Religion
Related: About this forumCatholic bishops issue rallying cry for ‘religious freedom’
By David Gibson| Religion News Service, Updated: Thursday, April 12, 4:41 PM
The nation’s Catholic bishops are calling on the faithful to pray and mobilize in a “great national campaign” to confront what they see as a series of threats to religious freedom, and they are setting aside the two weeks before July 4 for their “Fortnight for Freedom” initiative.
The exhortation is contained in a 12-page statement released Wednesday (April 12) by the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, and its chief concern is the Obama administration’s proposal to provide contraception coverage to all employees with health insurance, including those who work for religious groups.
The statement represents the hierarchy’s latest effort to overturn that policy, and it includes an explicit threat of widespread civil disobedience by the nation’s 67 million Catholics.
“If we face today the prospect of unjust laws, then Catholics in America, in solidarity with our fellow citizens, must have the courage not to obey them,” the statement says. “No American desires this. No Catholic welcomes it. But if it should fall upon us, we must discharge it as a duty of citizenship and an obligation of faith.”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/catholic-bishops-issue-rallying-cry-for-religious-freedom/2012/04/12/gIQAvoiQDT_story.html#
Blowhards.
I applaud resisting unjust laws. Hell, I don't even mind resisting just laws. But it's obvious what this is about. The Berrigans knew what fighting injustice was. These guys do not.
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Mz Pip
(27,453 posts)Just because you can't control every aspect of the government in the country you reside in doesn't mean the laws are unjust or that you are being unfairly persecuted.
Geez, get a grip. They sound like the world is coming to an end because someone who works for them might have access to birth control.
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)They used to have that kind of control over Europe, so it's understandable that they wouldn't quite understand that things are different. After all, it wasn't until very recently that they admitted that Galileo was right.
Gibby
(96 posts)elite, designer $5,000 a pair shoes, and his abuser-protecting ass.
Lord Almighty. If they want 'religious freedom' they might try offering basic respect to other human beings -- including those who see a vast range of reasons for not supporting the elite corrupt 1% fatcat Vatican Plutocracy.
I -- along with millions of others -- am FAITHFUL to the basic moral tenets of decency, and will never kowtow to some corrupt human institution that insists on insulting me with their routine rhetoric.
Dawson Leery
(19,348 posts)The RCC is the anti-thesis of democracy. Only men can lead and only those who kiss the ass of the ruling elites receive power.
Pope Ratman and Timmy Dolan will not be content until we are on our knees kissing their rings and accepting theocratic dictates from the Vatican.
Everyone has the right to practice their religion for themselves. No one has the right to force their religion onto others, as the RCC and Evangelicals are doing.
laconicsax
(14,860 posts)There's no democracy or free societies in the Bible. Quite the opposite, really.
edhopper
(33,606 posts)slamming Paul Ryan in the other thread on this forum.
These are the anti-Democrats who refused communion to Kerry.
rug
(82,333 posts)edhopper
(33,606 posts)seem to be all on one side of it.
trotsky
(49,533 posts)Neat how that works to their advantage.
longship
(40,416 posts)It has seemingly decided that the human interests have to give way to their strictly so-called moral issues, which are neither moral let alone in any way in human interest. Condoms are evil. So is any technology that gives women a choice, let alone a chance, to determine their own health. And don't get me started about the utter evils of homosexuals, the gender dysphoric, or (OMG, the worst) masterbation. But, but, but, priestly buggary is okay.
Fuck the Vatican.
LeftishBrit
(41,209 posts)Or even those who do. 'Widespread civil disobedience by the nation's 67 million Catholics'- good luck with that, as most Catholics do not themselves follow the church's teaching on contraception.
muriel_volestrangler
(101,355 posts)In his famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail" in 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. boldly said, "The goal of America is freedom." As a Christian pastor, he argued that to call America to the full measure of that freedom was the specific contribution Christians are obliged to make. He rooted his legal and constitutional arguments about justice in the long Christian tradition:
I would agree with Saint Augustine that "An unjust law is no law at all." Now what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.
Holy Jesus H. Christ on the 5:15 to Galilee, this takes some big clanking brass ones. In 1963, Martin Luther King was in the Birmingham jail because he was fighting to bring down the infrastructure of American apartheid. The odds weren't much better than 2-1 that he would get out of that jail alive. This is certainly analogous to people padding through the carpeted halls of chancery buildings trying to find a way around the country's anti-discrimination statutes so that the Presbyterian janitors in their hospitals would be forced to live under the same theologically inept regime that American Catholics have been ignoring for almost 50 years. Sitting in a cell, wondering if every turn of the key in the lock was the last one, is certainly exactly the same moral witness as sitting in your office, worrying your pectoral cross down to the nub because somewhere, somebody is having sex that may not "be open to the transmission of life."
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/bishops-statement-on-religious-liberty-8061319#ixzz1rwBI3jS2
trotsky
(49,533 posts)He had me at "Clan of the Red Beanie". LOL
AlbertCat
(17,505 posts)These employees are free to refuse the contraception if they want.
What's the problem?
Seriously.... do they want to live in this world or not? It's like making the Amish use electric turn signals. Get over it.
cbayer
(146,218 posts)They are dreaming.
Viva_Daddy
(785 posts)they didn't continually have their hands out looking for taxpayer funds to do their "good work". When you take Government funds, the Government has a right to impose conditions on how those funds are used and not used. If the Bishops want to be free of Government "restrictions" while continuing to oppress homosexuals and women they need to get off the Government gravy train.
