2/11/12

Update - Catholic Church On White House Standoff: Only Solution Is "Rescind The Mandate"

Update on: NWO Unifaith Groups Forming, Claim White House 'Concession' On Contraception Worthless 2-10-12 "...be informed because this is a 'no way out' scenario." [see post]
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Catholic Bishops: Obama's Solution 'Is Unacceptable'

(excerpted) The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement late on Friday declaring that the small alteration President Barack Obama had announced earlier in the day to a regulation that would force all health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives--including those that cause abortion--is 'unacceptable" because, among other things, it does not protect the freedom-of-conscience rights of secular for-profit employers, or secular non-profit employers, or religious insurers, or self-insured religious employers, or individual Americans.

The alteration President Obama described Friday says merely that insurance companies providing coverage to employees of religious institutions that object to sterilization, contraception or abortifacients will have to provide free coverage for these things to the employees rather than explicitly include them among the benefits covered by the premiums charged to the religious employer.

The regulation will still require individual Americans and private-sector employers to buy, and insurers to provide, insurance coverage that pays for sterilizations, contraception and abortifacients--even if doing so violates their religious beliefs.

Here is the entirety of the bishops' statement explaining their continuing objections to the Obama administration's mandate that all heath-care plans must cover sterilizations, artificial contraception, and abortifacients--all of which the Catholic Church teaches are morally wrong:


[excerpted] The Catholic bishops have long supported access to life-affirming healthcare for all, and the conscience rights of everyone involved in the complex process of providing that healthcare. That is why we raised two serious objections to the "preventive services" regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in August 2011.

First, we objected to the rule forcing private health plans — nationwide, by the stroke of a bureaucrat's pen—to cover sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause abortion. All the other mandated "preventive services" prevent disease, and pregnancy is not a disease. Moreover, forcing plans to cover abortifacients violates existing federal conscience laws. Therefore, we called for the rescission of the mandate altogether.

Second, we explained that the mandate would impose a burden of unprecedented reach and severity on the consciences of those who consider such "services" immoral: insurers forced to write policies including this coverage; employers and schools forced to sponsor and subsidize the coverage; and individual employees and students forced to pay premiums for the coverage. We therefore urged HHS, if it insisted on keeping the mandate, to provide a conscience exemption for all of these stakeholders—not just the extremely small subset of "religious employers" that HHS proposed to exempt initially...

...The only complete solution to this religious liberty problem is for HHS to rescind the mandate of these objectionable services. [full text at link]

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Rescinding the mandate completely...say the newly forming unifaith religious groups...is the only acceptable solution. Beside the violation-of-conscience objection fueling the escalating standoff, as designed by the NWO instigators, there is another very important precedent that is being pressed with regard to the White House 'contraceptive-compromise' ploy, and it is this: The executive branch requiring private companies, in this case the insurance companies, to provide 'free services' falls into the category of dictatorship - as does forcing private individuals to purchase services they do not want or need.

It's starting to look like the nwo architects of chaos have devised a 'perfect storm'...
stay tuned
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compare: NWO 'Religious Protest' Agenda Begins In America: Thousands March Against NYC Ban On Churches Using Schools 1-31-12 Expect to see 'religious protests' springing up across the land soon..."

update 2-12-12
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Note to true Christians - John 18:36 'Jesus answered, My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight'

2 comments :

Doug Indeap said...

Arguments for a "religious employer" exemption have gone from wrong to ridiculous.

Those demanding such an exemption initially worked themselves into a lather with the false claim that the law forced employers to provide their employees with health care plans offering services the employers considered immoral. The fact is that employers have the option of not providing any such plans and instead simply paying assessments to the government. Unless one supposes that the employers' religion forbids payments of money to the government (all of us should enjoy such a religion), then the law's requirement to pay assessments does not compel those employers to act contrary to their beliefs. Problem solved--except perhaps for an employer who really desires not just to avoid a moral bind, but rather wants to retain control of his employees' health plans, limit their choices to conform to the employer's religious beliefs, and avoid paying the assessments that otherwise would be owed. For that, an employer would need an exemption from the law.

Indeed, some continued clamoring for just such an exemption, complaining that by paying assessments they would be paying for the very things they opposed. They seemingly missed that that is not a moral dilemma justifying an exemption to avoid being forced to act contrary to one's beliefs, but rather is a gripe common to most taxpayers--who don't much like paying taxes and who object to this or that action the government may take with the benefit of their tax dollars. Should each of us be exempted from paying our taxes so we aren't thereby "forced" to pay for a war, health care, or whatever else each of us may consider wrong or even immoral?

In any event, they put up enough of a stink that the government relented and announced that religious employers would be free to provide health plans with provisions to their liking and not be required to pay the assessments otherwise required. Problem solved--again, even more.

Nonetheless, some continue to complain. They fret that somehow religious employers ultimately will pay for the services they oppose. They argue that if insurers (or, by the same logic, anyone, e.g., employees) pay for such services, those costs will somehow, someday be passed on to the employers in the form of demands for higher insurance premiums or higher wages. They counter what they call the government's "accounting gimmick" with one of their own: the "Catholic dollar." These dollars remain Catholic, it seems, even when paid by a religious employer to others, e.g., insurers or employees, in the sense that they can be used only for things the religious employer would approve. The religious employers' aim, we are assured, is not to thereby control the actions of others, oh no, but rather is merely to assure that the employers themselves do not somehow act contrary to their own beliefs by loosing "their" dollars into hands that would use them for things no self-respecting religious employer would himself buy. Their religious liberty, they say, requires not only that they be exempted from the law, but further that anyone to whom they pay money also be exempted and thus "free" to act according to their desires.

I wonder what they would think of their follow-the-dollar theory if they realized they had some of my "atheist dollars" in their wallets that can be used only for ungodly purposes, lest I suffer the indignity of paying for things I disbelieve.

tom m. said...

You've got one thing right - you are definitely 'dug in deep' with your position based on your atheist logic.

Proverbs 21:30 'There is no wisdom nor understanding nor counsel against the LORD'