Obama and Catholics

Here is a copy of a letter I sent to a couple who are friends of mine, both Irish Catholics. I have not received a reply from them yet.

Dear J,

I’m curious to know what you and S think about the decision by the Obama Administration, based on the provisions of Obamacare, to force all Catholic institutions — including charities, hospitals and schools — to provide and pay for insurance coverage that includes contraceptives, abortifacient drugs and sterilization procedures.

As Jonathan Last writes:

Paul Loverde, wrote, “I am absolutely convinced that an unprecedented and very dangerous line has been crossed.” In Phoenix, Bishop Thomas Olmsted wrote, “We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law.” In Pittsburgh, Bishop David Zubik wrote that President Obama had told Catholics, “To Hell with your religious beliefs.” Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria asked his flock to join him in the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, which concludes: By the Divine Power of God / cast into Hell, Satan and all the evil spirits / who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. … [Sister Carol Keehan, the president of the Catholic Health Association, who had actually lobbied in favor of Obamacare, early and often] was so horrified she threw her lot in with the more conservative [Archbishop Timothy] Dolan in full-throated opposition to Obama. Cardinal Roger Mahony, the spectacularly liberal archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles, wrote, “I cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience.  .  .  . This decision must be fought against with all the energies the Catholic community can muster.” Michael Sean Winters, the National Catholic Reporter’s leftist lion, penned a 1,800-word cri de coeur titled “J’accuse!” in which he declared that, as God was his witness, he would never again vote for Obama. The editors of the Jesuit magazine America denounced a “wrong decision,” while the Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne called the policy “unconscionable.”

Sounds like a lot of solid Irish Catholics to me ;>) .

Wikipedia defines totalitarianism as:

[A] political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible. … [A] totalitarian regime attempts to control virtually all aspects of the social life including economy, education, art, science, private life and morals of citizens.

Of collectivist systems, Hayek in The Road To Serfdom writes:

The various kinds of collectivism … differ from liberalism and individualism in wanting to organize the whole of society and all its resources for this unitary end and in refusing to recognize autonomous spheres in which the ends of the individuals reign supreme.

Wouldn’t the decision by the Obama Administration be properly described as an attempt by our federal government to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible, including morals, or as a refusal to recognize an autonomous sphere (namely, the Catholic Church) in which the ends of the individuals reign supreme?

Jonathan Last writes:

Obama has left Catholic organizations a very narrow set of options. (1) They may truckle to the government’s mandate, in violation of their beliefs. (2) They may cease providing health insurance to their employees altogether, though this would incur significant financial penalties under Obamacare. (The church seems unlikely to obtain any of Nancy Pelosi’s golden waivers.) Or (3) they may simply shut down. There is precedent for this final option. In 2006, Boston’s Catholic Charities closed its adoption service—one of the most successful in the nation—after Massachusetts law required that the organization must place children in same-sex households. Which means that what is actually [being threatened] are precisely the kind of social-justice services—education, health care, and aid to the needy—that liberal Catholics believe to be the most vital works of the church.

Bill Kristol writes:

As Yuval Levin noted in National Review Online last week, institutions such as the Catholic church represent a mediating layer between the individual and the state. This layer, known as civil society, is one of the principal differences between Western liberal order and the socialist view.

So, I am wondering whether you and S are troubled by what I see as attempts by the Obama Administration to destroy the freedom of conscience of individual members of non-public institutions like the Catholic Church and by the ongoing drift of so-called progressivism towards totalitarianism?

With all respect and hoping you and S are doing well,

Sabazio