainment, the unfettered ability to take pleasure however and whenever we like. Seemingly more pacific than the murders in the arena, rampant sexuality encourages people to exploit each other for amusement, under the guise that this is a harmless pastime as long as both are consenting. The philosopher Seneca, watching the games even before the age of the Coliseum, already understoodhow a little “harmless entertainment” would transform his people. He wrote,

“There is nothing so ruinous to good character as to idle away one's time at some spectacle. Vices have a way of creeping in because of the feeling of pleasure that it brings. Why do you think that I say that I personally return from shows greedier, more ambitious and more given to luxury?”

Pope Benedict XVI has identified the obsession with sexuality as a form of escapism similar to drugs. In his book “Light of the World,” while speaking of sex tourism and drug addiction, the Holy Father noted that the West feels a need for these “drugs” as it has “A craving for happiness has developed that cannot content itself with things as they are…. The destructive processes at work in that are extraordinary and are born from the arrogance and the boredom and the false freedom of the Western world.”

A pagan philosopher and a Catholic theologian singing in harmony?

But are these modern games victimless? Does really no one get hurt? In the arena, the Romans at least threw to the amusements of the people condemned criminals, men who had fought against the empire or disobeyed its most serious laws. In the eyes of the Roman people, these people had lost their status as human beings by defying the might and order of the Empire.

Today the victims that are sacrificed for the pleasures of the citizens are wholly innocent: the unborn. As much as we would like to separate them, sex and human life are still intertwined. But the savage agenda of “reproductive rights,” treats the unborn like the condemned criminal of Rome--as less than human, an unwanted by-product of bedroom entertainments. Unlimited abortion and contraception including abortifacients, paid for by every American taxpayer, wages war on these innocent lives. In Vespasian’s amphitheater, the games were free, a gift of the military spoils of a generous emperor, but in the abortion arena, every American, working to raise a family, will be paying for the emperor’s sinister pandering

There are, of course, many cases where abortion and contraception are resorted to out of hardship, violence and very difficult situations, but Planned Parenthood did not become a 4 billion dollar a year industry by catering to women who are victims of rape and incest. The abortion business has given 12 million dollars to the Obama campaign and Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood, has taken a leave of absence to campaign full time for the incumbent.

When those promoting the right to abortion are the same who make sexually provocative entertainments, it is not rape victims they are championing. The Playboy Foundation’s status as major donor to Planned Parenthood is not motivated by concern for victims of rape and incest, but rather seeks to snuff out the unwanted consequences of the freewheeling lifestyle it promotes. A television ad likening voting for the first time to losing one’s virginity, seems par for the course for these people, attempting to titillate young people into the voting booths.

Sadly, among the starlets like Scarlett Johansson and Eva Longoria, Meryl Streep has also declared her belief that the crusade to de-fund Planned Parenthood and place legal limits on abortion amounts to a “War on Women.” She stands like a modern Spartacus, ready to rally others to an ill-conceived and ill-fated quest. Dozens of actors and actresses have spoken out in support of the radically permissive abortion stance of the present administration.

The Romans and Greeks, however, as seduced as they were by the games, were never foolish enough to believe the words of an actor. The Greek word for actor “hypokrites" was understood, at least by the Greek speaking authors of the New Testament, to mean one who says one thing and does another. Actors are paid to make you believe they are aliens or angels, presidents or prostitutes. Indeed, many of our modern “hypokrites" play the noble artist among their fans Stateside, but hawk toothpaste and soft drinks in advertisements on the other side of the globe. Are these the people who should guide Americans in the decisions that will affect their children and their grandchildren?

In the ancient world, it was scholars and philosophers who stood up to decry the folly of a regime that would manipulate its people through bread and circuses. In our own Brave New World, such students of reason are needed more than ever.

* * *

Elizabeth Lev teaches Christian art and architecture at Duquesne University's Italian campus and University of St. Thomas' Catholic Studies program. Her new book, The Tigress of Forlì: Renaissance Italy's Most Courageous and Notorious Countess, Caterina Riario Sforza de' Medici" was published by Harcourt, Mifflin Houghton Press Fall 2012. She can be reached at lizlev@zenit.org

Jythier

on Nov 05, 2012

I hate that I can't share about abortion without seeming like I must not know what I'm talking about, just because I'm a man. Women, you have secured this right. God help us.

lulapilgrim

on Nov 06, 2012

Jythier

reply 79

I hate that I can't share about abortion without seeming like I must not know what I'm talking about, just because I'm a man.

Don't buy into this nonsense. Men know plenty and are just as important in the whole scheme of things.

Jythier

on Nov 06, 2012

I know that, but if I say anything I'm a woman-hater because I really think it's bad for their mental health to murder their children.

lulapilgrim

on Dec 12, 2012

Here's the latest Obama assault on religious freedom through the Department of Education.

The Obama administration turns up the heat on the war on religious freedom

by Judie Brown

Tue Dec 11, 2012 13:19 EST

December 11, 2012 (All.org) - The United States Department of Education (DOE) is investigating a junior ROTC instructor who is reported to have said that the Bible condemns homosexuality. An excerpt from the report states: “On Nov. 21 the DOE sent a letter to James Robinson, director of GLBT Advocacy and Youth Services, which says the department will be investigating whether or not students were ‘subjected to a hostile environment on the basis of sex or harassment based on failing to conform to gender stereotypes.’ They will also seek to find out if the school district ‘retaliated against the student . . . by failing to respond and take action reasonably calculated to stop the peer bullying.’”

If this sounds like a further extension of the Obama administration’s ongoing effort to quash religious freedom, not to mention freedom of speech, then you are correct. When this report first came to my attention, it occurred to me that it was a spoof, a joke, or perhaps somebody’s idea of humor. It is none of those things; the DOE is dead serious.

LifeSiteNews updated the story clarifying that the DOE’s Office of Civil Rights will be conducting the investigation. But there is something rather odd about this, don’t you think?

I mean, it’s similar to the threats leveled against students who wear pro-life T-shirts to school during National Pro-Life T-Shirt Week. Ridicule and humiliation are apparently acceptable if someone speaks out in favor of morality, even if only by way of a T-shirt message.

In other words, only specified forms of speech and liberal interpretations of Scripture are to be tolerated.

The fine line that links these two scenarios with the ongoing attempt by the Obama administration to deny religious freedom for the sake of contraceptive access is clear. The natural law must be driven out of public policy and education at all costs. And when someone dares to do otherwise, punishment will at least be attempted.

How long will it be before the protections guaranteed by the Constitution come crashing down under the pressure of such hedonistic attitudes? It’s hard to say, but here is something to consider.

In the first case, the Bible clearly condemns unnatural lusts such as homosexuality. In Leviticus 18:22 we read: “Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind, because it is an abomination.” The Bible does not say that individuals who are homosexual are being condemned, but rather that the acts themselves are wrong and offensive to God.

In the second case, both natural law and the Bible condemn the act of abortion. Exodus 20:13 states as one of God’s commandments, “Thou shalt not kill.” And though one of the cultural heresies is that abortion is not an act of killing because the preborn child is not a human being, anyone with an ounce of common sense and a desire to understand fundamental scientific fact knows that such an argument is bogus.

In the third and final case, the government, as hard as it may try, is not going to be able to rewrite the freedoms enumerated by the Founding Fathers, nor is it going to be successful in drumming believers out of the public square and back into their prayer closets.

It just isn’t going to work. The lies, the public ridicule, and the attempts to replace fact with fiction are all part of the design that is being pursued by those who hate God.

Frankly it’s so obvious that one has to wonder why it is taking so long for the Church to stand up and stop this insanity.

Judie Brown is president and cofounder of American Life League and a three-time appointee to the Pontifical Academy for Life.

lulapilgrim

on Jan 04, 2013

Some more news concerning the HHS mandate.

Dominos Pizza Founder Wins Motion Against HHS Mandate

Files Temporary Restraining Order Against US Government's Violation of First Amendment Rights

WASHINGTON, D.C., January 04, 2013 (Zenit.org) - Another employer in the United States has succeeded in moves to stop enforcement of the controversial HHS mandate by filing an emergency motion for a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) on the grounds of the mandate’s violation of the employer’s First Amendment religious rights.

The Health and Human Services (HHS) federal mandate requires employers of religious institutions to be legally required to pay for insurance that provides abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization procedures to employees.

Dominos Pizza founder Tom Monaghan won the bid for an emergency order to stop enforcement of the heavily opposed mandate. The mandate, which is part of the Affordable Care Act and took effect Jan. 1, 2013, also requires employers to educate their employees on using such drugs.

The Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) filed the motion late last week and U.S. District Judge Lawrence Zatkoff ruled in favor of the motion, citing the government’s failure to “satisfy its burden of showing that its actions were narrowly tailored to serve a compelling interest.”

According to a report by LifeNews, Attorney Erin Mersino – in a strongly worded brief — accused the Obama administration of “blatant violations of Monaghan’s constitutional rights to the Free Exercise of Religion and Free Speech guaranteed by the Constitution as well as a violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.”

The same report also featured a comment from lawyer and author Wesley Smith, who said, “This isn’t about birth control, but the power of the government to bulldoze freedom of religion down to a mere freedom of worship. Regardless of one’s faith or lack thereof, all who believe in American liberty should wish Monaghan well.”

Monaghan is also founder of Ave Maria University and Ave Maria Law School.

There are now 40 separate lawsuits challenging the HHS mandate, including suits from Hobby Lobby, Wheaton College, East Texas Baptist University, Houston Baptist University, Belmont Abbey College, Colorado Christian University, the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN), and Ave Maria University.

Before Christmas, another pro-life victory took place when Priests for Life won a legal battle to get an exemption from having to comply with the mandate.

The government agreed that it “will not take any enforcement action against [Priests for Life], its group health plans, or the group health insurance coverage provided in connection with such plans, for not covering in the health plans any contraceptive services required to be covered.”

Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, has been one of the most active and visible in leading opposition to the mandate around the country, telling Americans that “We do not adapt to injustice; we oppose it.”

lulapilgrim

on Jan 04, 2013

same topic--different reporter...from Cardinal NewmanSociety

Tom Monaghan Wins Against HHS Mandate

A federal court in Michigan has reportedly ruled that the founder of Ave Maria University Tom Monaghan may exclude contraception from his employees’ insurance coverage in his personal property management company Domino’s Farms.

Still uncertain is whether Ave Maria, which is also suing the federal government over the HHS mandate, will be exempted as well.

The Michigan court order granted a temporary moratorium on religious grounds for Domino’s Farms — a privately held company headed by Monaghan.

The court order said that forcing Monaghan to choose between his conscience and heavy financial fines is an infringement of his First Amendment rights and “constitutes irreparable injury.”

Monaghan had previously said that the law violates his constitutional rights, and he believed that the mandate “attacks and desecrates a foremost tenet of the Catholic Church” against contraception, sterilization or abortion and that it will “force individuals to violate their deepest held religious beliefs.”

lulapilgrim

on Jan 04, 2013

And on the military front...Obama condemns rights of Christian military chaplains

http://onenewsnow.com/ap/politics/obama-condemns-rights-of-christian-military-chaplains

lulapilgrim

on Jan 09, 2013

Hobby Lobby defying the Obama administration on religious liberty...

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/01/09/hobby-lobby-defying-the-obama-administration-on-religious-liberty/?roi=echo3-14190922197-10908911-72281a24e7ae8919b2da90544544c4db&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

lulapilgrim

on Jan 18, 2013

Yesterday Obama hit the height of hypocrisy....he paid tribute to religious freedom....this while I don't know how many hundreds of lawsuits have been leveled against his HHS mandate.

http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=16826

lulapilgrim

on Jan 26, 2013

National Catholic Register

Daily News

Robert George: Catholic Oppression Coming Over Marriage

The Princeton professor predicts that persecution will be directed against those who oppose a redefinition of marriage.

BY ADELAIDE DARLING/CNA

| Posted 1/23/13 at 6:17 AM

WASHINGTON — A Princeton law professor has predicted increasing persecution of Catholic teaching on sexuality, amid accusations by a New York scholar that such teaching creates a culture of rape.

In a Jan. 17 email to Catholic News Agency, Robert George of Princeton University warned of rising oppression against those who oppose a redefinition of marriage.

Such persecution includes an increase in “the use of ‘anti-discrimination’ laws to violate the freedom of religious institutions and religious individuals to honor their beliefs about marriage and sexual morality,” he said.

George’s comments came amid claims by one scholar that Catholic teaching on human sexuality contributed to the brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old Indian woman on a Delhi bus one night in December. The woman died from her injuries days after the attack while undergoing treatment in Singapore.

Ian Buruma, who is a professor of democracy, human rights and journalism at Bard College in New York, told CNA on Jan. 21 that Pope Benedict XVI’s “narrow views on proper human relationships reinforce the idea in other, more violent men that women outside those traditional relationships are ‘loose’ and thus deserve what is coming to them.”

He argued that the Pope’s tacit criticism of same-sex unions in a Christmas address to the Roman Curia supports sexual aggression and rage by promoting fear of sexual liberty.

While he acknowledged that the Pope’s speech — which was delivered after the violent attack took place — did not directly influence the rapists, Buruma said that “arguments such as the Pope’s reinforce sexual norms that incite men to violence.”

“[T]he rapists, coming from a deeply conservative rural Indian background,” he said, “assumed that the only right place for a young woman was in the family home as a mother and wife.”

Buruma criticized the Holy Father in a Jan. 14 article in the Daily Star for promoting what he described as a culture of rape.

“I would argue that his speech actually encourages the kind of sexual aggression that can result in the savagery that took place in New Delhi,” he wrote.

The professor suggested that restricting sexual activity to heterosexual marriage could prompt sexual repression. “[T]he more sex is repressed and people are made to fear it, the greater the chance of sexual violence,” he said.

The address that Buruma referenced, delivered by the Holy Father on Dec. 21, did not specifically reference homosexuality, but, rather, called for the strengthening of the family.

The Pope warned that the human family is disintegrating — especially in the West — because false understandings of human freedom see sexuality as a mere “social role” to be chosen rather than a biological reality of nature to be accepted.

Describing father, mother and child as “key figures of human existence,” he warned that a distorted understanding of sexuality loses a proper view of male and female as being the foundational “essence of the human creature.”

“The defense of the family is about man himself,” Pope Benedict affirmed.

Persecution Already Under Way

Scholars in recent months have increasingly warned of persecution for those who do not affirm all sexual practices as being equal.

Professor George cautioned in a July 2012 article for the online journal Public Discourse that anything less than full support of same-sex "marriage" is increasingly labeled as “bigotry” and is being “eradicated” from the public square.

In his email to CNA, George said that this attitude has already attacked the private sphere.

Business owners, adoption agencies and workers in several states have already been threatened, pushed out of their industries or forced to violate their consciences in order to operate their businesses, he said.

George pointed to public-school teachers and government employees who “have been subjected to disciplinary action and threatened with termination of employment” for expressing their biblical views on marriage, even in personal forums such as Facebook.

He added that, unless society changes its acceptance of religious beliefs, this trend will likely continue in the future.

“Soon you will see pressure against the tax-exempt status of the Catholic Church and other religious organizations that teach that marriage is the conjugal union of husband and wife,” he said, adding that there will also be efforts to deny accreditation to academic institutions “because of their teachings on marriage and sexuality.”

lulapilgrim

on Feb 01, 2013

George Neumayr, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is co-author (with Phyllis Schlafly) of No Higher Power: Obama's War on Religious Freedom.

lulapilgrim

on Feb 18, 2013

FOR PRESIDENT'S DAY from the Heritage Foundation..

http://blog.heritage.org/2013/02/18/morning-bell-george-washingtons-example-on-religious-liberty/?roi=echo3-14601009483-11470053-a39aebfa94f6109fcfbc5583c578f5bd&utm_source=Newsletter&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Morning%2BBell

It makes a good comparison between our first president and our current one.

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