This week the United State Supreme Court will be taking up some crucial cases involving freedom of conscience of employers in our country.
As Fr. Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life, points out in his guest column in this week’s Catholic Herald, the court’s justices will be considering whether employers must provide health insurance for drugs and services they find morally objectionable under the Affordable Care Act.
To the editor:
Do you think our forefathers, who so carefully crafted our Constitution and Bill of Rights to protect our God-given rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are happy or horrified at the turn their beloved nation has taken in these past 50 years? Their 13 colonies became One Nation under GOD, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Three branches of government were created: Legislative [elected] by citizens to past just laws, Judicial [appointed] to interpret laws, and Administrative [also elected] to enforce the laws.
To the editor:
After our 2012 election for president of the U.S.A., it is eminently clear to me that our Catholic leadership is faced with a daunting task.
When 70 percent of the populace of the Madison Diocese votes for an openly pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage slate that elected Obama, Baldwin, and Pocan, it is obvious that any and all teachings by Bishop Morlino and our parish priests are falling on deaf ears.
A rally was held at the steps of the Capitol on October 20 to protest the intrusion of the federal government into religious freedom through a recent mandate by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
To the editor:
The election of 2012 will decide what kind of future our children and grandchildren will have: one based on Christian moral principles or one based on the wholesale discarding of them. The Obama Administration champions no limit on abortions up to nine months of gestation, gay marriage, and limitations on our religious freedom.
To the editor:
We find the “Forming Consciences” article (Catholic Herald, September 27, 2012) to be both ambiguous and confusing. Stating that Catholics are to vote using a well-formed conscience is correct; however, our consciences have not been well-formed for the past 40 years or so. This close to the election it is essential that we speak plainly and clearly about what is at stake and disregard “nice platitudes and political correctness.”
Certain issues trump all other issues. The most significant issues trumping all others have to do with religious freedom, abortion, same-sex marriage, contraception, and other “culture of death” issues.
Independence Day concluded the Fortnight for Freedom mandated by the U.S. bishops, a two-week period of reflection and prayer on the defense of religious liberty that began on the vigil of the liturgical memorial of St. Thomas More.
In 2012, we may be grateful that none of us faces the headsman’s axe, as More did in Tudor England. But neither should we be indifferent to, or flippant about, the 21st-century threats to religious liberty that surround us.
Thirty-some years ago, I spent a fair amount of time on religious freedom issues: which meant, in those simpler days, trying to pry Lithuanian priests and nuns out of Perm Camp 36 and other GULAG islands.
Had you told me in 1982 that one of my “clients,” the Jesuit Sigitas Tamkevicius, would be archbishop of Kaunas in a free Lithuania in 2012, I would have thought you a bit optimistic.
If you had also told me, back then, that there would eventually be serious religious freedom problems in the United States, I would have thought you a bit mad.
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When President Obama mandated that religiously-based organizations violate core tenets of their faith, Americans were rightly outraged.
The president then announced an “accommodation” policy to these organizations, but the so-called compromise is not a compromise at all because it does not take away the mandate that infringes upon religious liberty.
On January 20, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, affirmed a rule that requires church-affiliated hospitals, agencies, and universities to provide contraception and sterilization in the health insurance for their employees.
To the editor:
Thank you for taking the lead in bringing awareness to our Catholic laity regarding the recent Obama abomination in his mandate regarding a ruling that all Catholic entities would be mandated to provide contraceptive and sterilization services that are in direct opposition to the beliefs of our Catholic faith.
What an unbelievable attack on religious freedom as provided for in our Constitution. Our fore fathers are turning over in their graves at this attack.
