Is Questioning Government Officials’ Beliefs and Associations Fair Game? Especially Those Working in National Security?

Don’t citizens as well as elected government officials have a right to know the backgrounds and associations (questionable or not) of unelected (appointed) government officials?

Well, by the way some people have reacted to Michele Bachmann’s questioning and examination of the State Department’s deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin’s background, beliefs, and associations one would think that the congresswoman had committed some horrible crime.

Oh yeah, that’s right, according to RINOS such as McCain, progressives, Democrats, and others who just want to get along for fear of offending others while continuing to have their heads in the sand she committed the ultimate faux pas in politics – Bachmann challenged the status quo and chose not to be politically correct at a time when political correctness is considered to be sacrosanct. She chose to put the security of our country over political correctness.

Do you think that it is legitimate to question any person’s political philosophy? If so, what is so wrong with questioning a person’s religious beliefs when that religion brings political implications along with it? Such as if the person’s beliefs are incompatible with our form of government and our constitution? If you think it is legitimate to question President Obama’s Communist ties why would you be opposed to someone investigating Huma’s family ties to Muslim Brotherhood organizations and/or operatives? Is it for fear of being labeled ‘Islamaphobic’? When the Muslim Brotherhood follows the same methods and philosophies as other organizations that are declared terrorist organizations? There are certain religious precepts within Islam that are incompatible with our constitution so finding out whether or not Huma holds beliefs which are in opposition to our Constitution is a very important thing to know. If Huma’s beliefs are not aligned with that of her mothers that is great but if she does hold the same beliefs as her mother, ascribing to beliefs associated with radical Islam, doesn’t the American people have the right to know?

I know some of you are probably asking “but what about freedom of religion?” If that religion is not tolerant of other religions, does not believe in religious liberty, but believes in global dominance and death to anyone that insults that religion and is unwilling to coexist with people who practice other religions or those who don’t believe in any religion or even those who don’t believe in God’s existence, and wants to dismantle our constitution in order to replace it with Sharia – Islamic law – then as citizens of the United States we are called to oppose this type of philosophy which threatens the very existence of the United States of America. I am highly confident that the majority of Muslims who reside in the U.S. are peaceful, have been westernized to some extent, and are able to follow both their Muslim faith and the Constitution without seeing the two as being in conflict with one another.

 

This is one example of what Bachmann and the other signees wrote that the squishies and progressives have found so offensive is this:

“The [State] Department’s deputy chief of staff, Huma Abedin, has three family members – her late father, her mother and her brother – connected to Muslim Brotherhood operatives and/or organizations. Her position affords her routine access to the secretary and to policy making.”

Now the Congresswoman has been criticized viciously by dhimmis who want to think that Islam is a religion of peace. I am not saying that all Muslims are violent but if you really think that a strict adherence to Islam is peaceful I would love to know what hole you’ve been hiding in the last 20 years or so. Strict adherence equals jihad. This is how Bachmann responded to Boehner and his ilk:

“Not once in the letter to the inspector general of the Department of State, as you summarize, was it stated that by extension (Ms. Abedin) may be working on the organization’s behalf. That her family members are connected to the Muslim Brotherhood has been reported and referenced widely in the Arab-language media, including Al-Hayat, The Arab Times and Al-Jazeera.”

Mychal Massie makes a good point:

If McCain and Boehner have such concern about not painting everyone with the same brush, why do they sit silently as Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and extreme racist bigots like Jehmu Greene publicly attack whites with racial pejoratives? If they care about justice and fairness, why have they not demanded Eric Holder and Obama’s Justice Department prosecute members of the New Black Panther Party for voter intimidation and for deaths threats made against George Zimmerman?

More from Mychal:

July 20 I received a lengthy letter from a professional person who had called McCain’s office to protest his condemnation of Bachmann. The person who wrote me requested I not use his name. He spoke to a McCain staff person named Will (who refused to give his last name) at approximately 3:52 p.m. Eastern at 202-224-2235. Following is part of that letter shared with the author’s permission – the person wrote:

“I called chastising McCain for his comments chastising Michele Bachmann and four other [members of Congress]. I said we are in dire times and that we don’t need attacks like this within the party. The person on the phone commented that Bachmann’s attack on Huma transcended politics and that she did not have evidence to smear Huma’s name in front of the whole world. The man said there was no evidence supporting what Bachmann wrote about. I said Bachmann only asked questions. He said she didn’t have enough facts to ask those questions and that she defamed Huma’s name in front of the whole world. I said Bachmann didn’t smear Huma’s name, that she wrote the letters to government offices, not to newspapers. I said whoever released those letters and then made it a public issue are to blame.

“The man … said no, the person who wrote the letter is to blame for thinking such things. I said she wrote the letter as internal documents to other government agencies, and he said if she didn’t want everyone to read them she shouldn’t have written them. … This man blames Bachmann for asking question; he says Bachmann asked pointed questions about Huma and that as a congresswoman she shouldn’t have. … I mentioned Humas mother and father; he said … everything Bachmann asks about were unfounded. He said they were only directed at Huma because she was Muslim. He asked, should we look suspect at all Christians due to Timothy McVeigh being a Christian? I replied that Timothy McVeigh was not a Christian. The man argues that he was. … I say next you are going to tell me that Hitler was a Christian, and the man replies, ‘He was.’ I said, Hitler was not a Christian – and he replies, ‘Yes, he was sir.’”

There you have it. McCain’s office believes Hitler was a Christian … and we wonder why and how the Republican Party has become what it is.

Timothy McVeigh grew up as a Catholic. Then he wandered into the darkness and became either an agnostic or atheist, and he was either an agnostic or an atheist at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing.

So according to a McCain staffer we as persons are not allowed to think certain things, or to question anything even if something smells rotten in Denmark? How Orwellian of him. Geesh. Yet another reason that both McCain and Boehner need to be voted out of office. More people adhering to the “see no evil hear no evil” way of life. Please people wake up before our whole country turns intoDearbornistan (watch here).

 

 

 

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Catholicism And Religious Freedom Then And Now: Thank The Catholic Founding Fathers For The First Amendment!

CATHOLIBERTARIAN.COM is now a syndicated blog!  We were approached by the political editor of Before It’s News with the request to allow him to publish our RSS feed there.   We have accepted, and now I am looking into further syndication possibilities as well as ways to monetize our blog and market products under our unique trademark.  Coming soon(?): I am a Catholibertarian!™ mugs and t-shirts!   If this blog can become profitable enough to replace Teresa’s income, she can spend much more time providing the content this blog’s readers enjoy so much.  We all know that she is the one whose posts people come here to read.  In celebration of our newly syndicated status, and at Teresa’s suggestion, I am re-publishing (with only the slightest editing) my first major blog post on this site.  It is as important now as it was when I first wrote it, in light of the fact that, once again, it is Catholics in America, including, just as before, those with the rank of bishop, who are at the forefront of defending this most important of our constitutionally protected essential liberties from unacceptable encroachment.  So without further ado, here is the text of my article Thank The Catholic Founding Fathers For the First Amendment:

The First Amendment has a quasi-sacred status in the minds of most Americans because that is the amendment that guarantees freedom of speech and freedom of the press.  On that note, it guarantees the protected status of what I am doing right now in this blog.  This tendency to imagine that the First Amendment is the product of divine inspiration in nearly the same sense if not degree as the Bible is even more prevalent in those who lean toward Libertarianism.  The latter are sometimes tempted to see the U.S. Constitution, and even more so its Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments), especially the First and Second, as akin to holy writ.  For some of us, the First Amendment is the more revered of the two, but not because of the liberty it upholds in the sphere of political speech, but because the first freedom it supports is not that of speech or the press, but the free exercise of religion.

What most people do not know is that we owe the freedom of religion we enjoy here in this constitutional republic in no small part to the efforts of Catholics, most especially Charles Carroll of Carrollton, the only Catholic signer of the Declaration of Independence.   He was a delegate from Maryland, which, of the thirteen original colonies, was the only nominally Catholic one – indeed, the other delegates from Maryland were all Episcopalians.

Prior to his being sent to the Continental Congress, Carroll was elected by the citizens of Annapolis and Anne Arundel County to serve in the Annapolis Convention.  Also known as “The Association of Freemen of Maryland”, it was one of several committees of correspondence that formed throughout the colonies in reaction to the British crackdown following the Boston Tea Party.   Carroll, along with half a dozen other Catholics in this colonial American anticipation of the Tea Party Movement, had to overcome a great deal of prejudice because of his faith.  Despite his election he was denied an official seat at the assembly because of his Catholicism.   At this time Maryland was vacillating in its support of the colonial resistance, but Carroll never wavered.   When, in January 11, 1776  the convention in Maryland ordered her delegates in Philadelphia  “to disavow in the most solemn manner, all design in the colonies for independence”, Carroll vigorously protested the move and continued to argue passionately in favor of open revolt.   Carroll’s arguments eventually turned the tide and Maryland changed is standing order to “vote in declaring the United States free and independent states.” 1

In February of that year, Charles Carroll, along with his cousin John, a Catholic priest who later became the Archbishop of Baltimore, and Samuel Chase, had been chosen to attempt to secure an alliance between the colonies and Canada.  Despite their lack of success, they were withdrawn in late June and Chase was immediately sent back to Philadelphia, as Maryland was about to change its position and vote in favor of independence.   When July 4, 1776 rolled around, it was determined that, because of his unwavering support for American independence Charles Carroll was primarily responsible for Maryland’s change in their official position, the colony would send him, albeit late by that time, to the Continental Congress.  Though it was too late for him to vote, he was just in time to become the last signer of the document declaring America independent of the British crown.

Charles Carroll knew firsthand and from bitter experience that Catholics in America would continue to be subject to official discrimination and marginalization as long as religious bigotry remained a legally accepted practice.   As long as religious oaths and tests for office remained legal, barring Catholics such as him, as a general rule, from participating in the political process, this country, which Carroll loved more than it loved him, would never be free regardless of whether it achieved independence from England or not.  For this reason Carroll was a great champion of religious liberty, easily the most vocal Catholic of his time to demand this basic freedom that we now take for granted.

When Carroll signed the Declaration of Independence, he saw it as a move toward general religious liberty, though admittedly he initially would only argue that such liberty should be applied to all Christians, not all members of all religions.

Charles Carroll was the most significant Catholic proponent of general toleration and religious liberty.  In 1774 he defended the rights of Catholics to speak out on political matters in Maryland and protested the irrational system that made religious affiliation a civil disability.   In 1776 he helped write the Maryland state constitution which provided for religious liberty, but only for Christians.

Charles Carroll also signed the Declaration of Independence, an act which he later viewed as the first step in a movement toward universal religious liberty.   He told a friend in 1829 that, when he signed that document, he had in view, “not only our independence of England, but the toleration of all sects, professing the Christian Religion, and communicating to them all great rights.” 2

Charles Carroll, his other cousin Daniel Carroll (Father John’s younger brother), and another Catholic, Thomas Fitzsimmons, contributed to the eventually successful effort to make the recognition of liberty of conscience the respected civil right and to codify it into the new Bill of Rights.    It was an important part of their vision that religious liberty would be the very first freedom mentioned in the First Amendment, right at the beginning of the Bill of Rights.  Not very long after, in 1806, another Catholic layman by the name of Francis Cooper, a Jeffersonian Republican, provided a strong early test of the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom for the benefit of Catholic holders of political offices in the new republic.  Elected to the state assembly in New York which required its office holders to take a constitutional oath of office which would have required him to renounce foreign allegiance “in all matters ecclesiastical as well as civil”, Cooper refused to take the oath as it would have violated his conscience by requiring him to deny his allegiance as a Catholic to the pope.  As Catholic allegiance to the bishop of Rome was understood to be a spiritual rather than a political matter, Cooper’s fellow parishioners in St. Peter’s Catholic Church in New York City (the oldest Roman Catholic parish and the Mother Church of Catholic New York, one of whose parishioners was the then newly converted former Episcopalian Elizabeth Ann Seton, our first American Catholic saint) signed the petition to remove that clause from the oath on grounds that it violated the First Amendment of the new Constitution of the United States.  The petition succeeded and the First Amendment passed its first significant test, again thanks to Catholics.

Recently  (as of the time that this article was first composed in the early days of this blog – Editor [and author!]) I found myself in an email discussion with a fellow Catholic blogger who is an even stronger Traditionalist than I am, indeed very much so, and who could not refrain from spewing the most hostile derogatory adjectives about the Second Vatican Council and all it wrought in the Catholic Church.  He is smarter and more informed than I, and this exchange threw me into a tail-spin, resulting in an acute crisis of faith on my part.   By the grace of God I hope and believe that I am over the worst of it now, but it has prompted me to reconsider some very basic foundational belief structures I have held for as long as I can remember, both as a Catholic and an American, and I will share one of the issues with you now.

One of the major problems he had with Vatican II could be found in Dignitatis Humanae and its embrace of the “heretical” doctrines of religious liberty and liberty of conscience, ideas which he understood as infallibly and eternally condemned by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors attached to the encyclical Quanta Cura.  That was far from the only issue raised by him that I felt an urgent need to address for myself, but he considered it his chief doctrinal objection to the validity of Vatican II as a genuine Council of the Catholic Church.  As I looked into the issue further, I found that he was far from alone in this radical Traditionalist view of the Vatican II affirmation of religious liberty as being the principal sign that it was not a valid Council of the Catholic Church.

As an American Catholic, I always took the religious liberty we enjoy in this country as something to be greatly esteemed, even celebrated.  I have known for decades that true religious freedom is not the rule, but the exception, in this world, and that governments often presume a prerogative to subject their citizens to coercion in matters of religious belief and practice.  I also knew that the Catholic Church, in her history, has employed  such measures, sometimes in very ugly ways, and not with any divine guarantees against making grave, catastrophic mistakes in this area, either (the martyrdom of Joan of Arc comes to mind).    But I never suspected that this history was not due to the tendency to sin of fallen humans in the Church but rather due to faithful adherence to an eternal, unchangeable teaching of the Catholic Church that the freedom of a human being to seek the truth and follow it wherever it led his or her conscience was not a true right — that it is “not liberty but license.”

It seems like common sense to me that if coercion is routinely used in matters of religion and religious conscience, because human beings have no right whatsoever, on any level, to be spared such a noxious use of force against them,  it will not only be used against false religions.  When the force of law is used to pressure people to conform to the official religion of the state, there is no guarantee that only non-Catholics will suffer violence against their consciences.   Quite the contrary.  The Devil hates the Catholic Church and will happily move Caesar to start throwing Her children to the lions again on the slightest pretext if God allows him to.  If the Church did not recognize that human beings have the right to seek the truth to the best of their ability using an uncompelled faculty of reason and unforced conscience, then why should the world recognize that right for Catholics?   The Church would be providing the perfect excuse for those in league with the Devil to begin watering the ground with the blood of the faithful.  They could even use the same legal structures against Catholics that had been put in place by Catholic sovereigns  to require non-Catholics to convert to the True Religion.

What seems like common sense to me also appealed to the common sense of Charles Carroll, who said that official intolerance in matters of religion could only produce “martyrs and hypocrites,” but certainly no true Christians.  Catholics should be especially sensitive to this, even more especially here in America , a nation with an ugly history of official, government encouraged anti-Catholic bigotry.   Prejudice against Catholics, is, of course, from the Devil, but it does not appear in a vacuum.  It is usually inspired by the memory of past abuses on the part of Catholic authorities against non-Catholics.  The Carroll family had to leave England because England was martyring Catholics, and Catholics did not have the freedom to profess their faith and worship in public without fear of being murdered.   Why was England so hard on Catholics?  Just because Henry VIII wasn’t allowed to divorce and re-marry?  No, that was not the source of the rage that caused the ground to run red with Catholic blood.  The rage was nurtured in the memory of English royalty, which had a tendency to take it personally when popes such as  Paul IV (also known as the author of the papal bull Cum Nimis Absurdum, by which he established the Roman ghettos for Jews living in the papal states and ordered that they should wear pointed yellow hats in public and attend Catholic sermons on their sabbath) and Pius V (Regnans in Excelsis) interfered with the rule of Elizabeth I.

…so keenly alive were both Parliament and people to the memory of the Smithfield fires of the Bloody Mary and the Papal Bishops, that they sought to guard against the recurrence of such a danger, by a rigorous exclusion of all Roman clergy from the kingdom of England. The English people had not forgotten that only seventy-three years before, Pope Paul the Fourth forbade Elizabeth to ascend the throne of England until she submitted her pretensions to him, and declared England to be a fief of the Apostolic See. They still remembered that Pius the Fifth, eleven years later, issued a bull against Elizabeth when she had been eleven years England’s glorious Queen, declaring her a “pretended Queen of England,” absolving all her subjects from allegiance to her, and cursing all who adhered to her as excommunicate heretics. Only fifty years before, the ”invincible” Armada of Spain, with the blessing of the Pope, hovered around the shores of England, commissioned by the Pastor Pastorum to convert by the gentle appliances of rack and stake the heretic English to the true faith, and win them back to the loving embrace of the Holy Father. Only thirty years before, the Gunpowder Plot sought to destroy the government by blowing up King, Lords and Commons, when assembled in Parliament. These events all conspired to beget in the English nation such an intense hatred to Roman Catholicism, as dangerous to the peace and liberty of the realm, that Parliament, under Elizabeth and James, passed severe repressive laws against the public exercise of the Roman Catholic religion, forbade the entrance of Romish priests within the kingdom, and compelled the English Romanist to attend the public worship of the English Church, under the penalty of twenty pounds per month. Such was the state of the public mind of the nation, and such were the laws of England, at the time Lord Baltimore obtained his charter for the territory of Maryland from King Charles. 3

The point of the above is that religious intolerance always begets more religious intolerance.  It is colossally imprudent, no matter whether it is doctrinally permissible.  It offends the conscience of people who love liberty, and for now I cannot help but to add that this is rightly so.

I have yet to fully examine both Dignitatis Humanae and Quanta Cura as well as the latter’s attached Syllabus of Errors, so I cannot say with the confidence that I would wish to that my blogging friend (whose doctrinal opposition to religious liberty provoked this post and in to no small extent inspired this blog) and the other Radical Traditionalists are as wrong as I strongly suspect they are.  When I have read those documents more fully and consulted with others wiser than myself, I will publish a follow-up to this article here in this blog.  For now I merely offer my suspicion that neither document represents infallible Church teaching

I cannot say with any authority what the Catholic Church should teach on the matter of religious tolerance, freedom of conscience, and the right of the state to use force against the latter, but I know where my heart lies.  Until some solemn duty causes me, to my great grief, to abjure it, I affirm freedom.  I affirm liberty.  I affirm conscience and the free search of the individual for the truth without fear that such a search will lead where the state would not wish him to go.  And I thank my Catholic brethren who I hope are  in heaven for their instrumental role in providing legal protection for my freedom to search diligently for the truth in response to the challenge posed to me by my Rad-Trad friend (who shall remain nameless at this time), even if his respect for that same freedom is compromised by his interpretation of papal documents that touch on the subject.  I had enough to worry about that I could eventually lose my soul.   My suffering would certainly have been intolerable if I had to worry that my honest conclusions could have hastened the damnation I feared by putting me in immediate danger of death at the hands of the state for a capital crime, since that is what heresy has been for most of the history of Christendom in the West.

 As of the writing of this appended commentary, Catholic institutions have until August of next year, 2013, to comply with the HHS mandate to provide coverage to fund contraception and abortifacients.  The Catholic hierarchy declares that they will not budge on this – We Will Not Comply.  Not now, not one year from now, not one hundred and one years from now.  Once again, radical Traditionalists (SSPX) are voicing their dissent, but not because are in favor of compliance with the tyrannical and unconstitutional mandate.  They are not, but their complaint is about the ground on which the Church in the U.S. is taking Her stand: Religious Liberty.  They are not in favor of religious liberty – it is a heresy, they say.  Here I give voice once again to my disagreement with their doctrinal opposition to religious liberty.  Since I wrote this article a year ago I have studied Quanta Cura, Libertas, and Dignitatis Humanae in considerable depth, and I have to say in all honesty, as a trained philosopher who knows a contradiction when he sees one, there is NO logical disagreement between either that which is infallibly affirmed or denied in the older papal documents and the content of Vatican II on Religious Liberty.

End Notes

1 Hagerty, James. “Charles Carroll of Carrollton.” The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3. New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1908.17 May 2011 .

2 Lee, Francis Graham.  All Imaginable Liberty: The Religious Liberty Clauses of the First Amendment.   University Press of America 1995

3  Brown, Benjamin B.F., Early Religious History of Maryland: “Maryland Not A Roman Catholic Colony:  Religious Toleration Not  An Act of Roman Catholic Legislation” , 1876

Note: Where not specifically cited, facts are drawn liberally from the Catholic Encyclopedia and Wikipedia.

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Glenn Beck: We Are All Catholics Now

Glenn Beck visited Rome about 10 days ago and met with Vatican officials.  Beck says that Pope Benedict XVI knows exactly what he’s fighting against – evil.  Beck states “I believe the Vatican is engaged in a very different kind of battle … They are in a spiritual battle, but it will be physical as well …Gearing up for a battle like nothing we’ve ever seen.”

I agree.

Then he said something profound, that “we are all Catholics now.”   We are all in this fight to preserve our right to religious liberty.  This is a battle between good and evil.  This attack by the Obama administration to strip away our right to religious freedom is pure unadulterated evil.

Glenn Beck has penned an article called Why we are all Catholics now which I highly recommend taking the time to read.

The issue revolving around the HHS mandate has nothing whatsoever to do with contraceptives or abortion pills and access to thereof. The issue is a matter of religious liberty.  Anyone who has even a speck of respect for the Constitution and the United States of America, will be against the HHS mandate.

I think the prayer of St. Michael the Archangel is needed for this battle we are facing today.

Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle.
Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray;
and do Thou, O Prince of the Heavenly Host –
by the Divine Power of God –
cast into hell, satan and all the evil spirits,
who roam throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.

 Amen.

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We Hold These Truths

H/T XT3.com 

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Rick Santorum Links: NASCAR, Comments on JFK Speech, and What is a Santorum Catholic?

Rick Santorum is sponsoring a car in the Daytona 500. That is awesome! He gave the driver this advice – “I talked to him about a strategy. I recommended he stay back in the pack, you know, hang back there until the right time, and then bolt to the front when it really counts,” Santorum said. “I’m hoping that for the first, you know, maybe 300, 400 miles, he’s sitting way, way back, letting all the other folks crash and burn, and then sneak up at the end and win this thing.”

Pic H/T ABC 

Rick Santorum defended comments he made last year in which he was critical of President John F. Kennedy’s speech on religion’s place in politics.  Santorum said  “Earlier in my political career I had opportunity to read the speech, and I almost threw up.”  He was specifically talking about this line in JFK’s speech –  “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute.”

From Boston.com: “I don’t believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute,” Santorum said today on ABC’s “This Week.’’ “The idea that the church should have no influence or no involvement in the operation of the state is absolutely antithetical of the objectives and vision of our country.”

Santorum said he understood the speech as being opposed to the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which bans government from making laws regarding religion or limiting its practice. “That means bringing everybody, people of faith and no faith, into the public square,” Santorum said. “Kennedy for the first time articulated a vision saying ‘no, faith is not allowed in the public square. I will keep it separate.’”

Santorum said his point was how important it is for everybody – including those of faith – to feel welcome in politics. “To say that people of faith have no role in the public square, you bet that makes you throw up,” Santorum said. “What kind of country do we live in that says only people of non-faith can come in the public square and make their case?”

Some people tend to misinterpret the “separation of Church and State”.   This means that there is to be no State-sponsored religion and citizens have the right to believe in whatever religion or no religion at all.  The State is forbidden from persecuting its citizens.   Citizens have a right to Freedom of Religion under the First Amendment to the Constitution.  

Father Dwight Longenecker posed the question “What is a Santorum Catholic?”  Father Longenecker is a Catholic convert who grew up as an Evangelical Protestant.  They were prejudiced against Catholics and Joe Kennedy’s philandering helped to reinforce these prejudices.  Here is the article:

As Rick Santorum surges in popularity people may be scratching their heads about his Catholic faith. The American public are used to Catholic politicians, but not this kind of Catholic politician.

I grew up as an Evangelical Protestant. We were prejudiced against Catholics. In our mind, Catholics were Democrats–and that was not good. We knew many of the blue collar folks were Catholics, but Catholics were also fat cats.

The Kennedys were Catholics and we had no respect for old Joe Kennedy who made his money as a bootlegger, nor for his philandering sons with their assumed air of American royalty. The Catholics we knew did not help to correct our prejudices. In our Puritanical Protestantism we didn’t smoke or drink or play cards or gamble or go to the movies. The Catholics did all that bad stuff.

I know now that my prejudices were just that. Among the worldly and sinful Catholics were many good and holy Christians. Likewise, among us Puritanical Protestants it turned out that there were many fallen and hypocritical Christians. That is really not the issue here. What my Protestant prejudices reveal is what Protestants in America have long thought about Catholics.

Protestant Evangelicals combined their theological disagreements with Catholicism with the bad example of Catholics in public life. Every time a Kennedy misbehaved the Protestants sneered and had their suspicions confirmed.

Whenever Catholic politicians like Pelosi and Biden and Kerry stood against their own church in public, the Protestants pointed fingers. When the Catholic bishops did nothing to discipline the wayward politicians Protestants raised a knowing eyebrow saying, “That figures.”  CONTINUED 

Father Longenecker hit the nail on the head! 

 

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Fr. Barron Says HHS Mandate is Anti-Catholic and Un-American

Secular totalitarianism is an apt name for progressives forcing the elimination of religion from the public square.  I would also call it secularist tyranny or tyranny of the secularist.

Father Barron goes on to explain the difference between freedom of worship and freedom of religion.

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Obama To Religious Americans: To Hell With Your Conscience

Last week after I learned that the Obama administration’s HHS had made a decision that the contraceptive mandate will go forward but they will give people a year to violate their consciences I relayed my thoughts in my post called Attack On Religious Liberty: Obama Administration Gives Non-Profits One Year To Violate Consciences.  I commented on this before my Bishop, Bishop Zubik of Pittsburgh, responded to the decision by the HHS to continue with the mandate.

One of the main tenets of the United States of America is religious liberty.  Bishop Zubik has correctly stated that the Obama administration has said “To Hell With You” to anyone who believes in religious liberty, that people have a right to follow their religious beliefs accordingly.  The Obama administration has in effect said screw you to religious Americans.  Obama has proven to be a dishonorable and unethical president.

It is no secret that progressives despise the Constitution.  They do all they can to undermine our constitutional rights and the constitutional principles that America was founded on.  Our Constitution recognizes that God has granted individuals certain unalienable rights.  Liberals believe that governments grant persons rights, not God.  Progressives deny the reality of moral absolutes.  Progressives have partaken in a war against the individual in which religious liberty has become a casualty of war.  The HHS mandate is one more example of just how intolerant progressives are to diversity of beliefs.

Bishop Zubik notes just how wrong this mandate is on so many levels.

A million things are wrong with this: equating pregnancy with disease;  mandating that every employer pay for contraception procedures including alleged contraceptives that are actually abortion-inducing drugs; forcing American citizens to choose between violating their consciences or providing health care services; mandating such coverage on every individual woman without allowing her to even choose not to have it; forcing every person to pay for that coverage no matter the dictates of their conscience.

Let’s be blunt. This whole process of mandating these guidelines undermines the democratic process itself.  In this instance, the mandate declares pregnancy a disease, forces a culture of contraception and abortion on society, all while completely bypassing the legislative process.

This is government by fiat that attacks the rights of everyone – not only Catholics; not only people of all religion.  At no other time in memory or history has there been such a governmental intrusion on freedom not only with regard to religion, but even across-the-board with all citizens. It forces every employer to subsidize an ideology or pay a penalty while searching for alternatives to health care coverage. It undermines the whole concept and hope for health care reform by inextricably linking it to the zealotry of pro-abortion bureaucrats.

The “religious exemption”  really isn’t a religious exemption at all.  How many church organizations or hospitals only serve Catholics?  None.   If organizations resorted to only serving Catholics because of this tyrannical mandate then the government or some other individual would charge discrimination.  So for this administration to claim that there is a real “religious exemption” is quite disingenuous.  The “religious exemption”  would only apply to Catholic institutions where the following can be applied:

• Only Catholics are employed;
• The primary purpose of the institution or service provided is the direct instruction in Catholic belief;
• The only persons served by the institution are those that share Catholic religious tenets. (Try to fit this in with our local Catholic Charities that serve 80,000 every year without discrimination according to faith. It would be impossible!)

Bishop Zubik expresses quite passionately that Kathleen Sebelius via the Obama administration has said “To Hell with You” to the Catholic faithful of the United States.

• To Hell with your religious beliefs,
• To Hell with your religious liberty,
• To Hell with your freedom of conscience.

More often than not the faithful’s requests for teaching on issues such as abortion, contraception, or euthanasia whether it be in the form of sermons or in other avenues   has been met with silence.  The Church has dogmas on these vitally important issues but if bishops, priests, religious education teachers et al. fail to discuss these central moral issues which are apart of our faith because they are afraid of offending the some of the laity how do they honestly expect the laity to be catechized properly?  Just because many Church officials have been negligent in their duty to teach the faith, including those controversial doctrines, thus having resulted in many Catholics not abiding by Church’s beliefs on contraception and other reproductive issues that doesn’t legitimize the Obama administration’s attack on religious liberty.  This decision by the Obama administration to mandate that all institutions must provide contraception, sterilization procedures and abortion-inducing drugs is an attack on the Constitution, religious liberty, and our conscience rights as citizens.

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Attacks Against God in the Public Sphere

Alright folks…. I am ticked off!  At the beginning of the airing of the U.S. Open, these God Hating liberals at the Nothing But Communism (NBC) news network purposefully omitted “Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance.   This is America, not Russia or China people.  This assault against God and morality has got to stop!  Every person has a right to say Jesus, God Bless You or a prayer in the public sphere whether people like it or not.  Then we have a case where The Department of Veterans Affairs is not allowing the National Memorial Ladies to say ‘God Bless You’, ‘God’, or ‘Jesus’ at funeral ceremonies at the Houston National Cemetery.  This is unconscionable!!  These ladies are not allowed to comfort the grieving with any religious references.  Our Constitutional rights are being violated by liberals.

Our Constitution says this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Godless Liberals are violating citizens religious rights in the public arena.  They are prohibiting citizens from being able to freely exercise their religion.  This is abominable!  These liberals would have us return to a persecutory Pre-America mentality, where individuals did not have inalienable rights granted by God.  They want to replace God with government.  We cannot allow this to happen.  Our Constitution is NOT a “living document” that can be changed with the Times to advance a culture of secularism and immorality.  The Constitution is for a moral and religious people.  So, libs either shape up and respect individuals religious rights and what the Constitution really does mean or go soak your heads on a slow boat to China and enjoy their Communism all your hearts desire.

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