For those of you not aware, Sister Keehan is head of the Catholic Health Association, an early supporter of Obamacare and a group that rushed this morning, before the Obama administration's "accomodation" had made news, to issue a statement in support. This is my email to her.
Sister Keehan:
I was very confused by the following sentence in the statement your group rushed to put out, "We are pleased and grateful that the religious liberty and conscience protection needs of so many ministries that serve our country were appreciated enough that an early resolution of this issue was accomplished." We are pleased and grateful to whom I might ask for the protection of religious liberty? The government, the Obama administration? I have news for you, we live in the United States of America, where religious freedom was guanrateed as a basic right as part of the founding of this nation. We do not have anything to be "grateful" for, it is our RIGHT. Our rights are defined in those founding documents, they are not the crumbs that whatever administration in power may seek to toss our way. If you and your organization continue with the view that we should be "grateful" to the government when they should choose to recognize religious liberty, then you will be part of trying to send this nation down a slippery slope.
I was also a little puzzled by this statement, "The unity of Catholic organizations in addressing this concern was a sign of its importance". You and your organization do not appear unified in your "gratitude" for this "accomodation". Your organization rushed to praise this accomodation apparently before any other Catholic organization even knew what it was. Furthermore, you do not have the good sense to see that from the begining, your organization has been used by the Obama administration as cover to ram through this far reaching power grab.
While as Catholics we do not seek to use law or government to impose our teachings on anyone, we also should not be sitting idly by and gleefully accepting whatever crumbs the government my choose to throw our way in regards to a basic and fundamental right. We should learn from what the Susan G. Komen Foundation went through, weakness is not the answer, easy capitulation is not the answer. It is in fact, what the far left is counting on. If Obamacare is truly about providing health care for all, then this should be something can be easily and constructively solved. I am willing to bet that is not the true motivation for Obamacare, hence the issues here.
Another point. Catholic Charities here in Illinois was referring same sex couples to agencies willing to place children with same sex couples when the state came in and yanked their foster care contracts because they would not directly place children with homosexual couples. Yet, that is precisely the "accomodation" your group is so willing to accept here. How long do you think this will last? Do you think the far left has suddenly found the line for which they will not cross in the name of abortion and contraception? Surely you have read the very prescient Humanae Vitae which correctly foretold that abortion was far from the last front in the birth control war (as its activists promised at the time), but merely the begining? Abortion was not enough, the original birth control pill was not enough (how many variations have been launched since), the morning after pill was not enough, Federal funding was not enough, funding abortions overseas was not enough. They have never stopped their all out assault on the unborn child.
Finally, you should know that the Obama administration searched for other political strategies before going the "accomodation" route. My wife was polled this week, by the Obama campaign. They asked her religion, her rating of the President, her rating of the recent HHS action as you would expect. But then they also had a question about support for collective bargaining rights. What they were fishing for, Sister, was to see if they could use traditional Catholic support for workers' rights as a way to drive a political wedge between Catholics and keep them from uniting behind this issue.
In other words, what the last two weeks have taught us is that the playbook of the far left is to attack, attack, attack and try and get the other side to give in. If they will not all capitulate like Komen, then you seek to divide the opposition. The next tactic, which you are now a participant in, is to offer up some fake "accomodation" (they cannot even bring themselves to say the word "compromise"), to buy time while they work through other means to get what they want. You ought to know who you and your organization are in bed with. Ask the Jews in Hungary during WWII what happens when the Catholic Church is all too willing to "accomodate" a government.
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