Last Sunday, the Obama administration silenced Catholic Army chaplains from reading a letter that criticized the Obama administration on its new mandate under Obamacare.
The letter was authored by Archbishop Timothy Broglio, and he criticized the mandate and encouraged Catholics in military congregations to stand against it.
Archbishop Timothy Broglio wrote that “the Administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States” in a way that is “denying Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty.”
He continued,
“And, as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled to choose between violating our consciences or dropping health care coverage for our employees (and suffering the penalties for doing so).We cannot—and will not—comply with this unjust law.”
In the letter, Broglio contends the Obama administration is telling Catholics to disregard their faith and Catholic teachings against abortion and birth control — “a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle.”
However, the Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains didn’t care for the tone of the letter and ordered senior chaplains in the Army to not read it from the pulpit. Broglio’s office said the Army office “sent an email to senior chaplains advising them that the Archbishop’s letter was not coordinated with that office and asked that it not be read from the pulpit. The Chief’s office directed that the letter was to be mentioned in the Mass announcements and distributed in printed form in the back of the chapel.”
However, there is a question that no one has answered.
As Timothy Whiteman from Examiner.com has pointed out, writing from Washington,
At the nearby Camp Lejeune Marine Corps Base - the pastoral letter was read by the Catholic Chaplains.
At the nearby Seymour-Johnson Air Force Base - the pastoral letter was read by the Catholic Chaplains.At the nearby Naval Weapons Station (SC) - the pastoral letter was read by the Catholic Chaplains.At the Coast Guard Catholic Chapel in Washington, DC - the pastoral letter was read by the Catholic Chaplains.But next door to us, at the Army's sprawling Fort Bragg... not so much.
So, every branch of the armed forces, except for the army, read the letter aloud at mass this past Sunday. The next question becomes: why just the army?
The Secretary of the Army, John McHugh, agreed that it was a mistake to stop the reading of the Archbishop’s letter, and he said that it was merely a suggestion from McHugh, an Obama appointee, to remove the line reading, “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law” because of “the concern that it could potentially be misunderstood as a call to civil disobedience.”
Civil disobedience, in military terms, is on par with disobeying a direct order, a court martial offense.
The full statement from the Archdiocese for Military Services, as reported by National Review, shows the censorship from the Obama administration. Meanwhile, McHugh has now agreed that it was a mistake to stop the reading of the Archbishop’s letter.
For more thoughts, I can suggest Karl Erickson's interview with an army chaplain on the matter.
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