Daffyd at the blog Big Lizards has a post which spells out what everyone should understand now: ObamaCare in general, and the HHS Mandate in particular, was never about healthcare:
Never was it about health insurance for the poor and uninsured; it was always about the federal government seizing control not only of the health care of individuals but also nationalizing those state and local health programs already in place. ObamaCare was, first and last, a power grab by the federal government at the expense of states, local governments, and individual Americans.
So please, let’s not imitate Captain Renault in Casablanca — shocked, shocked to discover that Barack Obama has violated our First-Amendment right to freedom of religion! In fact, that specific mandate was at the heart of ObamaCare tyranny: a frontal assault on the Catholic church in particular, which is so virulently hated by the gay-activist and feminist wings of the Left.
The only element of this policy that should shock anyone is the unbelievably hamfisted way that Obama decreed it: A politically savvy politician would have patiently held off until after the election, giving himself two years to allow the furor to die down.
Instead, the president once again mistook unanimity among his left-liberal friends for a Progressivist “consensus” among the American people; he lives in a bubble of epistemic closure, talking only to true-blue believers on the left. I formerly gave him the nickname “Lucky Lefty,” because (a) he is left handed, (b) he is left-leaning, and (c) he was extraordinarily lucky. Well he’s still (a) and (b), but not so much (c) anymore, so I can no longer call him that.
Obama’s new nickname is “Bubble Boy,” honoring his world view.
Go here to read the brilliant rest. The head of HHS is Kathleen Sebelius, a Catholic, who throughout her political career has been a fanatical pro-abort. As governor of Kansas she was the close political ally of the late George Tiller, Tiller the Killer, the foremost practioner of that infanticide-by-a-different-name called partial birth abortion. Go here to read all about her. She has been in open war with the Church for decades, and this Mandate is merely another shot fired in that war. The Bishops, finally, understand the gravity of the situation, even as Vichy Catholics eagerly support the other side. For Catholics, there can be no neutrality in this conflict. A time for choosing is upon us.
Pro-Church is it. It is both pro-choice and pro-life. It is where unchanging, all encompassing Word does bring hope and change when that becomes one’s choice.
It is all about force. All about control.
http://bullpasturechronicles.blogspot.com/2012/02/hell-to-pay.html
“Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force; like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” George Washington, Farewell Address
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” J. Adams
Obamacare was a power grab? I knew that in 2009 and wrote a little blog entry to record my thoughts on it.
http://primecut.blogspot.com/2009/09/ego-power-play.html
I would like to see American Catholic’s thoughts on George Will’s comments over the weekend. I can’t say I entirely disagree with him.
http://biggovernment.com/whall/2012/02/13/george-will-catholic-bishops-got-what-they-deserved-for-supporting-obamacare/
Government can only testify to the NO commandments. No killing, adultery, stealing, lying, coveting, because at this point, another citizen’s civil rights are being violated, but there is no civil law being broken in not loving a neighbor. We wish the High Priest, and the Levite stopped to help the man who fell among robbers, but it took a Samaritan.
If government could heal the sick and raise the dead, then, and only then, could government mandate insurance coverage to pay for these works of mercy.
Obamacare cannot mandate that the Catholic Church buy Obamacare and then make non-participation a criminal offense with penalties, because a crime has not been committed. If Obamacare could heal the sick and raise the dead without Divine Providence, then Obamacare could mandate coverage, but Obamacare cannot. All healing and raising the dead is accomplished through Divine Mercy, through the laws of nature and nature’s God, the works of mercy and charity. The bronze serpent from the desert of sin on a pole is the symbol of the medical profession. Government cannot mandate healing, nor raising the dead, nor works of mercy, nor of charity. Government can only mandate what government can do- civil obedience to the laws of nature and nature’s God.
In Hillarycare, a doctor was to be sent to federal prison for two years for healing a sick person not authorized by Hilliarycare, thereby criminalizing the practice of medicine. If Hillary care could have healed the sick and raised the dead, then there might be a penalty for not adhering, but Hillarycare could not. Likewise, Romneycare penalized non-participants for supposedly not healing the citizens, but Romneycare could not heal the citizens nor raise the dead, either.
Obamacare is trying to mandate a penalty for not healing the sick and raising the dead. Obamacare cannot heal the sick and raise the dead. But the Catholic Church through the Sacraments of healing and reconciliation, and especially the Holy Eucharist, prayers and petitions to God can heal the sick and raise the dead. Furthermore, the Catholic Church is not mandating any penalty for the government for non-compliance. The penalty must be commensurate to the crime. If the Catholic Church refuses to comply with an unlawful mandate, so too, the government can refuse to comply with an unlawful mandate.
This is one step away from Hitler ordering the massacre of Jews and if one did not obey one suffered the penalty of death, like treason in war. The Catholic Church has never taken an oath to buy Obamacare and cannot be held to disobedience or treason.
T. Shaw
The crown of king was offered to then President for two terms, George Washington. George Washington turned down the crown as king, nor would George Washington accept a third term as president.
I like Mary De Voe’s logic.
It never was about healthcare and the Bishops were wrong to support ObamaCare. This was entirely foreseeable. It is time to pay the piper.
http://bullpasturechronicles.blogspot.com/2012/02/hell-to-pay.html
Obama once said he’d rather be an effective one term president than an ineffective two term president. This was one of the few times he wasn’t lying. By effective he means, of course, advancing (er, imposing) leftist ideology. And at that he has been amazingly effective. He has done more toward that end in just over three years than Reagan ever could in advancing conservatism in eight years, no matter how hard he tried.
Obama, like any other good bully (and that’s what he is a leftist bully), is a master at preying upon the fear of his victims. And the right in this country are, by and large, to use a childhood term, frady cats. I mean, Obama openly attacks the First Amendment and the best the one who many conservatives look to as the futire, Marco Rubio can do is come up with is to propose a “Conscience Protection Act” that is an erroneously unwitting admission that the First Amendment doesn’t mean what it says. Furthermore, for this “act” to become, it would require the president’s signature. And you can forget about overriding his veto in Harry’s Hellhole, aka the U.S. Senate.
He also knows that he is gonna be running against an empty suit in Novemeber. Okay, Santorum is probably the best empty suit, but an empty suit nonetheless.
And he also knows the USCCB are nothing but a bunch of empty cassocks, whose collective episcopal motto ought to be “Ideology Runneth over my Theology”.
And when you consider that leftist bureaucrats run all the important government agencies, including the Pentagon (after 27 years working in DoD if you include my eight years of active duty in the Navy), the left runs the government no matter who gets elected.
So, against theis backdrop, you really don’t have to be all that politically saavyf you’re a commtted leftist like Obama.
[…] The Mandate Was Never About Healthcare – Donald R. McClarey, The American Catholic […]
We are at war. The left in this country must be put under the figurative ” ban “. It is a fight to the death weather we Catholics realize it or not. Obama and the democrats are for real, people! Even now I am afraid that most people cannot or will not see this reality. Oh well, what to do?
Tom,
You have a good idea. For the Church it would be “interdict.” I looked it up.
Here is a part of the blurb. “Whereas excommunication is exclusively a censure, intended to lead a guilty person back to repentance, an interdict, like suspension, may be imposed either as a censure or as a vindictive punishment.”
The clerics, especially the society of judas dastards, and laity that signed that petition supporting the state denial of Church liberty need to be placed under interdict.
The original “debate” over health care reform, ie, the propaganda, was to about portability, accessibility and affordability. It was never about those things, nor about ‘health care’ reform. This was all along a power play and Sebeilius and others are given unfettered and unreviewable powers to impose slavish adherence to their statist principles. Instead of accessibility, you now or soon will have “coercive self rationing” and government control over the human person and the subsidiary institutions entrusted with care; instead of efficiencies leading to cost savings, you will see onerous taxation and penalties; instead of portability you will soon have the private sector intentionally put out of the health care business and full, complete and dominant control by HHS committee over what will be covered—so that portability will no longer be an issue.
This was all in the original house bill which CHA and USCCB advocated—with of course the lip service to protecting conscience and excluding public funding for abortion. You are playing a game with marxists so it’s important to understand that the broader issue concerning ‘health care’ is about control. Soon, as in a mere few years, “Catholic” will be removed from every hospital, and then next they will be coming for your schools.
T Shaw,
I was actually thinking more of the ban as in Joshua conquering the promised land. Every last vestige of leftism needs to be rubbed out with extreme prejudice. Leftism is extreme and is in the business of rubbing out the Church in the US. I know this sounds perhaps a bit intense, but we are really facing an existential threat and have been for close to forty-five years at least. One could argue the threat goes all the way back to the Enlightenment, or Eden for that matter. My point is that the response of many in the Church right now is inadequate to the challenge. We are not responding with the same level of ” fight ” with which we are being attacked.
Tom and CTHEMFLY25,
Excellent!
This HHS mandate is about control and malice toward Holy Mother the Chruch.
Paul A. Rahe at ricochet.com, ” . . . reason why Sebelius, Pelosi, and Obama decided to proceed. They wanted to show the bishops and the Catholic laity who is boss. They wanted to make those who think contraception wrong and abortion a species of murder complicit in both. They wanted to rub the noses of their opponents in it. They wanted to marginalize them. Humiliation was, in fact, their only aim, and malice, their motive.”
There are not enough bullets.
Tom & T Shaw,
How does one without recourse to violence stomp out liberal leftism, progressivism, liberal democracy (two wolves & one sheep voting on what’s for dinner) or whatever term we may use to describe this phenomenon. I do not support initiating force to achieve that end. In the times of the ancient Israelites, God did order the initiation of force, but those times and circumstances were different. If we initiate force today, then we become as evil as those whom we seek to replace.
That being said, I do think that even should we be successful in ejecting Obama from the Oval Office in the November elections, the liberals won’t go quitely. They will evenutally initiate force against us and I think we have to let them. It would be far preferrable to convince them of the rightness of our position, but I fear they have gone too far down the path to be persuaded. Even if SCOTUS were to reverse Roe v Wade, they will not give up abortion without a physical fight. But once they initiate force, then we have every right to defend ourselves and the game changes. That game of course would be civil war and that’s not something any of us should work towards or even want. Yet it took a civil war to free the slaves (and with all due respect to Catholic Knight, regardless of whether or not that was the original reason for the war), so I think (based on that history alone) one might sadly be required here (please, dear God, no!).
Paul and T. Shaw,
Although I love to use violent metaphors, mostly because it tweaks so many noses out of joint, I am not advocating civil war. I am afraid though, history and culture being what they are in this country, there is a very real possibility of our ” culture war ” turning hot. It is quite evident from the history of radical secularism that the rhetoric eventually turns to action. The secularists preach an intolerant brand of atheistic humanism, which is used in a public way to ostracize and separate the opposition. They have no allies and allow no neutral parties. We as Catholics have a great heritage of facing these kinds of totalitarians and that history can serve us well in dealing with the current crop of tyrannical wanna-bees.
So I think we should never advocate to initiate violent means as long as so-called civil society is in place ( kind of ). Will we have to face violence in America in our struggle with the culture of death? Yes, I believe we already are, just ask the millions of dead children. The culture of death is not just a metaphor for bad actors misbehaving. It is a description of the enemy. Our weapons are fasting, praying, self-denial and obedience to the Majesterium. We must also fight the good fight in the arena of politics, friends and family. The workplace too is an area where we can bring on the struggle. Every day in every way.