On January 20, 2012 the Obama administration announced that it would not expand an
exemption for religious groups that object to its requirement for
health insurance plans to cover sterilization and contraception –
including abortion-causing drugs – free of charge.Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, stated that religious employers who object to providing the coverage will be required to comply with the new law by Aug. 1, 2013, one year later than the initial deadline.
Secretary Sebelius stated that “important concerns” had been “raised about religious liberty.” Kathleen Sebelius, as a Catholic should know that the Catholic Church has held the belief that abortion is a grave sin for approximately 2000 years before President Obama came into office.
"The early Christians are the first on record as having pronounced abortion to be the murder of human beings, for their public apologists, Athenagoras (second half of the second century AD),Tertullian (b.160 AD), and Minutius Felix (between 160 AD to 300 AD, exact date unknown) to refute the slander that a child was slain, and its flesh eaten, by the guests at the Agapae (funeral feast), appealed to their laws as forbidding all manner of murder, even that of children in the womb. The Fathers of the Church (third century AD to the sixth century AD) unanimously maintained the same doctrine."- from the Catholic Encyclopedia
One may disagree with the Catholic Church on the use of contraceptives or abortion but there is something schizophrenic about a government that sees it citizens as indentured servants to pay for the states spending including forcing its citizens to pay for everybody's contraception or abortion. Even the most rabid of secularists should understand that since Roe vs. Wade there have been approximately 50,000,000 abortions in the United States, so it seems the state is hell bent on killing as many future taxpayers as it can. There seems to be the need in America to assign new generations with a nickname, such as X or Y. I call the generations that have been born in America since 1973 survivors.
Whether Catholic or not, all American citizens should understand that the Obama administration is trying to subvert the First Amendment of the Constitution to force the Catholic Church to act against its beliefs in forcing the Church to comply with the HHS mandate.
The title I chose for my article may seem harsh to some, but read through the definitions below, I believe they are an accurate definition of what the Obama administration is trying to achieve, and others before him tried to achieve. I stand by the title I have chosen.
Statism
the principle or policy of concentrating extensive economic, political, and related controls in the state at the cost of individual liberty; support of or belief in the sovereignty of a state, usually a republic.
If there is no right to life there can be no liberty. The Constitution and The Declaration of Independence were designed to limit the sovereignty of the state and makes clear that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness does not come from man, or from the state. Members of the Obama administration, and many members of Congress are statists. The bond holders who were not paid during the government takeover of the auto industry can attest to the fact that the state exerted economic control at the cost of their rights. The Catholic Church is going through this now with mandated contraception and abortion inducing medication.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." - Declaration of Independence
Socialism
a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.
There are two types of socialism; fascism or communism. There is no left or right wing to socialism. Left or Right wing refers to the French Revolution. Fascism allows the private ownership of property, but controls its use. The Communist state owns everything. Some posit that leftist totalitarianism is preferable to rightist totalitarianism, the advocates of this view are generally college professors and journalists. I wonder if those that were shot in the basement of the Lubyanka thought better here than in Auschwitz.
Fascism There are two types of socialism; fascism or communism. There is no left or right wing to socialism. Left or Right wing refers to the French Revolution. Fascism allows the private ownership of property, but controls its use. The Communist state owns everything. Some posit that leftist totalitarianism is preferable to rightist totalitarianism, the advocates of this view are generally college professors and journalists. I wonder if those that were shot in the basement of the Lubyanka thought better here than in Auschwitz.
"The citizen in the Fascist State is no longer a selfish individual who has the anti-social right of rebelling against any law of the Collectivity. The Fascist State with its corporative conception puts men and their possibilities into productive work and interprets for them the duties they have to fulfill." - Benito Mussolini
"The state should retain supervision and each property owner should consider himself appointed by the state. It is his duty not to use his property against the interests of others among his own people. This is the crucial matter. The Third Reich will always retain its right to control the owners of property." - Adolf Hitler
Communism
a theory or system of social organization based on the holding of all property in common, actual ownership being ascribed to the community as a whole or to the state.
a system of social organization in which all economic and social activity is controlled by a totalitarian state dominated by a single and self-perpetuating political party.
The Third Reich murdered millions based upon ethnicity, the Soviets murdered millions based upon class or political persuasion. Like all socialist governments they viewed people as objects, not as individual human beings. Human beings that lived or died based upon the needs, or whims of those who controlled the state.
The Catholic Church has the right to determine how it spends money earned from donations. The Church also has the right to determine what health care they will provide to the employees of its institutions. The Catholic Church has the right to decide which medical procedures Catholic hospitals or clinics will perform, or will not perform.
If an employee of a Catholic institution wants health care that pays for contraception and abortion inducing drugs they are free to seek employment with another employer. If someone wishes an abortion or sterilization they are free to go to a non-Catholic hospital that offers those procedures.
The Christian doctrine of property can best be stated in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas:
The Third Reich murdered millions based upon ethnicity, the Soviets murdered millions based upon class or political persuasion. Like all socialist governments they viewed people as objects, not as individual human beings. Human beings that lived or died based upon the needs, or whims of those who controlled the state.
The Catholic Church has the right to determine how it spends money earned from donations. The Church also has the right to determine what health care they will provide to the employees of its institutions. The Catholic Church has the right to decide which medical procedures Catholic hospitals or clinics will perform, or will not perform.
If an employee of a Catholic institution wants health care that pays for contraception and abortion inducing drugs they are free to seek employment with another employer. If someone wishes an abortion or sterilization they are free to go to a non-Catholic hospital that offers those procedures.
The Christian doctrine of property can best be stated in the words of St. Thomas Aquinas:
"In regard to an external thing man has two powers: one is the power of managing and controlling it, and as to this it is lawful for a man to possess private property. It is, moreover, necessary for human life for three reasons.
First, because everyone is more zealous in looking after a thing that belongs to him than a thing that is the common property of all or of many; because each person, trying to escape labor, leaves to another what is everybody's business, as happens where there are many servants.
Secondly, because there is more order in the management of men's affairs if each has his own work of looking after definite things; whereas there would be confusion if everyone managed everything indiscriminately.
Thirdly, because in this way the relations of men are kept more peaceful, since everyone is satisfied with his own possession, whence we see that quarrels are commoner between those who jointly own a thing as a whole. The other power which man has over external things is the using of them; and as to this man must not hold external things as his own property, but as everyone's; so as to make no difficulty, I mean, in sharing when others are in need" (Summa theologica, II-II, Q. Ixvi, a. 2).
Commentary on this passage from the Catholic Encyclopedia
"If man, then, has the right to own, control, and use private property, the State cannot give him this right or take it away; it can only protect it. Here, of course, we are at issue with Socialism, for, according to it, the State is the supreme power from which all human rights are derived; it acknowledges no independent spiritual, domestic, or individual power whatever. In nothing is the bad economy of Socialism more evident than in its derogation or denial of all the truly personal and self-directive powers of human nature, and its misuse of such of such human qualities as it does not despise or deny is a plain confession of its material and deterministic limitations. It is true that the institutions of religion, of the family, and of private ownership are liable to great abuses, but the perfection of human effort and character demands a freedom of choice between good and evil as their first necessary condition. This area of free choice is provided, on the material side, by private ownership; on the spiritual and material, by the Christian Family; and on the purely spiritual by religion. The State, then, instead of depriving men of these opportunities of free and fine production, not only of material but also of intellectual values, should rather constitute itself as their defender."- from the Catholic Encyclopedia New Advent.org
