The nation has been through a bad four years under President Obama and I expect the next four years, courtesy of his reelection by a majority of the voters last November, to be even worse. In these dark times it is good to point to glimmers of light. Such a glimmer of light is the fight being put up by Hobby Lobby and other employers against the contraceptive mandate. Here is a letter from David Green, CEO of Hobby Lobby, which explains why Hobby Lobby is making this stand:
We’re Christians, and we run our business on Christian principles. I’ve always said that the first two goals of our business are (1) to run our business in harmony with God’s laws, and (2) to focus on people more than money. And that’s what we’ve tried to do. We close early so our employees can see their families at night. We keep our stores closed on Sundays, one of the week’s biggest shopping days, so that our workers and their families can enjoy a day of rest. We believe that it is by God’s grace that Hobby Lobby has endured, and he has blessed us and our employees. We’ve not only added jobs in a weak economy, we’ve raised wages for the past four years in a row. Our full-time employees start at 80% above minimum wage.
But now, our government threatens to change all of that. A new government health care mandate says that our family business MUST provide what I believe are abortion-causing drugs as part of our health insurance. Being Christians, we don’t pay for drugs that might cause abortions, which means that we don’t cover emergency contraception, the morning-after pill or the week-after pill. We believe doing so might end a life after the moment of conception, something that is contrary to our most important beliefs. It goes against the Biblical principles on which we have run this company since day one. If we refuse to comply, we could face $1.3 million PER DAY in government fines.
Our government threatens to fine job creators in a bad economy. Our government threatens to fine a company that’s raised wages four years running. Our government threatens to fine a family for running its business according to its beliefs. It’s not right. I know people will say we ought to follow the rules; that it’s the same for everybody. But that’s not true. The government has exempted thousands of companies from this mandate, for reasons of convenience or cost. But it won’t exempt them for reasons of religious belief.
So, Hobby Lobby – and my family – are forced to make a choice. With great reluctance, we filed a lawsuit today, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, asking a federal court to stop this mandate before it hurts our business. We don’t like to go running into court, but we no longer have a choice. We believe people are more important than the bottom line and that honoring God is more important than turning a profit.
In his poem Memoriae Positum which honored Colonel Robert Shaw who died leading the 54th Massachusetts, one of the first Union black regiments, in its assault on Fort Wagner on July 18, 1863, poet James Russell Lowell has this stanza:
We bide our chance,
Unhappy, and make terms with Fate
A little more to let us wait;
He leads for aye the advance,
Hope’s forlorn-hopes that plant the desperate good
For nobler Earths and days of manlier mood;
When the better angels of our nature, in Lincoln’s ringing phrase, assert themselves, I think most Americans will look back with shame on the folly and evil that ran rampant during the age of Obama. In the meantime it is time for more of us to stand up like Mr. Green, “for nobler Earths and days of manlier mood”.
Religious Liberty in an Enlightened Society
American taxpayers, without current legal exception on moral or religious grounds (it would classify as civil right if it was a liberal cause), are required to fund government run high schools that have classes teaching students how to use a condom and then dispense them free of charge to both boys and girls. The taxpayers who may object to this enlightened approach to educational instruction and choose to send their children to private or religious schools must do so at their own personal expense in addition to the continued funding of their local government school. Vouchers and school choice are vehemently opposed by secular progressives like Obama.
The same government school systems are also teaching the children as young as kindergarten that lifestyles contrary to nature’s law such as homosexual marriage are both socially acceptable and to be encouraged by our enlightened society.
Today sexually active boys, girls, men and women have, as a result of this enlighten society, the ability to reduce what has always been the sacred gift of procreation within marriage to a form of personally satisfying recreational activity with the legal right to disclaim, discard or destroy any living persons created naturally by such activity due to failure to use proper equipment or judgment. Not only can the participants deny their basic obligation to nature but our enlightened secular government with the anti-Christian guidelines of the Obama administration now in power requires business enterprises and even religious institutions with more than fifty employees who have health insurance plans for their employees, under Federal Law, are now required to include in their plans coverage to pay for the human carnage of human life and dignity left by such behavior. Opposition to the dictates of this HHS law or any of Obama’s agenda aimed at the destruction of Judeo-Christian morality is now considered hate speech.
The White House has recently permitted a petition to appear on its website for signatures to officially recognize the Catholic Church as a Hate Group. This was not by accident! The church with its stand on abortion, same sex marriage, euthanasia and religious liberty along with our Constitution are all that stand in the way of the total transformation of America the liberal’s messiah has in mind for us.
Hypothetical: Say five million Catholics who currently pay their income tax collectively gave notice to the current Administration that they will cease paying income taxes due to the unprecedented attack on Catholics / Christians, would it make a difference? 8 million? The risks are obvious, however what is it going to take to let them know that this not acceptable?
HAPPY NEW YEAR FOR WHOM?
The New Year does not bode well for our amoral nation.
America has become a godless imitation.
How many more will lose life, liberty, and survival?
The Constitution and rights must have serious revival.
The religious freedom we once had is now being denied.
Objections by religious leaders are being defied.
The God of Abraham was once our nation’s guiding light.
Immorality has almost become a legal right.
Marriage of a man and woman is God’s moral demand.
Will the Supreme Court now deny His eternal command?
The American people are enemy number one.
Our religious liberty and freedoms they have undone.
Our nation has grown cold to God’s love – we are divided.
The Ten Commandments are being openly derided.
Those who do not trust God have misplaced their intended goal.
They alone have the power to rescue their eternal soul.
As light fades, what we so proudly hailed no one can now see.
The ramparts were not watched – we are no longer free.
The future of America has never seemed so bleak.
Hope is possible only if the Son of God we seek.
Bob Rowland
1/IV/MMXIII
A post epiphany.
Soon after Mel Gibson had “taken a gamble” and opened The Passion to $900 M profits, he followed up with a timely production called Apocalypto. Mel begins with a quote from Will Durant; ” A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within.” Fitting in our self-destruct Administration.
Upon further discovery of Mr. Durants works this seems appropriate in light of your topic; “The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting agonist a divided majority.”….enter the divided Catholic Church.
If we we’re only united with our Magisterium the Catholic majority in America would not have V.P. Biden or House Speaker Peloski “speaking for Catholics everywhere.”
Divided we will fall.
May God intercede for our beloved Countrymen and freedom for All…born and unborn.
[…] David Green & the Better Angels of Our Nature – Don. R. McClarey, The American Cthlc […]
Today the Susan B. Anthony List reports that Planned Parenthood released their 2011-12 annual report. According to the report $542 million dollars of tax payer funding help to kill a total of 333,964 Americans on American soil in the year 2011. Viet Nam 50,000 – over 50 million dead since 73′
God help us.
Bill Sr
Jules Ferry, one of the leading architects of public education in Europe, was simply more candid than most politicians, when he said its purpose was, “to cast the nation’s youth in the same mould and to stamp them, like the coinage, with the image of the republic.
That is why the right of parents to control their childrens’ education was at the heart of the Church’s struggle with the secular state.
Michael PS: Amen.
That “parental control” was one of Pope Benedict’s “four non-negotiables” which majorities of US (so-called) catholics ignored in the 2008 and 2012 elections.
Obama’s (unpunished 1960’s terrorist/bomber) political godfather has been pushing youth brainwashing since his “rehabilitation.”
They know what to they. They don’t know how to think.
God help us, now.
[…] In the battle against the ultra-secularism culture, some stars stand out: https://the-american-catholic.com/2013/01/07/david-green-and-the-better-angels-of-our-nature/ — A personal story: I sometimes go to the other-side-of-the-road from the Jones Franlklin Rd. […]