While the administration continues to play cute with its so-called contraception mandate “accommodation,” the U.S. Catholic bishops remain unimpressed. (For that matter, so does the faculty of Notre Dame law school, as Ed reported earlier.) His Eminence, Donald Cardinal Wuerl, the archbishop of Washington, joined Martha MacCallum on America’s Newsroom this morning to explain why.
The president says his accommodation ensures that no religious employer will have to “pay for” or “provide” insurance for contraception; instead, those costs will be shifted to insurers. Ed has already thoroughly dismantled the president’s insurers-must-cover-contraception-at-no-cost-to-anyone idiocy, but Wuerl brought up another point: Many religious employers are self-insured. They have no insurance provider onto whom they can push the cost of contraception insurance.
More importantly, the president’s accommodation doesn’t address the fundamental objection to his administration’s original decision anyway: It still leaves the power to define what constitutes ministry in the hands of the federal government. That’s the real problem, Wuerl said.
“It isn’t the prerogative of the government to announce who does what ministries, what qualifies for ministry and what really defines a church,” he said.
Supporters of the president’s mandate love to toss out statistics that reveal just how many Catholics are in disobedience to the Church on this — as though that’s an excuse to trample religious liberty. Wuerl had a simple response to those supporters.
“The teachings of the Church are never determined by the polls,” he said. “That isn’t the norm for Catholic Church teaching: The Gospel is. Revelation is, not the polls.”
Obama has been overstepping in this same way before.
He used his own definition of what constitutes a congressional recess to simply declare one and put in recess appointments.
Now Obama wants to tell religions what qualifies for ministry and what really defines a church.
It might be that the Congress, the Senate, specifically, had abdicated its job.
But I don’t think churches will roll over so readily for Obama.
In George Orwell’s 1984, Newspeak, a bowdlerized form of English, was designed to make it impossible to express opposition to the totalitarian Party government. In the Party’s view, language becomes a tool of mind control as well as social control.
Obama and the PC crowd have tried their darndest to do the same today.
But they keep flopping because there actually are still people who understand that words have meanings.
You can’t just play enough games with words, jump through enough linguistic hoops and get your way, Obama.
Sorry, Nan G.
Yes, we can.
We can re-define white to be black, cold to be hot, good to be bad, or whatever we want.
We own the media. We give the media their talking points at 4 AM Eastern Time every day, and they dutifully parrot them throughout the day.
Any dissent will receive instant assignment to a re-education camp, where we will be taught that the only appropriate response is to ask “how high” on the way up.
Tell the big lie often enough, and everyone will believe it. Say you are for the poor while helping the rich, and the poor will vote for you. Say you support Catholics while eviscerating their core teaching, and the Catholics will vote for you. Say you support Israel while working to help Iran nuke them, and the Jews will all vote for you. Say you are for Hispanics while sabotaging creation of new jobs, and the Hispanics will vote for you. Promise everybody everything. Don’t bother to keep your promises, the sheep are too dumb.
See Samuel Jackson (actor) for details. He voted for Zippy because of his appearance. So much for intelligent voting.
Something for nothing always becomes nothing for something, as I read history!
Looks like our Liberal friends missed the boat on this one: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/february_2012/59_of_catholics_disapprove_of_obama_s_job_performance