Bootlickers and Backbones

The MCJ posts a good summary of how “religious” of a more lefty bent are responding to the Obama regime’s attack on freedom of religion via Obamacare rules. First, there are the usual bootlickers:

"We stand with President Obama and Secretary Sebelius in their decision to reaffirm the importance of contraceptive services as essential preventive care for women under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and to assure access under the law to American women, regardless of religious affiliation. We respect individuals' moral agency to make decisions about their sexuality and reproductive health without governmental interference or legal restrictions. We do not believe that specific religious doctrine belongs in health care reform -- as we value our nation's commitment to church-state separation. We believe that women and men have the right to decide whether or not to apply the principles of their faith to family planning decisions, and to do so they must have access to services. The Administration was correct in requiring institutions that do not have purely sectarian goals to offer comprehensive preventive health care. Our leaders have the responsibility to safeguard individual religious liberty and to help improve the health of women, their children and families. Hospitals and universities across the religious spectrum have an obligation to assure that individuals' conscience and decisions are respected and that their students and employees have access to this basic health care service. We invite other religious leaders to speak out with us for universal coverage of contraception."

The signees follow. They are rather predictable, but note them well. Sooner or later, history will place them with those clerics who collaborated with the French Revolution and with the Nazis in attacking life and freedom. When I call them bootlickers, I mean it.

Catholics for Choice, Jon O'Brien, President
Central Conference of American Rabbis, Rabbi Jonathan Stein, President
Concerned Clergy for Choice, Rabbi Dennis Ross, Director
Disciples Justice Action Network, Rev. Dr. Ken Brooker Langston, Director
Episcopal Divinity School, The Very Reverend Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale, President
Episcopal Women's Caucus, Rev. Dr Elizabeth Kaeton, Convener
Hadassah, Marcie Natan, National President
Jewish Reconstructionist Federation, Robert Barkin, Interim Executive Vice President
Jewish Women International, Lori Weinstein, Executive Director
Methodist Federation for Social Action, Jill Warren, Executive Director
Muslims for Progressive Values, Ani Zonneveld, President
National Council of Jewish Women, Nancy Kaufman, CEO
Planned Parenthood Clergy Advisory Board, Rev. Jane Emma Newall, Chair
Rabbinical Assembly, Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, Executive Vice President
Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Rev. Steve Clapp, Chair
Religious Institute, Rev. Dr. Debra W. Haffner, Executive Director
Society for Humanistic Judaism, M. Bonnie Cousens, Executive Director
The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, Rabbi Steven Wernick, CEO
Union Theological Seminary, Rev. Dr. Serene Jones, President
Unitarian Universalist Association, Rev. Peter Morales, President
United Church of Christ, Rev. Geoffrey Black, General Minister and President
Women's League for Conservative Judaism, Rita L. Wertlieb, President; Sarrae G. Crane, Executive Director

However, there are those who once supported Obama but to their credit now see there should be no further collaboration with this regime as it attacks freedom of religion. 2008 Obama voter and Catholic Michael Winters rightly warns against compromise now that the Obama Administration is making noises about such.

The most troubling part of Axelrod’s comment was the idea that finding a compromise will take time. I read that to mean, let’s paper this thing over until after the election. Does he take us for fools? If there is a second Obama term, something that I suspect seems more in doubt because of this decision, which is why Axelrod is saying anything at all, what leverage will Catholic leaders have after the election? Clearly, we cannot count on this president to do the right thing, nor even to do the thing he promised to do.

Exactly. If Obama would do this before the accountability of an election, what the heck would he do afterward? Any pre-election soothing noises should be taken as just that and only that – and ignored. This regime is not to be trusted with freedom of religion or just about any Constitutional freedom for that matter. Obama has proven that well.

Winters also notes that the courts are likely to give churches a complete exemption from the birth control mandates. So why compromise? And he may be right although I would not depend on it.

Nevertheless, Winters, again a past Obama voter, is in a fighting mood.

Yes, I want a solution to this mess. But, I also want a victory by which I mean I want a really robust conscience exemption. I want any change by the White House not only to work in terms of resolving this issue but to send a clear and unambiguous statement that in this great diverse, pluralistic country of ours, there is room for us Catholics to be Catholic, with all of our quirks, and that the government recognizes that they have no business telling religious organizations what their mission is or how to manage it. I do not want the White House to cry “uncle” for the sake of crying uncle. But, when somebody punches me in the nose, and when someone punches my friends Sr. Carol Keehan and Father John Jenkins and countless others in the nose, I am not going to rush to make nice with them either. There needs to be an apology. And the President needs to go to the pro-choice caucus and explain that their stance imperils the entire Affordable Care Act, both politically and legally, and without that, they would not be discussing extending contraception to anyone.

Make no mistake about it - those who support denying Catholic institutions a more robust exemption have placed their commitment to pro-choice orthodoxy above their commitment to health care reform. Is that progressive? Is that something progressive Catholics, who fought so hard to pass the ACA, want to defend? It is time for so-called progressive Catholics to stop serving as chaplains to the political status quo and recognize a first principle when they see one. It is time for Catholics to insist that a conscience exemption that only applies to religion on Sunday and no help for the poor unless they are also Catholic is no conscience exemption at all. And, if the White House doesn't see it that way, let them pay the political price for it.

That’s backbone. And I can respect that every bit as much as I hold the bootlickers in contempt.

Archbishop Duncan and ACNA take a stand against Obamacare mandate.

I am very glad to see this statement from Archbishop Duncan:

Archbishop Robert Duncan released the following statement in support of the Catholic Church’s fight to maintain freedom of conscience in the midst of the U.S. federal government issuing a preventive care mandate in violation of its teaching.

“The Anglican Church in North America stands by our Catholic brothers and sisters as followers of Christ in a nation whose Constitution guarantees ‘the free exercise’ of religion. As Christians, our faith and doctrine are at the very heart of our service to others in our community. Therefore, it is extremely troubling to see our government mandate services contrary to Catholic Church teaching. I call on all members of the Anglican Church to stand by our Catholic brothers and sisters, and pray for our elected officials to have the courage to stand up for religious freedom and overturn this mandate,” said Archbishop Duncan.

Roman Catholic Bishops Have Themselves to Blame

My readers may have noticed my vociferous opposition to the Obama regime’s attack on the Roman Catholic Church and on freedom of religion. But do not think I hold American Catholic bishops and clerics blameless in this. Just the opposite.

For those bishops as a group along with lefty clerics supported the passage of Obamacare. Did they really think that they could support the suppression of freedom inherent in Obamacare without endangering the freedom of their church? If so, they were fools:

Mr. Obama's allies among Catholic liberals are also professing shock — even the Catholic Health Association's Sister Carol Keehan, who lobbied for ObamaCare, and Notre Dame's Father John Jenkins, who invited Mr. Obama to speak on campus in 2009. But if they now claim they were taken for a ride by the secular left, the truth is that they wanted to be deceived in the name of their grander goal of government-enforced equity. The Catholic left was one of ObamaCare's great enablers.

They are not unlike those clerics who collaborated with the French Revolution only later to face the guillotine themselves. Those who collaborate with regimes that attack freedom endanger their own freedom as well.

(There is an excellent article on The French Revolution and clerics by James Hitchcock in the September/October issue of Touchstone. It is not available online at the moment, however.)

By the way, there are now noises from the Obama Administration that they are maybe, kinda, sorta willing to make some accommodation for the Roman Catholic Church. I think that just pre-election posturing. But in any case, I’m right again.

“Let us pray for those against women bishops.”

Peter Mullen sums up well the peril Church of England traditionalists find themselves in as General Synod votes on women bishops.

There is no question there will be women bishops. The issue is whether adequate provision will be made for those who cannot consciously recognize women bishops. And the feminazis and allies would much rather unchurch such bigots orthodox. Hell, they are even marching against providing for traditionalists.

Peter Mullen sums up such wolves well:

Campaigners for women bishops call themselves “liberal” and “inclusive”. But their liberality and inclusiveness extends only as far as those who agree with them. This is not liberalism at all, of course. Those bigots are like Trotskyists who work within an institution to subvert it and to turn it into its opposite. They are the Church Militant Tendency. I have seen (and worse, heard) their raucous and savage triumphalism, sneering and gloating at the discomfiture of traditionalists. These people who began their feminising movement by pleading for tolerance are themselves intolerable.

Indeed, they are “bigots.” And let us indeed pray for the faithful in danger of being unchurched by these shameless wolves.

On Crossing Lines and Personal Life

First off, I think I should say this is an unusual post from me and not that political a one although it may seem so at first.

I am wrestling with questions of when a political situation gets so toxic that one can no longer pretend it’s o.k. to be on the wrong side.

Allow me to spell this out. Obama with his illegal recess appointments and with his attack on freedom of religion is openly playing the tyrant and ignoring the Constitution. He has twice crossed very important Constitutional lines in recent days and willfully so. And I fear for the future. If he would do this before the accountability of an election, what would he do after?

And I’m beginning to relate to those who found themselves under the rise of Nazism and wondering what to do. Remember the road to the death camps was a gradual one. When one realized what was going on, it was too late to do anything about it. For too many, it was too late even to flee.

Yes, I know I may seem alarmist, and I am not expecting Leftist American death camps in my lifetime at least. But where does this attack on the Constitution and on our freedoms stop? If Obama is re-elected, it most certainly will not stop here. I have repeatedly warned that Obama has a totalitarian impulse, and I meant it. And events are proving me more right than I want to be.

But to the heart of my dilemma, at what point does one decide one cannot divorce the political and personal? And what does one do then?

An example: A supposedly Christian friend on Facebook openly cheered Obama’s illegal appointments. I knew he was of the Left, but I was so taken aback that he would support this that I wondered what else he was capable of. So I unfriended him. I do not want him involved in my personal life. He has broken my trust. And I pruned my friends list of a few others as well.

Yes, a small step, and I know some may find it petty. But if an evil regime crosses a line, should I ignore it and pretend it’s o. k. if someone cheerfully crosses that line as well? Remember that many apparently nice people who loved their families and were good neighbors and mowed their lawns worked for the Nazi death machine. And, again, that descent began gradually with lesser monstrosities first.

(Yes, I know some may find me violating Godwin’s Law. But what happened to Germany is the prototypical example of how a civilized people, even with a long history of the rule of law, can descend into almost pure evil. I can now very much relate to the ethical issues that confronted everyday people who lived in the midst of that darkness.)

I am wrestling with such issues. And I am having not a little trouble putting it into words. But at what point does one refuse to agree to disagree? And just how should that affect one’s personal life?

I have no easy answers. I am not even sure just what I should do. Still, I do think the current regime is so toxic and so dangerous that we are at the point where divorcing the personal and the political is becoming more and more untenable.

And, yes, even as political as I am, I hate that.

Prediction: Obama will try to appease angry Catholics

I have not yet seen any poll numbers that reflect this, but make no mistake – the damage Obama has done to himself by deciding to force the Roman Catholic Church to fund birth control in its health insurance plans (or else) is bad, really bad.

Obama just put himself underwater with the Catholic vote. And winning the presidency with Catholics voting against you has not been done in modern history and is unlikely to be done now.

And the damage is across almost the whole spectrum of Catholics. Even liberal Catholics are furious with the president, even to the point of already vowing not to vote to re-elect the Dear Leader. Yes, shocking!

Without serious damage control or some economic miracle or some other kind of miracle out there, I am convinced the damage is so bad that Obama may have just lost the presidency. Catholics will vote against him at least 55-45 and that will be just about the ballgame.

Which leads to a prediction.

Any day now, Obama’s pollsters will run into the Oval Office with much wailing and gashing of themselves and lay before the One the extent of the damage.

And, since his re-election is so much more important than even the Most Perfect implementation of Holy Obamacare, the One will pull back on the decision, most likely by suspending it *coughuntilAFTERtheelectioncough* for further study and consultation, but possibly by giving church institutions the outright exemption they have asked for.

Remember that you heard it here first.

Obamacare and the Dangerous Moralism of the Left

Ace of Spades goes yard on Obama’s decision to force the Roman Catholic Church to pay for birth control and how said decision reveals the arrogant and dangerous moralism of the Left.

And Obama is a perfect example of this moralistic Leftism:

Obama is a moralist, and an arrogant one. For all the talk of Christians being rigid moralists, the dirty little secret is that the left is far more rigidly, arrogantly moralistic, and it is cheerleaded by our cultural institutions (media, academia) rather than pushed back against, so its arrogance is encouraged.

Obama is pushing, very hard, a rigid moral system, and attempting to "shove it down the throats" of people who do not seek nor need his moral instruction.


And Obama and the Left show little hesitation in using the power of the Holy State to impose their secularist morality, freedom of religion and freedom of conscience be damned. For the Left is oh-so-right . . .


. . . that of course the coercive power of the state -- with its machinery of stripping away the property and liberty of those who run afoul of it -- should be deployed to wipe out mendicants and heretics.

One of the most cherished rights, never expressed anywhere but truly central to any truly free society, is the right to be Wrong. By which I mean, you should not just be free to do the things which the hegemonic culture deems to be "right." No one ever tries to outlaw that which they themselves believe to be right.

What they attempt to do, of course, is outlaw that which they believe to be wrong.

If you do not respect a citizen's right to be wrong -- if your first impulse is to use the frightening machinery of state coercion to compel him to be "right," as you see "right" -- then you do not respect him at all.

This is the chief character flaw of the leftist movement -- their inability to respect anyone at all but their own. [ed. – I could have a good rant on that point alone, but I will desist.] A very provincial and solipisitically childish way to view the world, of course, which leads to a vicious arrogance in attempting to pound, pound, pound square pegs into the round holes the state has cut for them.

The left would just be wrong, and not dangerous, if it weren't so arrogant about disposing of people's freedom with a single thoughtless line of legislation.

It is that, the arrogance and the profound disrespect of anyone who does not wear the feathers and warpaint of their tribe, that makes them not just wrong but sinister.


Absolutely right. And I have little more to add except that this latest putsch to bulldoze basic freedoms to impose a secularist (im)morality is part of the totalitarian impulse of Obama and the Left about which I’ve warned again and again.

This isn’t about just health insurance, taxes, and the economy, as important as those subjects are. This is about freedom and how Obama and his allies are attacking freedom.

A hat tip to MCJ.