 |
|
| Patrick Delaney |
At their annual meeting in November 2012, the U.S. Catholic bishops launched a pastoral strategy addressing critical life, marriage, and religious liberty concerns. This strategy included first and foremost a call to prayer and sacrifice along with the activism of a nationwide postcard campaign.
In addition to the continued promotion of contraception and abortifacients in our schools, neighborhoods, and in international population control programs, and the resulting sadness and crime of widespread surgical abortion, two additional recent “flashpoints” elevated the urgency of our need for prayer and action.
First ‘flashpoint’: HHS Mandate
The first is the Health and Human Services (HHS) Mandate which requires almost all employers, including Catholic employers, to pay for employees’ contraception, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs regardless of conscientious objections. Not only, therefore, are Catholics and other people of good will expected to live in a society which promotes these evils to our young people with our tax dollars, but now the government wants us to pay for and provide them ourselves within our own communities.
Each of these practices violate what Pope Benedict XVI called the “language of creation,” traditionally referred to as the Natural Moral Law, which proceeds from the Creator and is inscribed on the human heart. And attempting to force Catholic and non-Catholic citizens to violate the laws of God the Creator is a grave affront to America’s first freedom, religious liberty, as well as to the inherent dignity of every human person.