In an unprecedented move against a sitting President, the largest Christian denomination in America has declared war on Barack Obama due to a provision in the new healthcare law that religious groups say violates the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion.
The announcement came yesterday from the Catholic League.
The League, which represents the nation's 70 million Roman Catholics, declared that it would mobilize the Church to take the fight "to the streets" if necessary to stop the Obama abortion mandate that would force religious groups involved in healthcare to pay for procedures they believe are antithetical to their faith.
Catholic leaders blasted the mandate as a direct attack on freedom of religion.
The sticking point is a provision in the new ObamaCare law that would force faith-based hospitals, schools, and charities to provide to their employees birth control pills, abortion inducing drugs, and sterilization procedures.
In response, the Catholic League's Bill Donohue stated,
Never before, unprecedented in American history, for the federal government to line up against the Roman Catholic Church.
But Donohue indicated that the Church was ready to fight the federal government with any means necessary:
This is going to be fought out with lawsuits, with court decisions, and, dare I say it, maybe even in the streets.
Archbishop Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York condemned the new law and indicated that the nation's priests have been mobilized by official letters from the Bishops that are to be read from pulpits across America.
But as Catholic chaplains in the U.S. military prepared to read a letter penned by Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese for the Military Services at this week's Mass, military officials attempted to silence them. Undeterred, Archbishop Broglio responded with a sharply worded statement that any attempt to silence the chaplains would be a violation of their constitutional rights.
The letter was read by the chaplains during Mass but with the stipulation that a line be deleted which stated, "We cannot--we must not--comply with this unjust law." Archbishop Broglio agreed to the deletion when military officials suggested that it could be construed by congregants as a call to civil disobedience.
As of today at least 153 Catholic Bishops in the U.S. alone have condemned the ObamaCare mandate. The Bishop of Marquette, Alexander Sample, wrote,
We Catholics will be compelled to either violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees and suffer the penalties for doing so.
The mandate appears to be a direct contradiction to a statement made by Obama during a 2009 speech he delivered at the University of Notre Dame indicating that he supported the drafting of a 'conscience clause' in his healthcare bill for those who are opposed to abortion.
However, the new law contains no such clause.
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