That’s what could happen on a legal theory articulated by the Obama administration—and the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court were quick to pick up on the fact.
The case at hand involves a Lutheran minister, but the principles potentially apply to the issue of women’s ordination in the Catholic Church.
Specifically, the case involves a woman who served in a teaching capacity that her Lutheran body considers ministerial. Problems arose with her position because she suffers from narcolepsy, and she threatened to file a complaint with the state under the Americans with Disabilities Act. She was then let go because the Lutheran body she works for holds that an in-house dispute resolution process should have been used rather than involving the state.
They apparently have a fairly strict interpretation of 1 Corinthians 6:1-8, where St. Paul warns against lawsuits among believers, saying that such disputes should be settled within the Christian community rather than using the secular courts because of the scandal this creates. The Catholic Church recognizes the principles used in this passage but would apply them within a larger, natural law framework that would not result in an absolute prohibition. The scandal caused by Christians suing each other in secular court in a country like America today is not nearly the same as it would have been in St. Paul’s day, when Christians were a tiny minority. Operating in a “Scripture only” manner that does not have the same natural law heritage, however, it’s easy to see how a Lutheran group might take St. Paul as being more absolute than he is.
Whatever one may think of the group’s view regarding dispute resolution and going to court, it seems like this is precisely the kind of thing that the First Amendment would protect. The federal government should not be in the business of telling churches who they must or must not have as ministers. Such an intervention would violate the free exercise of religion.
Right?
Not according to the Obama administration.
FROM CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY/EWTN NEWS:
“The (Obama) administration has taken a very extreme position,” said Becket Fund Legal Counsel Luke Goodrich, who is leading the religious freedom group’s work on the Hosanna-Tabor case. He said the administration was “attacking the very existence of the ministerial exception,” such that “even the pastor of a church could sue the church for employment discrimination.”
“There’s a lot of uncertainty surrounding the outcome of this case,” Goodrich told CNA/EWTN News Oct. 3, “because the Supreme Court has not decided a case involving the autonomy of religious groups in many years.”
The Justice Department holds that the Lutherans cannot fire Perich for complaining to the government even if church teaching forbids it.
And it was this question – when might the government’s interest in preventing discrimination trump a religious group’s principles? – that prompted the justices to ask the attorney for the government’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission during Oct. 5 oral arguments why female priests could not be mandated by the government on similar grounds.
The justices were quick during oral arguments to apply the principles the Obama administration was proposing to the Catholic Church’s teaching that only baptized men can be validly ordained to the priesthood:
“The belief of the Catholic Church that priests should be male only – you do defer to that, even if the Lutherans say, look, our dispute resolution belief is just as important to a Lutheran as the all-male clergy is to a Catholic?” asked Chief Justice John Roberts, questioning Leodra Kruger, the U.S. solicitor general’s assistant who represented the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission.
“Yes,” Kruger responded. “But that’s because the balance of relative public and private interests is different in each case.”
That right there should send chills up your spine. Whenever a public official starts talking about the relative balance of public and private “interests” the public (i.e., government) “interests” tend to win out in the end. It may take a generation, but once the precedent is set that it’s a question of how government vs. non-government “interests” get balanced, the government finds a way—based on changing mores and social standards or whatever—to impose its own interests as the expense of non-government entities.
“Do you believe, Miss Kruger, that a church has a right that’s grounded in the Free Exercise Clause and/or the Establishment Clause to institutional autonomy with respect to its employees?” asked Justice Elena Kagan.
“We don’t see that line of church autonomy principles in the religion clause jurisprudence as such,” the federal government’s attorney replied.
Kruger also said the ministerial exception to discrimination laws was not simply a part of the First Amendment’s guarantee of the “free exercise of religion.”
So according to the Obama administration a church does not have a First Amendment right to determine who its ministers will be.
Justice Scalia then pressed Kruger on the difference between ordinary “associations” – subject to a range of anti-discrimination laws – and religious ones.
“There is nothing in the Constitution that explicitly prohibits the government from mucking around in a labor organization,” said Justice Scalia, “but there, black on white in the text of the Constitution are special protections for religion. And you say that makes no difference?”
Kruger’s response included her explanation of what the government considers “the core of the ministerial exception as it was originally conceived … which is that there are certain relationships within a religious community that are so fundamental, so private and ecclesiastical in nature, that it will take an extraordinarily compelling governmental interest to (allow) just interference.”
Go, Antonin! This is the very reason we have freedom of religion protection in the First Amendment to begin with—to draw a bright line that the government must not cross.
But Justice Breyer pushed the federal government’s attorney to say how far she believed the protection extended.
“Suppose you have a religion and the central tenet is: ‘You have a problem with what we do, go to the synod; don’t go to court,’” he asked. “So would that not be protected by the First Amendment?”
“It’s not protected,” Kruger responded.
So, according to the Obama administration, the Obama administration gets to decide on the applicability of 1 Corinthians 6:1-8 to an employment dispute?
The government attorney went on to attack Hosanna-Tabor’s use of the ministerial exception, which she said would mean “ that the hiring and firing decisions with respect to parochial school teachers and with respect to priests is categorically off limits” to federal regulators.
And this would be bad . . . how? Note in particular that she objected to the idea that “the hiring and firing decisions with respect to . . . priests is categorically off limits.” So the Obama administration thinks the government’s interference with the Church’s hiring and firing of priests should not be off limits?
“We think that that is a rule that is insufficiently attentive to the relative public and private interests at stake,” she said, citing “interests that this Court has repeatedly recognized are important in determining freedom of association claims.”
It was then that Breyer sprung the question of whether a woman might sue over her exclusion from the Catholic priesthood, on the same basis that Perich was suing over a religiously-grounded termination.
Kruger said the two situations were different – not categorically, but rather because “the private and public interests are very different in the two scenarios.”
“The government’s general interest in eradicating discrimination in the workplace is simply not sufficient to justify changing the way that the Catholic Church chooses its priests, based on gender roles that are rooted in religious doctrine,” she said.
But, she said, the government does have a “compelling and indeed overriding interest in ensuring that individuals are not prevented from coming to the government with information about illegal conduct,” even if the church in question would prohibit its members from doing so on religious grounds.
I’m sorry. My spider sense is telling me that if the principle is established that these situations are not “categorically different” then it’s only a matter of time before the government, trying to pander to feminist constituencies, will decide that “the government’s general interest in eradicating discrimination in the workplace” is “sufficient to justify changing the way that the Catholic Church chooses its priests.”
Justice Samuel Alito pointed out that this distinction between the Lutherans’ lawsuit prohibition on the one hand, and the Catholic Church’s male priesthood on the other, seemed arbitrary.
To quote President Obama, “Darn, tootin’!”
Kruger’s clearest articulation of the Obama administration’s position on religious freedom came in response to Justice Kagan’s question as to whether she was “willing to accept the ministerial exception for substantive discrimination claims, just not for retaliation claims.”
The government’s lawyer responded that “substantive discrimination” claims, such as those alleging sex discrimination, could also be legitimate grounds for a lawsuit against some religious institutions.
Yes. This generates lots of confidence that the Catholic Church will not be an institution that is tomorrow subject to lawsuits alleging sex discrimination regarding its hiring of priests.
The good news is that, based on the press account above, the justices seem skeptical of the Obama administration’s legal theory on this point—and a majority of the court are, in fact, Catholics of one stripe or another—but we’ll have to wait and see the outcome of the suit, won’t we?
In the end, the Church will not base its theology on the dictates of the U.S. Supreme Court, but if things go wrong now, they could go even more wrong in the future and harm the Church’s ability to live and promulgate its faith in America.
What do you think?
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I’m not a lawyer and even I can see this lady is twisted into a pretzel trying to have it both ways.
I am highly concerned about the possibility of such a liberal administration dictating within a religious body who gets to serve as a minister or priest. The Vatican has made it clear that a male only priesthood is not something it can change. If Rome can’t change it, then how can the Obama administration? This is wrong on so many levels.
I’m not much into conspiracy theories, but day after day it seems this guy is out get get Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular. If he gets the Catholic vote next time, I will weep for our Church.
It is a good thing martyrs, red or white, are the foundation of the Church. If things come to this possible future we must have faith that, though persecuted, the Church, supported by Christ, will come out triumphant as it always does.
I wonder how these the ideas behind the Obama administration’s arguments may start being intewoven into the “theology” of those who promote female ordination. If this does start happening all of a sudden, it will be a clear indication how seriously such “theology” is taken even by those who propound it - that they will basically say anything to try and force the change they want to see in the all-male priesthood.
While the misunderstood Vice President Biden says and does nothing.
“But, she said, the government does have a “compelling and indeed overriding interest in ensuring that individuals are not prevented from coming to the government with information about illegal conduct,” even if the church in question would prohibit its members from doing so on religious grounds.”
this also sounds frighteningly close to broaching the idea that the government can demand priests break the seal of confession
The Bishops should stop trying to be “friends” with the Obama administration.
Any recusals forthcoming? Here we have a situation with six out of nine justices are Catholic, the remaining Jewish. Not a single WASP on the once most predominately WASP branch of the government.
On the other hand, if there are recusals forthcoming, what will that say?
The Court’s being asked to walk through a legal minefield it once (wisely) did everything in its 225-year long history to avoid: making decisions that would affect any religious body’s ecclessiastica structures or teachings. In this case, the how and why of the Catholic Church’s “clerical structure” ... to employ a more secular term to describe what we’d normally term hierarchy, involves both the why She calls the shots in this matter and how She does. It also poses a possible outcome scenario where Catholic Americans will now be forced to make a legal as well as emotional (involving patriotic love of country) committment in a more public way.
If the Court takes the extreme liberal position, this could put the Church in an “outlaw” position and/or be forced to submit names of the Vatican’s lists of priests for promotion to aux. bishop, bishop, archbishop and especially cardinalate positions to government, i.e., civic review and public approval.
Ironically enough, this situation strikes against everything our majority Protestant Founding Fathers bitterly and rightly objected to the Crown’s and Parliament’s attempts to put in place a government approved episcopacy for the Anglican Church.
Maybe I’m groping here, but there’s a lot of different mines to be on the watch out for.
Get ready for a new “revival” of sorts for the old sentiments underlying “Rum, Romanism and Rebellion.” There’s a strong undercurrancy of thought within Protestants, especially Evangelicals, promoting, however directly or indirectly, the notion that truly loyalist Catholics cannot be trusted to be both loyal to their Church and country. Protestantism is by nature far more successfully rooted in a nationalist, regionalist and localist social social mindset. The very idea that a person can be loyal to their country while paying heed to commonly (misperceived) “foreign interests,” or clerics acting as both teachers of faith and morals, especially where issues of faith and morals contradict the “American way” of life, economics, and even questions pertaining to patriotic loyalty could very well introduce a new wave of McCarthyite behavior. How ironic when we consider that Joe McCarthy was a Catholic, and today’s version, Rep. Peter King, R-NY, is conducting hearings about supposed Muslim home-grown terrorism that also touch on the loyalty of American-born Muslims.
It could be even worse: Imagine a strident anti-Catholic, who is either a Baptized Catholic, now lapsed, or a very liberal Catholic, man, or woman with both an old axe to grind, (even if that pol has legal grounds or not) to pursue hearings or worse, legislative “remedies” that would in the long range, destroy the very fabric of the 1st Amendment for all Americans, in the name of “equality.”
Every religious body should be on the watch out for what this case could mean. If the Catholic Church, with its (quite) “originalist” ... to borrow a contemporary term ... teachings on who is or isn’t qualified to be an ordained Priest/Minister/Hiearchical official, based on both Tradition…which is older than Scripture, and Her Canon Law, also based on both can be instructed by the Supreme Court to change to meet its secularist dictums, no religious body is safe from governmental interference.
And watch the speed of how fast the religious bodies work to get a new amendment passed to correct this new “intolerable act” of government interference. Not only watch the speed taken on at least getting this amendment passed, watch the even greater emotional fury that’ll surround it.
This is for everybody you know, regardless of where and how they worship God, suggest that they be on the watch and get on their knees, then put on their legal and emotional seatbelts because this is not going to be a smooth ride; not by any means.
What a world when the a case filed by a Lutheran against (her) and the first Protestant denomination’s clerical distinctions in this nation—the most religious nation in the western world, (largely due to our freedoms protected by the First Amendment and Jefferson’s call for a mutually protective “wall of separation” between free religious faiths and our local, state and federal governments—could soon witness a drastic curtailment of the very same oldest, and only Divinely-founded Church that a resounding majority of the Supreme Court justices belong to.
It’s not for us to engage in “inside baseball” talk and handicap which Justice is “the most, or least, Catholic” ... let’s pray instead that all members of the Court look at this case and handle it with the greatest sensitivity.
We have enough potentially divisive issues to pull this country apart again like it’s never been pulled apart since 1861. Pray that we don’t have another. (And pray also that none of our present Catholic justices decide as blockheadly as ironically, our first Catholic Chief Justice Roger Taney whose “reasoning” on the Dred Scott matter led to Fort Sumter.
Six hundred thousand lives were lost due to conventional weapons and infections: Secession and civil war today could be far more costly considering that there are many nukes stored in potential neo-secessionist states/regions most likely to separate one way or another based on how such a sensitive “religious freedom vs. loyalty question” case turns out.
Last night I watched a PBS show (“Women, War & Peace”) about the use of rape as a weapon by Serbs against Muslim women during the Bosnian War of the Nineties. Neighbors, former school chums and friends turned against each other, in a heartbeat, so to speak, due to ancient religious and ethnic grudges. And our fellow Christians, Orthodox Serbs, perpetrated this crime against not only the Muslims in Bosnia, but against all humanity. To settle scores? Let’s not—for a heartbeat—be so sanguinely careless to think it couldn’t happen here.
Surely, what happened there was the result of a Balkan pot of “unsettled” ancient,and basically tribalistic animosities let unwatched once the “godless Communists” lost power, but haven’t we done a great job of keeping our pots simmering too long and not keeping an eye out for those devious ones who ever so cleverly manage to turn up the heat when nobody’s looking?
The next time we hear a big squabble in the media over what some preacher/priest/rabbi/iman, or anti-religious “critic” says about another church or all religions in general, let’s be thankful. At least somebody in the kitchen’s watching and making sure the knob’s either turned back or hopefully shut off for good.
From the reporting I’ve read so far, it seems the Justice Department reached a conclusion and then went looking for reasons. Not surprisingly, the reasons they find have obvious unintended consequences that their blinders prevent them from seeing. It’s good to hear the Justices are not wearing the same blinders.
“From the reporting I’ve read so far, it seems the Justice Department reached a conclusion and then went looking for reasons.”
This administration consistently reaches conclusions of a common theme whenever it comes to religion, such as the conscience clause with health insurance, so I think the truth is closer to: the Justice Department reached a conclusion, but—knowing its reasons are too extreme to pass the Court’s muster—went looking for other reasons that might seem plausible.
It’s heartening that even the progressives on the Court seem taken aback by the Justice Department’s reasoning, but give it a generation or two, and the Court’s progressives will be arguing precisely the reasons that the Justice Department used: namely, when it comes to politically fashionable notions, supremacy of the state trumps considerations of conscience, speech, etc. Indeed, reading a college newspaper is… troubling.
If Obama gets the Catholic vote next time and the USCCB refuses to denounce the man, then the American Church deserves what is coming. Deus vult!
The Church in America is in a severe crisis, and I’m sorry but I hear nothing but placates from the USCCB.
I think it’s a stupid case and that’s the problem… the merits of the case are clouding the principles. I am concerned. An English court already decided that a Jewish school was not allowed to act on the Jewish belief that children of a Jewish woman married to a non-Jewish man are “more Jewish” (to put it bluntly) than children of a Jewish man married to a non-Jewish woman. The school had a waiting list and gave preference to children of a family with a Jewish mother, even though a family with a Jewish father was next in line, because of their well-known, centuries-old belief that reckons Jewish descent through the mother’s line. The English court said that was discriminatory. I am not Jewish and, like most people, I think the matrilinial thing is silly. But you know what? IT’S NOT MY RELIGION. If that’s what they believe, then it’s okay by me. It is not the job of the English court system to decide who is a Jew and who isn’t, Jews can decide it any way they want to.
In this case, it looks like the church might have done a dumb thing by firing the teacher. I don’t know enough about it to judge. I have had kids in a parochial school in which one of the teachers had a severe mental problem and couldn’t be fired despite a breakdown at school—I sure think the ADA was not meant to keep mentally ill teachers in classrooms. Something needs to be done about such laws. But where this is going is NOT GOOD.
One key point seems to be missing here. No one is forced to join any religion in this country. In this country, you can go forth and start your own religion…so why does the Government need to get involved. If this woman doesn’t like the rules of the religion join another or start her own. God knows anyone working for a church can get paid much more elsewhere.
To bring the point further, before one is hired you are generally a believer of that religion or at the minimum willing to keep your mouth shut and follow along. Therefore, if you aren’t to keep that simple contract then why should they continue to pay you. Whistle blowers are always free to quit and tell all to the government and news organizations. The point being is that no organization owes you a paycheck if you aren’t willing to go along with the culture of that organization. If you have a deep concern that you feel is more important than the paycheck then you talk and you talk loud; but, you don’t take money with one hand and slap with the other.
What I don’t understand is why an issue debated in the Supreme Court has anything to do with the Obama Administration. The Courts interpret the laws, not make them—that is up to the Congress.
I think the question here is whether the Federal Government should allow special consideration (e.g. exemption from taxes) to an organization that does not allow equal rights to women. The organization has the right to exclude anyone it deems appropriate, but if it discriminates against a particular group, it is not waives its right to federal funding.
It would be like a woman suing because she didn’t get the role of Jesus in a movie.
I agree with Laura. If this woman is so convinced that her church is teaching error, why doesn’t she join another? Why does she want to stay within a church that (in her opinion) teaches error? I don’t get it.
This seems like a smart (but evil) plan of the Administration. Like they’d love so much to adopt the one-child policies of China, since they respect them so much, they would also love to adopt their policies on religion. It would, in fact, make the Catholic Church an outlaw… so, in it’s place would pop up a National Catholic Church, sponsored by the government. The real Catholic Church would be forced underground while the government takes the churches and gives them to the National Catholic Church.
Ed, that’s because you can’t read. That’s not our fault.
Anyone who can’t tie all of the threads together regarding the Obama agenda has got to be willfully blind.
The first endorsement he has received for re-election has come from the Communist Party.
Of course there’s a “conspiracy” going on - the conspiracy to move our republic into a Socialist/Marxist/Communist government! The Catholic Church is the greatest enemy of this plan, which is why Obama, et al. are seeking to crush her through the courts. In fact, it appears that Obama is more aware of what the Catholic Church really teaches than many Catholics (especially the social justice crowd).
I know what I read, see and hear. I’m not stupid. Obama is the biggest mistake this country HAS EVER made.
Ed,
Everyone seems to forget that “federal funding” is OUR TAX dollars! We, the people, have every right to have a say in how they are spent, not an administration with an agenda!
Use of federal tax dollars does not take away freedom of religion or conscience or free speech rights!!! It’s our money.
I think Catholics need to focus on developing, and using new legal arguments because God’s dictates to Moses, and the authority of Jesus, and certain traditions do not seem to hold much weight in some circles. The framers of the Constitution were certainly not devoid of a specific culture, or historical tradition. Catholics, and no doubt other religions will need to stand strong (perhaps more collaboration among us) no matter what the circumstances.
This would lead to some kind of quasi-State run “Catholic” church, a la China. Which would mean a lot of illegitimate priests and excommunicated bishops if they dared to ordain a woman. Don’t underestimate the ability of certain groups to launch such challenges in the near future. We are in the midst of a Satanic cultural landslide that can bring upheaval with little forewarning. However, SCOTUS will probably vote to protect a religious institution’s right to define gender roles. And, God willing a conservative is elected to the White House, we can land a conservative woman to replace Ginsburg and hopefully a strict constructionist to replace Kennedy.
Ed - you wrote: “The Courts interpret the laws, not make them—that is up to the Congress.”
No offense intended, but have you heard of Roe v. Wade?
This won’t turn into a women’s ordination issue, it sounds more like an issue of whether clergy can be disciplined on ethical grounds that are not commonly accepted by others in society. If, for example, a diocese decided to suspend and dismiss from the clerical state priests who engage in homosexual acts then the priests could sue the diocese for unjust dismissal. This deals with whether a person can be dismissed from a ministerial position for behavior that a group (but not society in general) considers immoral, like threatening to sue rather than using church courts. Many people do not consider homosexual acts immoral, so according to the Obama administration’s interpretation, that could be a good enough reason to restrict a diocese’s disciplinary policies.
This is going down a very wrong path. But sadly, the country is already a 1/3 of the way down for a while now. Eventually a worshiper of evil spirits may sue the Catholic Church for not allowing them to receive communion. “It’s discrimination!”, they’ll cry. I hope Catholics all over America will wake up and roll back the horrible things done by our government before it becomes too late. Martyrs strengthen the Church, but being a martyr seems to be a backup plan. God wants us to convert the world not get killed by it.
Ed: I agree with you.
Therese60640: Your hatred of the Obama administration is well noted.
“Obama is the biggest mistake this country HAS EVER made.” Your bile against the administration is unprofessional.
You misunderstood Ed in that he was saying YOUR tax exemption was not justified when you discriminate against citizens.
I doubt Women will ever be forced on the Catholic church though, they will get to discriminate against whoever they want.
2 things: Confessional Lutherans also have a strong belief in natural law, but don’t use it to water down Scripture where it is clear that Paul’s teaching was not an application of love to his cultural context, as with the rule requiring headcoverings. Here, the Lutheran church is just saying even if the woman was fired for her disability, the fact she asked civil courts to judge the church’s firing instead of appealing to higher church authority justifies her firing because she publicizes scandal and sins against the church, instead of submitting. I doubt the Catholic church would take a different position if a Catholic religious teacher was removed and sued the church in secular courts.
second thing: the woman was not a minister, she was a “commissioned minister” a recent creation made to fit tax laws, for the benefit of church workers that are not called pastors. Confessional Lutherans don’t ordain women, and women teaching Sunday school, day school, etc do so under supervision of a pastor.
When anti-discrimination laws were first put into effect in this country, did it really not occur to anybody who appreciates even a modicum of non-interference from the temporal authorities that the laws would eventually be turned against practically every institution that pre-exists the State? Why should Catholics support anti-discrimination laws? Discrimination is not inherently unjust, only conditionally unjust. Since the law normally isn’t nuanced enough to embed this conditionality, and thus every single case of “discrimination” gets taken to court, I think a plausible Catholic case can be made for getting rid of these laws… and from the look of this post, we’d better hurry.
Karl - You said “This won’t turn into a women’s ordination issue,”
By extension it did; and that’s directly in the Supreme Court transcript. With the government attorney clearly hedging on whether or not it’s out of their reach to commandeer doctrine that is “prejudicial” by secular humanistic standards, the concern here is valid. An “unrelated” ruling can become a hole big enough to drive a truck through (see “Privacy”, “Abortion”). She seemed to hang her reassurances on what amounts to merely an opinion of the sitting government at any given time.
rover serton: You said, “I doubt Women will ever be forced on the Catholic church though, they will get to discriminate against whoever they want.”
The Church has never been, and never will be a democracy. The first stop on your discrimination train is the assembling of the Twelve. Are you going to sue God?
well, the information reagarding separation of church and state isn’t being applied. Who the heck does Obama think he is.
He is just as evil as the man he got killed…Bin Laden!
Federal funding is something that churches very specifically do not get. Yes, they have tax exemptions, but (just like the lack of government funding) that is an element of church/state separation, helping to insure that the state cannot unduly influence a church by imposing taxes or offering deductions based on certain behaviors.
Ed and rover serton: you act as if discrimination is a bad thing. Discrimination is simply recognizing distinction, which the Church does regarding the priesthood. Now, if you are talking about the negative connotation that comes with the word discrimination, then your argument is still flawed because you seem to view the priesthood as a ‘right’. This is faulty thinking. Men have the ability to become priests, women do not, but neither has a ‘right’ to it.
Dennis and Chris, I agree with both of you. As a methodist, I am often discriminated when I go to a Catholic mass. I can’t take communion etc. My wife and I couldn’t get married in the Catholic church. I have no problem with that and wouldn’t change it. Discrimination was the correct word, it has a negative conotation but I discriminate Wendy’s over McDonalds (for the taste). Sorry to raise the confusion.
Teddy, Equating Obama with Bin Laden is just plain stupid. Like Hank Williams equating Obama with Hitler. You have no perspective when comparing a popularly elected office holder with a mass murderer. This site should be above that.
So much for the Secularist campaigning of ‘Separation of Church & State’ eh? Well they’ve always had it wrong, the whole ‘Separation of Church & State’ was nto made to protect the State and Secularism, it was made to protect the Church and religions from the Secular State who may deem themselves the authority over them, which is precisely what’s going on and has been going on for some time now.
There is more than enough evidence on the table to spell it out:
Obama, his administration, the Democratice party, nay, pretty much the entire two party system run governmental and court system of the U.S.A. intends to work together with the U.N. to establish a secular humanist religion that will over see and control all people worldwide with their philosophies and immoral justifications. They as a body are the new gods and if you don’t fall in line they will see to it you suffer for it. They are not going to be obvious about it or do it all at once. It’s all in progressive steps. They’ll do a little now while fooling you that they intend to go no further, then later they will do more while giving you the same song and dance, and then inevitably step by step will will take you for everything you’ve got and you’ll either get used to it by then or be completely blindsided once it’s taken over.
Evil has been moving gradually, and is primarily ideologically driven. It will drive itself into the minds of people through the media, through the schools, through culture and false philosophies disguised under positively charged words like ‘science’, ‘fairness’, ‘rights’, ‘choice’, ‘freedom’, ‘diversity,’ ‘progress’ etc.
If you think for one second that the Obama administration will not force the Catholic Church to ordain women, marry homosexuals and fund contraceptives (well that last bit is already happening) and tow the secular line that all religions are equal, you are deluded! That’s precisely what they want. They will lie to you that they do not out of one side of their mouth and give directions to do precisely that from teh other side. These are people who will KILL CHILDREN! These are people who don’t believe in absolute morality, and therefore don’t believe in a God who judges and therefore EVERYTHING is a good means to an end, and that includes deceiving you and persecuting you to fall in line!
The Catholic Church is in for a world of hurt! All nations and rulers shall press upon her from all sides simultaneously, while from withinits unercover enemies shall act as a trojan horse to hinder her from protecting itself. The world is so far removed from proper critical thought, from correct history, from correct science, and so enslaved to its own animalistic passions that there is no reasoning, nor logic, nor human ability to combat it. The only recourse right now is literally a divine miracle from God to demonstrate their foolishness and force them to reexamine themselves and doubt the false ideologies that they’ve been brainwashed and accepted conveniently for their own pleasures. This is why the saints have warned that only very few are saved… the majority are damned, and they are damned because they wanted to be, and the damned will enjoy as much company as they can afford to take down with them.
This administration time and time again makes clear how much it despises observant Catholics and other conservative Christians by it’s strong pro-abortion, pro-contraception, pro-homosexual “marriage”, etc. positions. If they are allowed to get their nose under the tent, as it were, we will very quickly be in the same position as that of the Chinese Christians. Unfortunately for the United States, far too many people who say they are “Christians” do not actually worship and follow Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior but instead clearly worship the fallen idols of this world. I fear for the souls of those who will stand before a Holy God in such a state of mind.
rover serton :
Primarily due to openly supporting abortion, Obama has with full intellectual consent backed the genocide of millions of children and his policies will continue to murder millions of them not just in the U.S. but worldwide for many years to come. It may end up being the case that Barack Obama will be one of many directly involved in murdering more people than either Bin Laden or Hitler and all those in league with them could ever have dreamed of. This is not an exaggeration. It’s a stone cold openly conducted and willingly acknowledged fact, except the perpretrators love to pretend that they are nothing alike when all logic dictates that they in fact are, just that they wear different uniforms and refers to the same screeds under a different name. We only dislike Hitler because history has clearly shown what his policies led to. In time history will reflect similarily upon Barack Obama if he does not change and act to reverse the damage he has done. And so far, he’s mightily proud of his evil accomplishments. Similarily Bin Laden and Hitler hated the Church and Christianity. Obama clearly wants to achieve that same status. Bin Laden and Hitler were both utterly convinced their causes were righteous and moral and their actions just. So does Obama, and all those who support his policies in these areas. Hitler didn’t act alone and neither did Osama. They were just the faces and mascots of a problem that ideologically infected a whole groups of people. Likewise with Obama, who is the face of a problem that is clearely evident in many people today, not just in America, but worldwide.
@Chris: I’m saying that it’s less likely that women will actually sue the Catholic Church or a confessional Protestant or evangelical church for refusing to ordain them. A priest or Protestant minister would have clearer grounds for a lawsuit if he was disciplined for immoral behavior. It looks like the case is going to be about whether the LCMS can discipline her for violating church teaching by refusing to use church courts. But yes, courts can make a precedent mean whatever they want it to mean.
Ella: I know they are out there but I have never met a anti-contraceptive Catholic in my life until, they either hit 50 years old (the women) or have had Vasectomies or their tubes tied. Every Catholic I’ve ever met has been a cafeteria variety and has used contraceptives until it wasn’t necessary. I’ve also never met one that waited till marriage.
I doubt this is true: “I fear for the souls of those who will stand before a Holy God in such a state of mind.” I think the true fear is that they will continue to vote for Democrats.
If Lutherans want female clergy that’s their business, not ours.
It sounds like Obama, while he’s in office, wants to force the Catholic Church to accept women as clergy if that is what she wants even though Rome will never allow it (but allows female alter servers and feet washing on Holy Thursday!).
I agree that eventually somebody is going to sue the Church for being denied communion….for whatever reason.
The Episcopal church has allowed female clergy and you can see how they’re doing.
The issue isn’t so much Obama or any president. A case like this was bound to make its way to the Court. That’s just the nature of our times. SO many of us seem more caught up in the zeitgeist dictating that everybody should have such equal access to everything that any and all standards for just about any other job, calling, whatever one’s seeking is subject to review by judges at any level using deconstructionist reasoning instead of relying on precedent.
That’s an overgeneralization. But I purposely tossed it out for everybody to get an idea of the times we live in and their effects on our judiciary and chattering classes who most often are the ones pushing suits like this. Seeing that the case came from a Lutheran, a church where ecclessiastical lines of hiearchical authority have long ceased to be respected, perhaps that might work in the Catholic Church’s favor. Our lines are as clear as the white smoke (wafting its way above St. Peter’s Sq. on a clear blue day announcing the selection of a new pope. We have history and a clear line of hiearchical authority to point to. We also have Canon Law, which many, if not most, Protestant churches and denominations lack at their obvious peril when legal challenges coming from personal lawsuits like this arise.
Insofar as the usual conservative calls for strict interpretation of the Constitution on “originalist” lines, isn’t it odd that the same crowd calling for such a constricted approach towards the role of the judiciary when it came to Citizens United.
Perhaps it won’t come down to a worst-case scenario for the Catholic Church, (resulting from this initial foray against Lutheran’s rights to determine how their church will be structured and governed. On the other hand, be ready for a steady drumbeat of ostracism and attempts to “reshape” the “American Catholic Church” to become more like ... let’s say, ummmm, the Episcopal Church.
If the Blue Bloods in the chattering classes could never get us to conform to more “widely accepted views of a more ‘progressive-minded’ group of Catholics, thus ensuring that we’d become just as irrelevant as they’ve rendered themselves, there’s always that “legal remedy” to get us to “see the errors” of our thinking, and fall in line before it’s “too late.”
What, “too late” to survive yet another 2,000 years worth of Caesar’s failed string of attempts to wipe Catholicism off the map? LOL.
Johnno:(you replied while I was typing so I didn’t see this till you posted, sorry for the confusion all) You single out Obama. Bush 43 had the house and senate and ignored the abortion wedge. The Republicans had the power to push thru abortion reform but you were used, big time.
You do the fools errand to equate a president upholding the law of the land (abortion since 1973) and Hitler and Bin Laden.
p.s. proofreading is not a bad thing to do before posting.
Chris—
Roe V Wade was not a process of making law, it was interpreting whether a woman has a right to her private health decisions, even to the point of aborting her baby in the first trimester, without government or legal intervention. They were interpreting the law as it was when the case was presented before the court. You have enough people working through state and congressional bills to change the law.
The point is, you cannot force someone to do (or not do) something that is against their well being unless CONGRESS passes such a law. Roe may have changed her mind, but the judgement only said that the constitution did not provide such laws. The founding fathers did not have the Christian values everyone claims they did.
Rover: I have been contraception free years before I even converted to Catholicism and I (very happily) have six children to prove it. I am concerned for any soul that goes against the Lord (including my own at times); although I am a conservative Republican, I couldn’t care less if someone were to choose to vote for a pro-life Democrat.
Johnno—you wrote,
Obama, his administration, the Democratice party, nay, pretty much the entire two party system run governmental and court system of the U.S.A. intends to work together with the U.N. to establish a secular humanist religion that will over see and control all people worldwide with their philosophies and immoral justifications. They as a body are the new gods and if you don’t fall in line they will see to it you suffer for it.
//
If that were so, he would have passed his Jobs bill by now. It’s the corporations (yes, even the pharmaceuticals in some cases) that have control of congress and probably the courts. Obama is not getting anything that he and the people who can’t get a job or health insurance, want done. Wall Street is not being punished for destroying our economy, corporations are outsourcing jobs to other countries, and polluting our environment
—.
You are crediting them with too much power. Things are the way they are because the congress people you vote for are being bought. This has been the nature of politics in every civilization.
Ella: I didn’t say there were NO practicing catholics, I just have never met one. Congrats on your 6 children. I have 2 (and only 2 since I have been “fixed”). Please don’t reply to this but it is interesting wording “I have been contraceptive free for years…”.
For good or bad, a pro-life Democrat is like a moderate Republican. Endangered. I wouldn’t vote for an anti-choice Democrat or any
Republican.
Rover, you can’t take the Eucharist at Mass and feel discriminated against for that? Do you believe that it is truly the body and blood of Christ? If you do, why are you not Catholic since that is really the heart of the Catholic faith? And if you do not, why do you want it and why are you at Mass? Not challenging you, just wonder.
I really don’t want any gov’t to rule on discrimination in all things and ways! What a tangle—and subject to change with every new court or gov’t.
Joseph,
you wrote: “God wants us to convert the world not get killed by it”
—
Do you really think that can be done? What happened to free will? I thought God could do what ever he wants. When is he going to kill all the non-Catholics and the ipso facto excommunicated Catholics who use contraception and have had abortions? Why won’t he strike Obama and all the Democrats?
—
Pray for a miracle, That will at least keep you out of politics.
Why should you let a human government have any say in matters of The Church?
You must never ground The Church on human laws.
The Church is grounded in The Word of God. Not in some crap humans got toghether and wrote later, wether it is called “the constitution” or anything else for that matter, it is still just words written by humans.
Build your house on The Rock, not on the sand.
Just tell them that the constitution, human rights or whatever fancy human achievements they call upon in order to break you, are nothing but sand and that The Church does not need their approval for anything at all. Simple as that.
You don’t let a government run the church, but you’ve got to have your eyes open and ready to see the danger when it’s coming ‘round the bend.
Gabriel,
Like I said, it’s really a matter of money. The government won’t subsidize a not-for-profit organization unless it conforms with certain secular laws. Individuals may pay taxes, that is a price of being a citizen. The government does not subsidize the Ku Klux Klan, and they can discriminate as much as they want.
//
Ed, free will is being guided, not destroyed, if the world is converted. This is much like a parent raising a child. The parent tries to guide the child to the correct decisions, but the child has the free will not to obey. Simply because this is the case does not mean the parent stops trying to raise their child in the best way possible.
Why does God not strike down non-Catholics, ex-communicated Catholics, Obama, and Democrats? Because that would remove the possibility of repentance on their part.
Your last sentence: “Pray for a miracle, That will at least keep you out of politics” shows incredibly poor logic. Why can we not pray for a miracle and stay in politics at the same time?
Maggie McC: I was not upset I was discriminated against by the mass, I just was, and more importanly, my son saw all going up for bread and wine and asked “Dad, why are we being discrimated against”. I told him him the difference between Catholic and methodist communion.
I am at mass for the same reasons I am at temple, masque, church and cathederal. I have many friends from many different religious traditions. I do my best to be polite but, I consider them all equal, As in, interesting superstitions.
joke: If you own a bible, you are probably a Christian. If you own a torah, you are probably a jew. If you own a Quran, you are probably a muslem. If you own all 3, you are probably an athiest. I have all 3.
I believe we should allow this to go before the Supreme Court and be settled.
As with so many things in our litigious land, just follow the money.
@ Ed,
I am unsure what your reply about God killing people off applies to what I said.
In the bible, God wanted the Israelites to convert their pagans neighbors. That was their first job. But instead of converting others, they themselves started idol worship. Not sure what faith you belong to, but God always calls his people to be love and loving others involves teaching truth not causing wars unless war is warranted as an extreme measure.
Your point is valid, but I disagree with your exegesis of the Corinthians passage. To be fair, your post is not an attempted exegesis, nor do you offer anything more than passing comment.
A sweeping statement that a legal dispute would have caused more scandal in 1st Century Corinth than in the hostile media soaked 21st Century needs some examination, but this isn’t the time and place to argue matters of opinion. Public scandal is only one of St Paul’s concerns in 1 Cor. He argues that the lowliest Christians are better ‘judges’ than the most qualified unbeliever. He argues that the penalties of secular courts are harsh, why not stay within a fold where the decisions are made on the principle of loving justice? The text still has a VERY strong application to today’s circumstances.
rover serton :
I should of course point out that I’m batting for the Republicans either. I would condemn the entire state of affairs as a whole. The whole system itself is corrupted, wheter in America, or abroad. I am merely singling out Obama here because the current article has to do with his administration and he is the guy who currently holds power, and this is a spillover form other recent news having to do with him forcing contraception and abortion support from Catholics through his healthcare plans. But as I pointed it out later, He’s not alone on this. Those under him, those who supported him, those who either wittingly or unwittingly elected him are also part of the problem. Hitler also upheld the law of his land, laws his own Nazi Party established of course and even before his aprty took power that were useful for him. Likewise Obama is also pushing things into law, unlawfully trying to change laws and doing whatever he can to establish what he wants and enshrine it into law for societal change. Either way, the law allowing abortion is unjust to begin with. It would be the same as someone carrying on Hitler’s policies if the Nazis were still in power today saying they are defending the ‘law’, or any of Bin Laden’s successors carrying on his legacy. It wouldn’t excuse them and it doesn’t excuse Obama.
Ed:
One has only to pay attention to the current trends in politics and things people like Obama and the UN are implementing to see the agenda which is no secret. They also know full well that they aren’t going to get their way overnight. They intend to keep pushing things until they eventally get their way or strike when the time is right to take advantage of a situation. But yes indeed there are still people that oppose them. And they are aware of it and changing people takes time. Corporations and the economy are one thing. Abortions, marriage etc. is another that I don’t see corporations caring about too much unless they are the sort that profit off of it, like the millions of dollars Obama keeps fighting for to give to Planned Parenthood, and the financial aid incentives he’s using to bribe countries like the Phillipines with to legalize contraceptives and abortion. However one can resonably argue that Obama’s policies on abortion etc. do further irreparable harm to the nation’s wealth and economy.
And you asked,“Do you really think that can be done? What happened to free will? I thought God could do what ever he wants. When is he going to kill all the non-Catholics and the ipso facto excommunicated Catholics who use contraception and have had abortions? Why won’t he strike Obama and all the Democrats?”
The answer is because God is just and truly does not discriminate. If he were going to kill all Democrats or contracepting couples arbitrarily, why stop there? EVERYONE is a sinner! It would be just as just to kill everyone for the smallest sin. If I am going to call upon God to rain down fire and brimstone upon sinners I should also realize that I am just as deserving of death as they are. But God being merciful gives us time to recover and change. And not only that, he allows us to exercise forgiveness and patience with others so that He in return can show us patience and forgiveness. All this is not just a test of the unfaithful, but simultaneously is a test for those who proclaim themselves faithful. But allowing the course of events to play out for a subsequent time, it becomes more apparent and easy to separate the sheep from the goats as those who pursue holiness grow holier, and those who lean towards evil,become more enslaved to it and as the process goes on, many in the hypothetical middleground will either rise or fall.
There were particular times where God chose to kill. You can find these in the Bible. Study about the people He did kill and understand why they were killed. And also note that in all those circumstances, those people were given time to change. Sometimes even as much as 400 years. When it was determined that no change was possible for them and they would not repent and outright rejected Him despite all the signs and warnings He’d given, He finally had to destroy them. There are parallels between those nations and cities God destroyed and our current times. We are being given just as much time as they are to change. There is still hope and still time to save many and change their hearts. But once we hit the point of no return, then and only then would it make sense for God to act.
As God promised Abraham, even if there are a few men left in the city that are still good, He would not destroy it for their sakes. And in other cases, the few good people left had to flee to safety, either on board the Ark or out of Canaan surrendering to the Israelites in order to escape punishment and destruction. Those who chose to remain and be defiant did so out of their own free will. It is not for us to know or decide when and how and in what manner God will choose to act and strike down anyone. He is omniscient. He already knows what’s best. We merely trust. And if we should bear suffering for awhile under any governmental or societal tyranny, so that any few remaining can still be given ample time to convert, or to expiate our own sins on Earth rather than in Purgatory, then we accept His example of suffering for the sake of others, and for our own repentance and bear it. However, we must also fight and speak out when we can and actively work towards converting others and changing the world, even if the situation seems hopeless always keeping in mind that we must not merely rely on human effort but to work alongside God and trust in His Divine Providence to aid us in hopeless times. Catholics are called to be witnesses.In good times and in bad. And if for a time we are to suffer and face persecution and hatred, then that’s simply how it has to be. To be able to face that and overcome it is a triumph and proof that we have won the race and kept the faith.
Rover, right on!
Watching this court case, my take is: it’s a done deal. SCOTUS will rule that the US Gov’t has jurisdiction over all religious groups, dogma, ecclesiastic rules, etc. Justification: US law trumps all.
It’s lights out for the catholics; time to abandon the superstition or accept the hell of the re-education camp.
Mr. Marx: Thanks, I guess, but my goal in life is not to knock religion out of peoples lives. If I could, I wouldn’t. I agree that US law does trump church law WHERE APPLICABLE. But, the government must leave people to believe and worship as they desire. A woman fired for being a having a sleeping disorder should be protected. A woman wanting to be a priest, sadly, not so much. I have been discrimated against by the Catholic Church and I have no quarel with that. It is their religion. They are free to practice as they see fit UNTIL it hurts secular organizations or they demand special rights (like saying who can get married, outside their religion or who can adopt while using taxpayers funds).
Rover.
Joseph:
“In the bible, God wanted the Israelites to convert their pagans neighbors”
//
That command is a prototype of what Hitler said about “the final problem”. The Bible was written by people who won the past wars. Besides, the Israels were not Christian at the time. St. Paul “converted” pagans to Christians by allowing non-Jews to join the congregation.
How does anyone know if they are being commanded by God and not a devil?
Dennis—
Look what prayer did for the drought in Texas to see if efficacy. Prayer at least takes your attention away from the secular world of politics and toward God. If you believe that God will take care of you, why do you care about anything?
—
Catholicism works better by incentives rather that threats of damnation.
Mr. Marx,
I don’t think it’s U.S. Law that trumps all—it’s U.S. dollars. I’m not worried about this court case, because I’m still naive enough to think SCOTUS judges will deal with this ethically within their jurisdiction. But, it won’t matter, because it is regarding an exclusive cult. If Catholic institutions loose their non-profit status and have to pay taxes, it won’t make much difference in how the money is spent. Again, that role is for congress to decide.
Prayers and penance said the fatima angel, now more than ever,we also have to consider the idea of martyrdom , where do we stand? like st. paul says we have to fight the good fight till the end,
This administration gets scarier each and every day. Ashamed to say I’m a Catholic that voted for Obama. I certainly won’t make that mistake again.
first all the “straw votes” and now the worry over av ADA hearing, from nothing, comes nothing, why isn’t the individual State involved? More specifically, why Federal Jurisdiction? Something isn’t being told!
@Ed:
“Look what prayer did for the drought in Texas to see if efficacy.”
What does that prove? That God is not a vending machine (enter x number of prayers to get y)? We already know that, and it does not take away from his love, mercy, and justice simply because He does not do things as we want Him to. Using your thinking, let’s turn this statement around. Look at the healings that doctors cannot explain. That must show prayer IS effective. Responding there is an unknown scientific explanation for it shows as much ‘blind faith’ in science as any Christian would have in God.
.
“Prayer at least takes your attention away from the secular world of politics and toward God.”
Prayer does direct us towards God, but God can then direct our attention on this world while still keeping Him in mind. That includes politics as well.
.
“If you believe that God will take care of you, why do you care about anything?”
What a strange, maybe mis-worded, question. We care because God made us to care, so we want to care, and He tells us to care (love your neighbor).
.
“Catholicism works better by incentives rather that threats of damnation.”
Even though that does not seem to have anything to do with what I have written, I will address it. The incentive of Heaven should be our greatest driving force, but we are fallen, so having a healthy fear of damnation also has its place to drive us.
.
Now, let me ask you some questions. If you do not believe in God, then why do you care about anything? Also, in a conversation with a different atheist, he said: “What the Nazis did was fine, what slaveholders did was fine, and if there was a country where women did not have rights, raping them would be fine.” Do you agree with this? If not, why? The funny thing is, I commended him because he is the only atheist I have ever met that has reasoned atheism to its logical conclusion.
I’m afraid that we are in the times of Noah now.
Ed,
How does God’s instruction to the Jews have anything to do with Hitler? You are making the most non sequitor statements. If Hitler highjacked a statement, that’s his bad and doesn’t negate what God instructed the Jews to do. Though I have no clue if he did or didn’t cause I don’t know what you are talking about.
I am sensing that you are not a man of faith Ed, else you would not say such things about the bible. I think you don’t know what the Catholic Church teaches about the Bible nor about God.
Yes, the Israelites were not Christians when they during the time of the book of Genesis nor the Book of Exodus. That is way before the time of Christ. Saint Paul converted pagans to Christianity just as he converted Jews to Christianity. Christianity has it’s roots in the Jewish faith but it is not the Jewish faith. And Saint Paul, or anyone else for that matter, does not “allow” someone to join the congregation. Through baptism, Christ joins that person to Himself and they join the Church, Christ’s mystical body.
Usually the most obvious way someone knows a commandment is from God is that it’s from God and does not contradict what God has taught in ages past. The spiritual life is complicated and nuance.
Ed: Being ‘Tax Exempt’ is NOT federal funding. Where did you ever draw this conclusion from? In no way is a tax exempt organization necessarily getting funds from the Government. It is instead not getting taxed on income it receives. Apparently you are so into socialist thought, you actually believe that all income, profits and property of individual’s in this country somehow has partial ownership by the federal government. Do you really believe this? If so, you have never studied the founding documents and founders of this country. Either that, or you want this country to be something fundamentally different than what it was established to be. Communists believe that all things (including people) inside the governments borders, are property of the government. Is this how you believe???? Or do you believe that the government is a Government ‘Of the People, by the People, for the People’, and therefore, what the People own, the people can vote to keep. Taxes are a societal acceptance that the citizenry has some obligation to fund the government and it’s instituions at service to the people. It is not an admission that all things inside the borders of this country are partially owned by the gove’t. The common sentiment of the people of this country from it’s founding is that Religious Organizations should not be subjected to any government intrusion, including Taxation! One of the earliest sentiments of this countries founding is that they wanted the government to have NO PART in meddling with religion. The Religious Clauses of the Constitution are more about protecting Religion from Government intrusion, than they are about preventing Government from Religious influence. We know this fact because many cities and state’s had fundamentally religious Law’s on the books, and even in some cases were integrated with certain religious creed’s. The founding Fathers found no problem with this, even as they voted for the Federal Constitution’s Religious Clauses.
Rover: I am sure you were just as adamant as opposing the incredible vitriol and vile hatred spewed from many in the mainstream media, hollywood etc. regarding Pres. Bush right. I oppose unjust accusations and vitriol lobbied against President Obama’s character, even though I find many of his policies to be damaging for this country. Regardless, I pray for him and hope only good for him and from him. Even though I oppose him politically on most issues.
Secondly, I know for a fact that Father Mitch Pacwa owns multiple copies of the Bible, Koran and Torah, and is a devout Catholic Priest that certainly knows more about all of these religions than you or I do. In my estimation, most people are atheists because of excessive personal pride. Their brief religious search goes something like “God, if you exist, show yourself to me, otherwise I won’t believe in you” God doesn’t give them a miraculous vision, so they decide to not believe, and spend the rest of their lives as cynical atheists with little respect for anyone other than themselves and those few who they have chosen to be exempler’s of their own created worldview. Atheism is fundamentally Nihilistic, because that’s all a person consumed with pride can be. There were a few times I met truly honest atheists/agnostics. Their response to their religious quests was something like “I have studied the Universe and human knowledge, and have found that There is so much confusion in religion, that I cannot choose which to believe. I therefore choose to believe only that which I can concretely experience or which corresponds to our knowledge of the material world. However, I acknowledge that our intellects are limited, and there may be realities which are beyond our ability to understand, and possibly even some deity. I therefore respect those who have been given some possible understanding which I have not been given, and will continue to believe as if there is no God until I have further insight”. There are very very very few humble atheists. Those few Humble Atheists, are often a lesson in humility to prideful Christian’s. They show us that the Divine light can even shine in those that don’t even recognize they have it.
As an analogy, let’s assume there was a certain very popular Toast masters group which had some paid speech tutor’s for the group’s members. Let’s assume that one of these Speech tutor’s had a stroke, and could no longer speak. Would it be reasonable for this Toast masters organization to sever this person’s employment as a speech tutor? This is a non-religious organization, and yet it would still make sense for this group to be able to only keep for hire in the speech tutor position, those people who could accomplish the job for which they were hired. In this case, giving speech tutoring. An atheist, who should operate only on reason (which they rarely do), should see that it makes no sense to continue paying someone for a job they cannot perform. Or does firing this teacher who could not perform her job bother you because it doesn’t ‘feel’ right? Awaiting your very logical and reasoned explanation…..
PS. Christian’s actually have response to why the woman should be taken care of regardless of her disability. It’s called Charity (love of others over oneself). Of course, this makes absolutely no sense in an Atheistic worldview!
So how do you think this would go over if they forced Muslims to have women leaders?
Doorman: You require Athiests to be humble? YOu KNOW the truth but have no evidence at all and I hear no modesty in your unproven claim. You tolerate Athiests “if they stay in their place”. We are at where gays were 15 years ago. We will soon be able to come into view but we will not be humble for not believeing.
I will not answer your question because of the insulting way you ask it: “An atheist, who should operate only on reason (which they rarely do)” If you request dialog, you don’t get to insult to start it. I.E. Your wife wants to talk, you say “What this time, B__ch?
Oh, reguarding Bush43. He is a war criminal for torture along with many lesser impeachable offenses. Cheney will probably not ever be charged due to his health. Bush is young, time will tell. Bush did good things with Aids in Africa.
No respect, no dialog. Bye.
If events keep going this way…....I will meet you folks in the secret underground RC Church for mass!!!!
I think that 2nd term Obama will fill a deceased conservative justice seat with another bizzaro-Kaganesque-Ginsbergesque-Sotomayeresque creature and swing the votes to effectively ban the existence of the Catholic Church in the USA.
no one said “Anti-Christ” in this whole blog! Congratulations. It is a federal crime and will be prosecuted, so only whisper it among one another, and keep it OFF-line. ;-)
P.S. the atheists, i.e.(petulant disobedient believers) really flap their gums on Catholic blog sites. REPENT, and bend your knee to Truth!
Dennis and Joseph:
We are obviously on different wavelengths here. People prayed in Texas, but the inspiration to do something the help the situation did not happen to anyone. What if they decided to “meditate” instead (I mean use another religion’s form of prayer)? God is not a vending machine, but they asked for inspiration and got nothing—Minds that pray don’t think creatively.
—
Doorman:
you wrote: “...The Religious Clauses of the Constitution are more about protecting Religion from Government intrusion, than they are about preventing Government from Religious influence. We know this fact because many cities and state’s had fundamentally religious Law’s on the books, and even in some cases were integrated with certain religious creed’s. The founding Fathers found no problem with this, even as they voted for the Federal Constitution’s Religious Clauses.”
—
So you want (the “RIGHT”) religion to be involved with the law-making of our country? And we will be different from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Iran, etc.—how? YHWH is the original god of the Jews, Christians, and Islam, and all they can do is fight and kill each-other. The spirit of this blog is that it wants to join the fighting and obliterate all other worldviews because you, too, think you have the Only God on your side.
—-
Your common enemies are liberals, homosexuals, women, and reason. All you can spew is hateful accusations that have no evidence of reality to support them. I agree with Anne Rice—it is impossible to be a Christian in spirit and a member of the Catholic faith.
—
Jump for joy, cause I’m leaving this blog in disgust.
Do not be overly concerned about this. The Supreme Court will not reverse itself on other decisions such as the Boy Scouts decision. Time and again the court has upheld the rights of any organization to permit male or female only and will continue to do so. All Americans are not catholic and the effects of a court decision could only apply to a restricted membership organization of which the Catholic Church is not one. The persons who would hijack the Catholic Church for their own purpose will continue to spread gossip such as this hoping to get their way. The present administration in Washington is socialist in nature and the destruction of Christian religion is a priority world wide.
@Ed:
“God is not a vending machine, but they asked for inspiration and got nothing—Minds that pray don’t think creatively.”
How do you know there was no inspiration that happened in that drought? Did you investigate every situation? As for praying minds do not think creatively, what a ridiculous statement! Perhaps you should take some time to read the Church Fathers and well-known Christian writers to see true creativity.
Also, I noticed you did not answer my questions. Not a surprise, though, because you are stuck between either showing your thinking is inconsistent or advocating horrible actions. All of that being said, I am ending my participation in this thread because I have more important things to do, such as take care of my now awaken newborn girl.
@rover serton: Hank Williams is justified in comparing Obama to Hitler. Hitler was a man who killed millions, and so is Obama. Obama’s liberal abortion policies have seen a marked increase in the rates of abortion - and he has spread this evil to other countries by funding their pro-abortion policies. Your outrage about Hank Williams’ comment is not appropriate unless you disagree with the Catholic position that life begins at conception.
@Ed: “Minds that pray don’t think creatively?” Da Vinci didn’t think creatively? Albert Einstein didn’t think creatively? Capurnicus didn’t think creatively? Rembrandt didn’t think creatively? J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis didn’t think creatively? What a lot of nonsense you speak.
Perhaps I didn’t see it, overlooked it, and maybe it’s not possible now for the Church to file it, but what about an amicus curiae (sp) brief filed on behalf of the Lutherans by our bishops, preferably from the good offices of Archbishop Dolan? Yes, the Lutherans were the first to break off, but we’re not rehashing old history lessons from the Reformation. That would be the classic shootin’ one’s foot tact (“Darn tootin’” fer sure!) in a nation that was by and large founded predominately by Protestants fearful of the more hiearchical Anglican influence and its (too close for their comfort)theology, practices and hiearchical structure of the Mother Church it broke from. The less unsaid (by lawywers) about the obvious history the better ... but we do have a dog in this fight, however cleverly brought into it, by the Justices Jimmy quoted from above.
After all, we don’t want to wind up like a famous Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemoller who lamented that when the Nazis were rounding up all their “usual suspects” before they got to him, as an outspoken dissident, notwithstanding his WWI hero’s staus (Iron Cross 1st Class, I believe) ... when the Gestapo knocked on his door, he had nobody to stand for him.
We’re not dealing with men in dark long leather raincoats and fedoras. But we have to be very supportive of any pin-strippers in the legal profession, be they working for the Lutherans or any other church facing the might of some well placed and powerful attorneys working for the Administration who have agendas they plan to pursue.
For much like that infamous Borgia cardinal who became the wildest party pope of Renaissance Rome, these people have the government’s legal clout and they plan to make the most of it.
Very interesting case from many perspectives. If the Court sides with the church, will Muslims use the ruling as precedent for demanding their adherents litigate only in sharia courts?
Ed:
—-You replied to someone: “That command is a prototype of what Hitler said about “the final problem”. The Bible was written by people who won the past wars. Besides, the Israels were not Christian at the time. St. Paul “converted” pagans to Christians by allowing non-Jews to join the congregation. How does anyone know if they are being commanded by God and not a devil?”
First of all you’d need to clearly recognize and establish that Hitler was a fallen man, and God, being God has authority over life and death and all His decisions are just as He is all knowing. If God didn’t exist then also it’d be hard to argue that Hitler’s solution was wrong, as just like any living creature he and others could take advantage of others all they please as nature and the evolutionary stories Hitler believed in dictated.
The Bible was written over the course of hundreds of years. You are asserting some conspiracy of a cover-up or falsifying of history on the part of the various writers, something many have tried to prove but have failed time and time again. However, your assertation falls apart further given the Bible doesn’t just record victories but also defeats and against all typical whitewashing that various cultures did with regards to reflecting upon themselves, the Bible actually casts Israel in a terrible light time and time again. The people were not worthy, the people constantly rebelled, the people sinned, and Israel was given its share of victories, not because they deserved them, but because their enemies were worse than they were at the point of no return; and when Israel began becoming like their enemies, God punished them the same way with defeat, death and exile.
You assert to cast doubt on the faith asking us how we ought to know whether we follow God or just tricked by the devil or false superstition? You assert this in the same way that the Pharaisees attempted to ignore Jesus and His miracles and His power to cast out demons by saying, “It is with the power of the devil that He casts out devils…” To which Christ replied, “A house divided against itself shall not stand.” How are we to know then? We have only to look at the history of the Church in an unbiased manner to see its fruits, its accomplishments it saints and see that pretty much the entire state of affairs in secular society today is precisely what the Bible, and prophets, and Papal encyclicals and saints and mystics and visionaries predicted well in advance and we contrast what the Church offers to the evil situations that secular society who has pushed aside God has created, and to see that likewise many secular monarchs and countries and nations have fallen while the Church is the only beacon throughout history that remains standing and will continue to remain standing once this current generation of things has gone away. It is then stunningly clear who is with God and who is in league with the devil.
—You also reply to someone else: “Catholicism works better by incentives rather that threats of damnation.”
To this it must be said that the ONLY and MOST CRUCIAL incentive of Catholicism IS to save people from damnation. What are you after? Riches and wealth? Health? Popularity? Sexual pleasures? What good is it to have and do these things on Earth for a temporary time until you die only to lose your soul and suffer forever because your priorities were misplaced?
1) Priests are not “hired”, so laws re: employment are irrelevant, right? am I missing something here?
2) Fedgov should have no business doing about 99% of what it does these days. If the vast majority of it is not dismantled asap, this is but one tiny example of how it will abuse its power.
Ron Paul 2012!!!
@ C Matt; the analogy would be if a Muslim organization insisted that it’s clergy live according to Sharia, not it’s followers. But they would certainly have the right to “excommunicate” (so-to-speak) even laity for failure to live accordingly, but that’s not the issue here.
Ed is gone! Good job every one for your double talk and changing the subject and pretending ignorance. He is to liberal to be a Catholic anyway.
Brandy Miller: Please site FACTS where Obama’s administration has surpassed Bush, Reagans, Clintons in number of abortions. Saying something does not make it fact. Hank Williams was fired/quit. If you compare Obama to Hitler, you can compare ANY president to Hitler. You really want that? Hitler deserved capitol punishement. Does Obama?
Da Vinci didn’t think creatively? Albert Einstein didn’t think creatively? Capurnicus didn’t think creatively? Da Vinci believed in reason and his quotes seem to imply, if you can’t test it, it isn’t proof. Einstein didn’t believe in a god like the Christian god, Deist at best. Capuricus was scared to publish until the end due to the Catholic threat of punishment. I’ll grant you the 2 storytellers believed in your Christian (although, not necessarily Catholic) God.
Con o Sullivan: congrats on “scaring” Ed away. You wouldn’t want an intelligent person that disagreed here. He isn’t necessarily too liberal to be Catholic, just too free thinking.
We’ll get rid of rover soon enough.
Best of luck. I enjoy intelligent discourse. Jimmy puts out good writing and I enjoy listening to him on EWTN Sirius radio.
You write:“To this it must be said that the ONLY and MOST CRUCIAL incentive of Catholicism IS to save people from damnation.” You have your orders, start saving me! Once again, good luck.
Rover.
@Con O Sullivan: Show me in the Catechism, Canon Law or the Bible where people you determine as being too liberal merit tossing out of the Church? I never heard your name mentioned in context with the Vatican or the Hiearchy over here. Maybe I’m just too liberal to realize we had a new Torquemada on the block.
Thanks for the self-promoting shameless plug on your behalf. At least those of us who are “too liberal” will be forewarned to be on the watch out. Maybe the right will change the words of “JOe Hill” to “Joe McCarthy” and get Laura Ingraham, or Ann Coulter to sing it in replacement for Joan Baez.
Never mind there goes the neighborhood; now it’ll be “There goes the Church.” As for me, I’ll take Joe hill, Joan Baez and the “too liberals” any day over the reactionaries trying to send the Church back into the medieval times. I’ll bet you’re greasing the carts and binding the burning faggots for the stake, too. Naaaaah, just get some fatwood sticks. But make sure we get the gunpowder bags so it’ll be quick. LOL
Most churches in America have organized as “501c3 tax-exempt religious organizations.” This is a fairly recent trend that has only been going on for about fifty years. Churches were only added to section 501c3 of the tax code in 1954. We can thank Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson for that. Johnson was no ally of the church. As part of his political agenda, Johnson had it in mind to silence the church and eliminate the significant influence the church had always had on shaping “public policy.”
Although Johnson proffered this as a “favor” to churches, the favor also came with strings attached (more like shackles). One need not look far to see the devastating effects 501c3 acceptance has had to the church, and the consequent restrictions placed upon any 501c3 church. 501c3 churches are prohibited from addressing, in any tangible way, the vital issues of the day.
501c3 Church Facts
Lyndon B. Johnson, LBJMost churches in America have organized as “501c3 tax-exempt religious organizations.” This is a fairly recent trend that has only been going on for about fifty years. Churches were only added to section 501c3 of the tax code in 1954. We can thank Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson for that. Johnson was no ally of the church. As part of his political agenda, Johnson had it in mind to silence the church and eliminate the significant influence the church had always had on shaping “public policy.”
Although Johnson proffered this as a “favor” to churches, the favor also came with strings attached (more like shackles). One need not look far to see the devastating effects 501c3 acceptance has had to the church, and the consequent restrictions placed upon any 501c3 church. 501c3 churches are prohibited from addressing, in any tangible way, the vital issues of the day.
For a 501c3 church to openly speak out, or organize in opposition to, anything that the government declares “legal,” even if it is immoral (e.g. abortion, homosexuality, etc.), that church will jeopardize its tax exempt status. The 501c3 has had a “chilling effect” upon the free speech rights of the church. LBJ was a shrewd and cunning politician who seemed to well-appreciate how easily many of the clergy would sell out.
Did the church ever need to seek permission from the government to be exempt from taxes? Were churches prior to 1954 taxable? No, churches have never been taxable. To be taxable a church would first need to be under the jurisdiction, and therefore under the taxing authority, of the government. The First Amendment clearly places the church outside the jurisdiction of the civil government: “Congress shall make NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Religion cannot be free if you have to pay the government, through taxation, to exercise it. Since churches aren’t taxable in the first place, why do so many of them go to the IRS and seek permission to be tax-exempt? It occurs out of:
Ignorance (“We didn’t know any better”)
Bandwagon logic (“Everyone else is doing it”)
Professional advice (many attorneys and CPAs recommend it)
501c3 Church Facts
Lyndon B. Johnson, LBJMost churches in America have organized as “501c3 tax-exempt religious organizations.” This is a fairly recent trend that has only been going on for about fifty years. Churches were only added to section 501c3 of the tax code in 1954. We can thank Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson for that. Johnson was no ally of the church. As part of his political agenda, Johnson had it in mind to silence the church and eliminate the significant influence the church had always had on shaping “public policy.”
Although Johnson proffered this as a “favor” to churches, the favor also came with strings attached (more like shackles). One need not look far to see the devastating effects 501c3 acceptance has had to the church, and the consequent restrictions placed upon any 501c3 church. 501c3 churches are prohibited from addressing, in any tangible way, the vital issues of the day.
For a 501c3 church to openly speak out, or organize in opposition to, anything that the government declares “legal,” even if it is immoral (e.g. abortion, homosexuality, etc.), that church will jeopardize its tax exempt status. The 501c3 has had a “chilling effect” upon the free speech rights of the church. LBJ was a shrewd and cunning politician who seemed to well-appreciate how easily many of the clergy would sell out.
Did the church ever need to seek permission from the government to be exempt from taxes? Were churches prior to 1954 taxable? No, churches have never been taxable. To be taxable a church would first need to be under the jurisdiction, and therefore under the taxing authority, of the government. The First Amendment clearly places the church outside the jurisdiction of the civil government: “Congress shall make NO LAW respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Religion cannot be free if you have to pay the government, through taxation, to exercise it. Since churches aren’t taxable in the first place, why do so many of them go to the IRS and seek permission to be tax-exempt? It occurs out of:
Ignorance (“We didn’t know any better”)
Bandwagon logic (“Everyone else is doing it”)
Professional advice (many attorneys and CPAs recommend it)
Does the law require, or even encourage, a church to organize as a 501c3? To answer that question let’s turn to what the IRS itself has to say.
Churches Need Not Apply
In order to be considered for tax-exempt status by the IRS an organization must fill out and submit IRS Form 1023 and 1024. However, note what the IRS says regarding churches and church ministries, in Publication 557:
Some organizations are not required to file Form 1023. These include:
Churches, interchurch organizations of local units of a church, conventions or associations of churches, or integrated auxiliaries of a church, such as a men’s or women’s organization, religious school, mission society, or youth group. These organizations are exempt automatically if they meet the requirements of section 501(c)(3).
Churches Are “Automatically Tax-Exempt”
According to IRS Code § 508(c)(1)(A):
Special rules with respect to section 501(c)(3) organizations.
(a) New organizations must notify secretary that they are applying for recognition of section 501(c)(3) status.
(c) Exceptions.
(1) Mandatory exceptions. Subsections (a) and (b) shall not apply to—
(A) churches, their integrated auxiliaries, and conventions or associations of churches.
This is referred to as the “mandatory exception” rule. Thus, we see from the IRS’ own publications, and the tax code, that it is completely unnecessary for any church to apply for tax-exempt status. In the IRS’ own words a church “is automatically tax-exempt.”
Churches Are “Automatically Tax-Deductible”
And what about tax-deductibility? Doesn’t a church still need to become a 501c3 so that contributions to it can be taken as a tax deduction? The answer is no! According to IRS Publication 526:
Organizations That Qualify To Receive Deductible Contributions
You can deduct your contributions only if you make them to a qualified organization. To become a qualified organization, most organizations other than churches and governments, as described below, must apply to the IRS.
In the IRS’ own words a church “is automatically tax-deductible.”
Churches Have a Mandatory Exception To Filing Tax Returns
Not only is it completely unnecessary for any church to seek 501c3 status, to do so becomes a grant of jurisdiction to the IRS by any church that obtains that State favor.
In the words of Steve Nestor, IRS Sr. Revenue Officer (ret.):
“I am not the only IRS employee who’s wondered why churches go to the government and seek permission to be exempted from a tax they didn’t owe to begin with, and to seek a tax deductible status that they’ve always had anyway. Many of us have marveled at how church leaders want to be regulated and controlled by an agency of government that most Americans have prayed would just get out of their lives. Churches are in an amazingly unique position, but they don’t seem to know or appreciate the implications of what it would mean to be free of government control.
Sir,
It is my understanding that a priest is not ‘employed’ by the Church, but is chosen and ‘ordained to serve’ in the Church.
The place in which he is based is not a ‘workplace’ in which he earns money, but a place of service where he is provided with sufficient for his needs.
Roger, Windsor, England
Odd… is there someone else using the same name as I am? (very possible). Anyway those last two posts about ‘getting rid of rover’ and ‘taxes’ weren’t by me…
Rover S: “You have your orders, start saving me! Once again, good luck.”
The role of the Church is to save people from damnation much like the role of the Ark was to save people from the Flood. You are called to get on board, but you can just as well remain outside.
Since I do not know you in real life anything I can do for you is limited. But you yourself are obviously aware that there are other resources where you can learn all you need to. In the end salvation is offered as a gift, never forced and you are free to reject it.
The only advice I can offer you is to compile a list of all issues you have against being a believer or Catholic etc. and then seek to find out if there are answers to your questions and issues with an open mind. Though I realize that the task is much harder than it sounds given how splintered and fractured the face of Christianity is these days. So in the end I can at least offer you this…
1) Seek God and seek truth and proper morality openly and unbiasedly. Never stop seeking, never give up.
2) Practice forgiveness and charity, even against those who do you great harm and scorn, because you too have done great harm to others and yourself either wittingly or unwittingly.
3) Practice humility. Acknowledge that you are imprefect, that you sin, even that you may be sinning in ways that you are unaware about or might mistakenly believe are good. In other words, acknowledge the possibility that you are limited in your scope of knowledge and resources and faculty of reason. You are not omniscient or all knowing. And knowing this are alwasy willing to humbly admit that when God judges you His way is just and you submit yourself to His mercy and authority in all areas.
4) Practice prayer. Attempt to talk to God, even if you’re not fully aware of who He is. Always take recourse to this, even in your own words.
5) Practice penance. Alongside forgiveness of others, accept suffering that come your way as a form of penance for your own wrongs that you can never make right again. And where wrongs can be righted, seek to do just that even if it costs you something, especially your own pride. Practice such penance, not only for yourself, but also on behalf of others, and especially those you consider your enemies, and pray they may not be your enemies anymore.
6) Keep fully in mind that there are forces and the natural ways of the world that will seek to make sure you do not have time to do any of the above and that they will seek to prevent you from ever accomplishing any of this. But you must persevere!
If you do at least these things then you become a man worthy to receive mercy, forgiveness and be shown charity by God who sees your example and returns your services in kind, no matter how errornous your perception of Him may be or even if you belong to a flase religion. Do these things and you are more saved than most.
The state of our Country is just Plum Pitiful !! The best that the two Political parties could give us last time was McCain who divorced his first wife because she became crippled in a car wreck ” and just doesn’t appeal to me any more.” Or Obama who stated that knowing when a human life begins is ” ASbove my pay grade” How in the world could a Christian pick between these two ? Let’s pray that we have better choices this time. In His mercies,
N. Raines
APOSTOLIC JOURNEY TO GERMANY
22-25 SEPTEMBER 2011
VESPERS OF THE BLESSED VIRGIN MARY
ADDRESS OF HIS HOLINESS BENEDICT XVI
Chapel of the Shrine, Etzelsbach
Friday, 23 September 2011
(Video)
Dear Sisters and Brothers,
I would like to greet all of you most warmly, all who have come here to Etzelsbach for this time of prayer. Ever since my youth I have heard so much about Eichsfeld that I thought at some point I must see it for myself and pray together with you. I offer sincere thanks to Bishop Wanke, who pointed out to me this strip of land from the aircraft, and I thank your speakers and representatives who have brought me gifts symbolic of this region, thereby giving me at least an indication of the variety that is found here.
So I am very glad that my wish to visit Eichsfeld has been fulfilled, and that here in Etzelsbach I can now thank Mary in company with you. “Here in the beloved quiet vale”, as the pilgrims’ hymn says, “under the old lime trees”, Mary gives us security and new strength. During two godless dictatorships, which sought to deprive the people of their ancestral faith, the inhabitants of Eichsfeld were in no doubt that here in this shrine at Etzelsbach an open door and a place of inner peace was to be found. The special friendship with Mary that grew from all this, is what we seek to cultivate further, not least through today’s celebration of Vespers of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
When Christians of all times and places turn to Mary, they are acting on the spontaneous conviction that Jesus cannot refuse his mother what she asks; and they are relying on the unshakable trust that Mary is also our mother – a mother who has experienced the greatest of all sorrows, who feels all our griefs with us and ponders in a maternal way how to overcome them. How many people down the centuries have made pilgrimages to Mary, in order to find comfort and strength before the image of the Mother of Sorrows, as here at Etzelsbach!
Let us look upon her likeness: a woman of middle age, her eyelids heavy with much weeping, gazing pensively into the distance, as if meditating in her heart upon everything that had happened. On her knees rests the lifeless body of her son, she holds him gently and lovingly, like a precious gift. We see the marks of the crucifixion on his bare flesh. The left arm of the corpse is pointing straight down. Perhaps this sculpture of the Pietà, like so many others, was originally placed above an altar. The crucified Jesus would then be pointing with his outstretched arm to what was taking place on the altar, where the holy sacrifice that he had accomplished becomes present in the Eucharist.
A particular feature of the holy image of Etzelsbach is the position of Our Lord’s body. In most representations of the Pietà, the dead Jesus is lying with his head facing left, so that the observer can see the wounded side of the Crucified Lord. Here in Etzelsbach, however, the wounded side is concealed, because the body is facing the other way. It seems to me that a deep meaning lies hidden in this representation, that only becomes apparent through silent contemplation: in the Etzelsbach image, the hearts of Jesus and his mother are turned to one another; the hearts come close to each other. They exchange their love. We know that the heart is also the seat of the deepest affection and the most intimate compassion. In Mary’s heart there is room for the love that her divine Son wants to bestow upon the world.
Marian devotion focuses on contemplation of the relationship between the Mother and her divine Son. In their prayers and sufferings, in their thanksgiving and joy, the faithful have constantly discovered new dimensions and qualities which this mystery can help to disclose for us, for example when the image of the Immaculate Heart of Mary is seen as a symbol of her deep and unreserved loving unity with Christ. It is not self-realization, the desire for self-possession and self-formation, that truly enables people to flourish, according to the model that modern life so often proposes to us, which easily turns into a sophisticated form of selfishness. Rather it is an attitude of self-giving, self-emptying, directed towards the heart of Mary and hence towards the heart of Christ and towards our neighbour: this is what enables us to find ourselves.
“We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose” (Rom 8:28), as we have just heard in the reading from the Letter to the Romans. With Mary, God has worked for good in everything, and he does not cease, through Mary, to cause good to spread further in the world. Looking down from the Cross, from the throne of grace and salvation, Jesus gave us his mother Mary to be our mother. At the moment of his self-offering for mankind, he makes Mary as it were the channel of the rivers of grace that flow from the Cross. At the foot of the Cross, Mary becomes our fellow traveller and protector on life’s journey. “By her motherly love she cares for her son’s sisters and brothers who still journey on earth surrounded by dangers and difficulties, until they are led into their blessed home,” as the Second Vatican Council expressed it (Lumen Gentium, 62). Yes indeed, in life we pass through high-points and low-points, but Mary intercedes for us with her Son and helps us to discover the power of his divine love, and to open ourselves to that love.
Our trust in the powerful intercession of the Mother of God and our gratitude for the help we have repeatedly experienced impel us, as it were, to think beyond the needs of the moment. What does Mary actually want to say to us, when she rescues us from some trial? She wants to help us grasp the breadth and depth of our Christian vocation. With a mother’s tenderness, she wants to make us understand that our whole life should be a response to the love of our God, who is so rich in mercy. “Understand,” she seems to say to us, “that God, who is the source of all that is good and who never desires anything other than your true happiness, has the right to demand of you a life that yields wholly and joyfully to his will, striving at the same time that others may do likewise.” Where God is, there is a future. Indeed – when we allow God’s love to pervade and to shape the whole of our lives, then heaven stands open. Then it is possible so to shape the present that it corresponds more and more to the Good News of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then the little things of everyday life acquire meaning, and great problems find solutions.
Confident of this, we pray to Mary; confident of this, we put our faith in Jesus Christ, our Lord and God. Amen.
- Libreria Editrice Vaticana
—- On Fri, 10/24/08, William Wong wrote:
1. Pro-Abortion.
According to Michael Gershon of the Washington Post, Obama’s record on abortion is extreme. He opposed the ban on partial-birth abortion—a practice a fellow Democrat, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, once called “too close to infanticide.” Obama strongly criticized the Supreme Court decision upholding the partial-birth ban. In the Illinois state Senate, he opposed a bill similar to the Born-Alive Infants Protection Act, which prevents the killing of infants mistakenly left alive by abortion. And now Obama has oddly claimed that he would not want his daughters to be “punished with a baby” because of a crisis pregnancy—hardly a welcoming attitude toward new life (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/01/AR2008040102197.html). At the Saddleback Forum, when asked by Pastor Rick Warren at what point does a baby starts having rights, Obama said that question was beyond his pay grade. He also said that as President one of his first task is to sign a Freedom of Choice Act.
2. Gay Marriage-At the Saddleback Forum, Obama said the magic words that Christians love to hear-marriage is between a man and a woman and was applauded.
This however, is disingenuous because he went on to say that he would not support a Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) to the Constitution to define marriage as such knowing full well that only a FMA can stand against the efforts of the gay-lesbian-bisexual-transexual lobby to redefine marriage.
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/pages/Saddleback_16AUG2008.htm
3. Lack of Experience-
Contrary to the main stream liberal media’s contention that Gov Palin does not have the experience to be the President, Obama is the least experienced of the 4 candidates running for office. He was the junior senator from Illinois starting 2005 of which 3 years was spent campaigning for the office of the Presidency of the US. Prior to that he was the state senator from Illinois. Thus, he had no prior executive experience. Compare to a governor who has to govern a state, senators spent the bulk of their time arguing amongst themselves before voting for a piece of legislation.
4. Voted 94 times to raise taxes on the American people. In fact he has proposed to raise taxes on people making $42,000 a year and above. Also proposed to raise taxes during a recession year which is tantamount to killing the goose which lays the golden egg. Not a wise choice. The actual number of times can be debated but not the fact that there is no tax increase that Obama didn’t like.
http://www.gop.com/news/NewsRead.aspx?Guid=40abb3a8-83c8-4f0f-ae4f-c85162396145
Together with a penchant for raising tax, Obama was caught on video explaining to Joe Plumber that he (Obama) was not trying to punish Joe for his success but was trying to ensure that those behind him (Joe Plumber) also have a chance to succeed. This is Obama Hood style economy. http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=joe+plumber&hl=en&emb=0&aq=f#
5. Lack of Respect for the Bible-The Word of God. Obama mocked the Bible by scornfully quoting Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and the Sermon on the Mount as examples of how not to use the Bible to guide public policy. http://www.onenewsnow.com/Blog/Default.aspx?id=279222. He also referred to Romans 1 as an obscure passage in the Bible. How many genuine Christians would refer to any part of Romans as obscure?
6. Lack of Judgement demonstrated by his long association with people who hate AmeriKKKa like Jeremiah Wright (Pastor who screamed “God Damn AmeriKKKa” right after 9/11- http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/Story?id=4443788), William Ayers (unrepentant domestic terrorist who bombed Government Buildings in the 70’s and who said after 9/11 that he regretted that he had not done more- http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/08/26/newly-released-documents-highlight-obamas-relationship-with-ayers/ ), and Rezko (convicted felon who bankrolled his first political campaign http://www.gop.com/ObamaRezkoShadyDeal/ ) amongst others.
7. Culpability in the sub-prime mortgage fiasco through his involvement with ACORN (Association of Community Organizers Reform Now) as its lead counsel. ACORN sued banks to increased lending to people in red-lined districts who could not afford such loans. ACORN storm-troopers stormed the office of WGN radio to prevent an interview with Stanley Kurtz regarding Obama and ACORN. Here is Stanley Kurtz- http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NDZiMjkwMDczZWI5ODdjOWYxZTIzZGIyNzEyMjE0ODI=
Obama’s campaign had given ACORN more than $800,000 to help register voters. ACORN is currently under investigation for voter registration fraud in 11 states.
8. Lack of qualities to be the Commander-in-Chief of our Armed Forces. Obama has stated that he will scraped the Missile Defense System. He also slandered our troops with air raiding villagers in Afghanistan. http://video.aol.com/video-detail/fox-news-obama-in-2007-air-raid-villages-in-afghanistan/2130970770/?icid=VIDURVNWS02. He also referred to Iraq as a mistake. Here is a response from one of our troops who served in Iraq. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4fe9GlWS8
9. Supreme Court Judges-Just imagine President Obama nominating another Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Souter, John Paul Steven, and Breyer all in their 50’s and capable of pushing judicial activism and tyranny for the next 20~30 years.
10. Lack of Support for Democracy of our ally Israel. Enough said! www.nypost.com/seven/10142008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/the_o_jesse_knows_133450.htm
rover—
If you enjoy intelligent conversation, why are you here?
Just imagine Mitt Romney appointing another justice serving three masters, (maybe the nation) but definitely David and Charles Koch. Or have too many Register readers already forgotten what the Roberts Court did (through Citizens United) to the First Amendment thanks to its watering down the 14th allow for the treatment of corporations as persons insofar as stretching the meaning of personhood and genuine free speech.
“Corporations are people, too, my friend,” said Mitt last summer at the Iowa State Fair. Based on Romney’s reasoning alone, Planned Parenthood ought to be shoveling all it has in his campaign coffers.
Oh yes, and weren’t Harry Blackmun and Lewis Powell both Republican appointees to the bench, same as William Brennan? Prior to his retirement, Justice John Paul Stevens, a Ford appointee, was very pro-Roe. Justice Kennedy is the mystery man; leaving the prolifers with yet an other mystery man, the ever-loose libertarian cannon, Antonin Scalia.
Only Clarence Thomas is solidly anti-Roe; and well, it’s best to let Thomas’s devil may care attitude towards even the whiff of compounding conflict of interest charges surrounding the rather curious intermingling of his wife Ginny’s plump income for her lobbying against a case her husband refuses to recuse himself on: Obamacare.
Mr. Wong, the woeful record of Catholics sitting on the highest bench should be the biggest flashing yellow light to keep us from fooling ourselves further in holding on to incredibly naive beliefs that abortion will be stopped, the environment left unscathed, and free speech(for all but the very wealthy and their corporatist backers) will remain intact.
With apologies to Mitt Romney, keep in mind one of the Romney’s favorite former (??) causes, Planned Parenthood when you hear these words again and again this next year: “Remember, corportations, are people, too my friend.”
Saint Catherine of Siena, please intercede for us on this matter of grave concern! And hurry up 2012!
I would like if Christ’s Church, The Holy Roman Catholic Church, all her ministers and actual members, used the term, “Priestess” when referring to women who want to be ordained in any ” church”.
To continue to refer to a woman been ordained as a ” priest” has a subconscious impact on the moving of boundaries that help define our gender roles within the correct order of function.
To refer to a person who is a priestess brings to mind pagan / witch practices that would clarify the issue that is been peddled in todays society.
This is a lot more that just a word change, this is important on a scale to the use of the expression abortion” instead of ” baby killing. I have never had a person respond that they would continue supporting ” baby killing” even though yet had up to then, always defended ” abortion”.
So call the thing for what it is, gender deception.
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In my country, America, you are entitled to an (your) opinion, even when they are misguided, 2012, I pray ends war, famine and drought…perhaps my premature gray, I remember “Chicago 1968” as well, albeit, differently then posted here, ‘63 Chevy’s rocked!! More should!
With due respect for every person, an opinion is just that, a non founded remark drawn from nothing and held sacrosanct because of a citizens right to free comment.
To be a Citizen of adult voting age, presupposes we are some what knowledgeable and ” know” who we are as a people and what our Democratic Nation is founded on and for. So I think an opinions should be reserved for the entertainment world, movies, sports.
As a young boy, if someone said something foolish or stupid, he was usually just looked at with silence and then a second glance to his humiliated parent, if they were present.
Why our politicians and supreme court judges are allowed to spout the foolishness they do and are not held accountable, I think that is a condemnation of our society in general and especially our secular media. Freedom of the press,( facts or fiction) is one of the major failings of today and our biggest single problem that is not challenged.
So with no major independent public oversight that is reliable, we are all stumbling in the dark and suffering form “opinion” overload.
So, what will it take to bring a major public demonstration coast to coast, that will sustain its momentum, to achieve a solid return to responsible governance.??? After all talk is cheap and action speaks louder than words.
Profound matters of life or death, should never be reduced to the level of opinion.
When Roman Catholics start taking ” matters” of State serious, as they should. Then we may see a return to accountability and consequences for those who insist that they are the right ones to lead our societies.
May God have mercy on us all.
I didn’t think I’d get to read so many athiests’ comments when I decided to read this article. Why can’t you athiests that like to read NCR be like my husband - a true athiest who respects other people’s religions and would never think of reading articles and making nasty comments on a Catholic website. It’s our religious beliefs so leave us Catholics alone.
It seems to me that when any organization, religious or not, engages in an activity that is secular (i.e., non-religious organizations regularly engage in that activity), then it possibly falls under the jurisprudence of the secular authorities. The questions then become: Is education a secular activity? When does education and/or the condition of the teacher in the classroom cross the line from secular activity to religious activity? In the view of the Church, is education EVER a secular activity? When the secular authorities start treading too close to that dividing line, it is time and past time for those who value our freedoms not only to speak up, but to take within-the-system action to nip this tendency in the bud.
The government’s argument is based on what Pope Benedict referred to as the Dictatorship of Relativism or, as Sam Alito called it, “arbitrary distinctions”. The balancing of interests that today leaves the Catholic priesthood out of bounds for government lawyers is, tomorrow, a balancing that favors claims by women who have been denied admission to the seminary by their local bishop.
Ironically, it is the Supreme Court itself, more than any other institution in America, that has given legitimacy to a form of reasoning that is nothing more than this thinly veiled pursuit of unprincipled political agendas. What can’t pass muster at the ballot box gets dressed up in legal lingo to sound like sophisticated argument.
If the Justices were taken aback by the government’s position, a position that was “arbitrary”, a position that flew in the face of “black on white” constitutional principles, they have already shown by that slightly raised eyebrow more commitment to principle than did the Warren Court, or its successors. After all, it was Earl Warren and his colleagues that famously made a constitutional principle out of “emanations” and “penumbra”.
We should not be surprised about anything to do with this case. The apparatchiks at Justice while at law school learned the principles they are now expounding, and they learned them from reading the judgments of the Supreme Court. Truly, in principle, there is nothing new in the position advanced by the government.
If we are to be surprised at all, it would only be that the Court, understanding now the implications of legal reasoning unhinged from legal principle, were to reject the government’s position and rule in favor of Hosanna-Tabor.
It’s sounding like the Obama Administration is showing it’s colors more and more, starting with all the CZARS and progressing to deeper communist tactics like those found in China, whereby the Chinese government is ‘appointing’ so called Catholic Bishops. SCARY. And to think the UN and United States have been thumping on the middle eastern leaders, calling them dictators. Then what too is Obama to be called?
The present administration, besides its shenanigans in the story above, is doing everything it can to “make the Hebrews eat pork.” The heinous Nazis used to take despicable delight by making some of our Elders in the Faith, the Hebrews, eat pork in the concentration camps. These sadists enjoyed making the Hebrews do things that were repugnant to them, their faith and the Almighty.
Today, Catholics and those of other faith traditions as well as some atheists who share our values on conscience protection, are being forced to “eat pork.” The healthcare law will force those who are pro-life to fund contraception and possibly abortion. At the same time, the funding will send many women to cancer treatment and possibly premature death due to the 40% or better risk of cancer from oral contraceptives are abortion.
While someone in military service can claim to be a conscientious objector, pro-lifers, at this time can not.
What we can do is pray, fast, do penance, educate others and get out the vote. Then we can refuse to eat pork.
It is time we all start wearing the “Pregnancy is not a disease” t-shirts with a picture of our children on it.
So…the church is claiming that it DIDN’T fire the woman because she fell asleep during counseling sessions, but it DID fire her because she violated a biblical mandate NOT to bring church disputes to secular courts?
Sorry, I’m just not buying it. They are using the religious freedom argument to justify firing a woman with a disability that CLEARLY could have significantly impacted her ability to do the job. THAT is the question the court should be addressing. Does a blind person have the “right” to a job as a crossing guard?
My guess is that the attorneys for the Lutherans are taking this tactic because they think the religious freedom argument has a better chance of winning than the “inability to fulfill job obligations” argument. Legal maneuvering, nothing more. We can only hope that our Supreme court justices are smart enough to cut through the baloney. Good grief.
Posted by rover serton on Wednesday, Oct 12, 2011 5:09 PM (EDT):Dennis and Chris, I agree with both of you. As a methodist, I am often discriminated when I go to a Catholic mass. I can’t take communion etc. My wife and I couldn’t get married in the Catholic church. I have no problem with that and wouldn’t change it. Discrimination was the correct word, it has a negative conotation but I discriminate Wendy’s over McDonalds (for the taste). Sorry to raise the confusion.
Teddy, Equating Obama with Bin Laden is just plain stupid. Like Hank Williams equating Obama with Hitler. You have no perspective when comparing a popularly elected office holder with a mass murderer. This site should be above that.
MY REPLY—well, Obama is for abortion and euthanasia for the elderly. Abortion kills more than Hitler and the Nazis did=a new human cleansing. Obama is also trying to snuff out religion—especially Christanity…so, my comparison of Bin Laden to Obama is pretty good.
...Hope that gives YOU a “perspective”....
I think the Church is pretty safe. The Executive branch has little power in the supreme court other than appointing them. Plus the Catholic church hardly has a part in the case its the Lutheran church. Also the majority of the supreme court is catholic. I kind of think this article is just extremely biased in trying to keep obama from getting reelected. I honestly think the church is safe.
The Obama administration cries “separation of church and state” when it means that people with religious convictions are saying, “This is what I believe and I want a government that supports and protects those beliefs.” Then religious people are told to shut up and keep their morals out of government. But, they have no problem going the other way. “We want our government and societal beliefs to be such and such and you religious people need to adhere.” It’s a double standard.
The Church would do well to take St. Paul’s advice in 1 Corinthians more literally. The influence of lawyers in the Church in America is a particular scandal and, at least in the Archdiocese of New Orleans, the Church is far too frightened of liability issue and such.
The Court didn’t buy it. The Obama Administration lost 9-0.
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