On January 20, U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finalized regulations under Obamacare that require religious institutions to provide and pay for contraceptives, abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization in their health coverage. The mandate violates the teachings and beliefs of many religious institutions and puts their ministries of service to millions at risk.
Dealing with the internet can be a trying experience. Dealing with social media can result in finding a lot of trolls -- people who will argue with you and your opinion, because you have an opinion.
It's the internet. I'm not surprised about anything I find on it anymore. I think it was created by Cthullu, not Al Gore. It's a bottomless pit that WILL stare back at you if you look at it too hard. In the dark. On a cold winter night. With eerie music playing in the background (Cthullu has a MP3 player)
All witticisms aside, with loud and angry voices on Twitter and Facebook with the Obama Administration at one end of the recent Healthcare Mandates for religious institutions, and the United States Bishops and this column on the other, where does everyone else fall? Surely, this is only a religious, Catholic issue, and certainly, no one else cares except for old white Bishops?
Not so much. To start with, we had the surprising condemnation from Chris Matthews about the HHS mandate. It is one thing to see something similar in National Review Online, but Mr. Matthews is something else.
And, he is not alone among journalists.
Business Insider not only declared that the HHS decision was wrong, but that the Catholic Church was right about both abortion and contraception.
“The administration’s feint at a compromise ... fails to address the fundamental problem of requiring religiously affiliated entities to spend their own money in a way that contradicts the tenets of their faith.… In this circumstance, requiring a religiously affiliated employer to spend its own money in a way that violates its religious principles does not make an adequate accommodation for those deeply held views.”
There is also the USA Today editorial board, which stated:
“Few Americans of any political stripe would disagree with the simple proposition that the government should steer away from meddling in church affairs. Certainly, it should never try to force a religiously affiliated institution to violate a central tenet of its faith .... the Obama administration didn’t just cross that line ....That’s contrary to both Catholic doctrine and constitutional guarantees of religious freedom.”
Even the New York Times had an interesting viewpoint on the matter, on February 6th:
“[F]aith motivates people to serve. Faith turns lives around. You want to do everything possible to give these faithful servants room and support so they can improve the spiritual, economic and social ecology in poor neighborhoods. The administration’s policies on school vouchers and religious service providers are demoralizing because they weaken this ecology by reducing its diversity .... By coercing the religious charities, it is teaching the faithful to distrust government, to segregate themselves from bureaucratic overreach, to pull inward.”
Kathleen Parker, of the Washington Post, had plenty to say on the subject.
“Catholic institutions are under siege by the federal government ... Essentially, the new law forces them either to forfeit their most fundamental beliefs or to face prohibitive penalties—or to close hospitals, schools and other charities, with catastrophic consequences for millions who depend on them. For perspective, one in six patients in the United States is cared for in a Catholic hospital.”
“We’re actually not having a debate about birth control. To repeat: The debate is about freedom of conscience. It ain’t about the Pill.…As to the separation of church and state argument that church critics keep raising, keep in mind that this separation was also intended to protect religious believers from state interference. When the state insists that one’s religious beliefs be supplanted by another’s, in this case by secularism, then might one argue that the state is establishing a religion in contravention of the Constitution’s intent?… Sister Carol Keehan, CEO of the Catholic Health Association, who supported the health-care act with assurances from Obama that Catholics’ rights of conscience would be protected, despite criticism from many other Catholic leaders. She has now met the crowded underside of Obama’s bus.”
Even President Obama's hometown paper, the Chicago Tribune, has little love for this move, declaring that "Here the administration is dealing with a matter of faith, a matter of conscience. It should reverse this decision, to protect religious freedom.” The Washington Times used it as a club on both Nancy Pelosi, HHS, and President Obama.
William McGurn, of the Wall Street Journal also had some interesting numbers.
“.... [M]ore than half of all the civic institutions in American life have a religious purpose or affiliation—and that our liberty is linked to theirs.… What people see these days, however, is the candidate who derided small-town Americans as ‘bitter’ people clinging ‘to guns or religion.’ Turns out he was more correct than he knew. Except that what these Americans are clinging to might better be described as the Second and First Amendments.”
On one last note, the most recent word on the subject comes from the Wall Street Journal editorial board, who concluded “Religious liberty won’t be protected from the entitlement state until ObamaCare is repealed.”
UPDATE: Mike Brzezinski of MSNBC has also joined in.
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