Wednesday, February 8, 2012

Michael Gerson | Obama should respect the rights of the religious groups



6:50 PM, Feb. 6, 2012  |  
President Barack Obama leaves after speaking about the economy during an event at Fire Station #5 in Arlington, Va., Friday, Feb. 3, 2012. Fire Station No. 5 was one of the first stations to respond to the 9/11 attack at the Pentagon. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
President Barack Obama leaves after speaking about the economy during an event at Fire Station #5 in Arlington, Va., Friday, Feb. 3, 2012. Fire Station No. 5 was one of the first stations to respond to the 9/11 attack at the Pentagon. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh) / Susan Walsh/AP
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WASHINGTON Some issues fade; others fester. The Obama administration’s contraceptive mandate on religious charities, hospitals and universities is the festering kind.
The initial reaction concerned the rights of institutions. Catholic organizations naturally resent being forced to buy health insurance that covers sterilization, contraceptives and drugs than can end a pregnancy soon after conception. The Obama administration seems to have calculated that since contraceptives are popular and the Catholic Church is not, the outcry would be isolated.
But religious liberty is also popular, given the Constitution and all that. Even those who have no objection to contraception — the category in which I have repeatedly placed myself — can be offended when arrogant government officials compel religious institutions to violate the dictates of their conscience. Religious liberty that applies only to doctrines and practices of which we approve means nothing.
In this case, however, the main harm Barack Obama has done is not to institutions. It is to the people they serve.
The provision of social services in America, and by America abroad, is a partnership between government and religious groups, both of which have advantages. Religious charities are compassionate and trusted by communities. Government has greater reach and resources.
A humane partnership between the two has depended on an uneasy compromise. Religious groups must use public funds for public purposes, not for proselytization. Government, in turn, allows religious charities to maintain views and practices that are different from those of public institutions.
At first, Obama endorsed this consensus — in his “Call to Renewal” speech in 2006 and his Zanesville, Ohio, speech in 2008. Now his administration is applying an ideological wrecking ball. It asserts that only churches merit serious religious liberty protection. The government’s views and standards must prevail when religious groups serve nonmembers — an apparently unlimited power to regulate religious institutions that don’t distribute the bread and wine.
The health care mandate is not an aberration; it is a culmination. In the Hosanna-Tabor Supreme Court case, the Obama administration opposed any special ministerial exception to federal law — a radical argument unanimously repudiated by the court. The Department of Health and Human Services recently denied a grant to the Migrant and Refugee Services committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to assist women rescued from sex trafficking, ostensibly because the organization does not refer for abortions.
In a variety of international settings, I have seen religious groups, with support from the U.S. government, engaged in AIDS treatment, fistula repair, malaria control and the promotion of child and maternal health. Dr. Ram Cnaan of the University of Pennsylvania has documented the domestic role of “sacred places that serve civic purposes” — homeless shelters, food banks, health care, welfare-to-work, prisoner re-entry programs. Cnaan estimates the “replacement value” — the cost to government agencies of assuming these roles — to be about $140,000 each year for the typical community-serving religious institution.
Take the case of one city: Philadelphia. There are about 2,000 such faith-based institutions, many of them Catholic. Replacing them would require about a quarter of a billion dollars every year. Catholic Social Services helps more than 250,000 people a year in soup kitchens, shelters and centers for the disabled. Its Community-Based Services division runs adoption and foster-care programs, staffs senior community centers and supports immigration services. The Catholic Nutritional Development Services, working in partnership with public agencies, delivers nearly 10 million meals a year — accounting for about half of all meals delivered to poor children in Philadelphia in the summer months when school is out.
Much of this good work — and similar work across the country — is now threatened. If federal policies make it impossible for religious nonprofits and hospitals to work in conjunction with federal, state and local agencies in providing social services, millions of poor and vulnerable Americans — Catholic and non-Catholic, religious and nonreligious — would suffer. The task of building alternatives would cost hundreds of billions of dollars — and then lack the distinctive human touch provided by religious groups.
All because Obama seems determined to establish secularism as a state religion. There is, however, an easy solution to the problem: The president could respect the rights and views of those who disagree with him. The relevant portion of the Bill of Rights is easy to find, because it comes first.

Bishop Galante urges protest of health care policy


www.courierpostonline.com

By GEORGE MAST        
February 7, 2012

Courier-Post Staff

Bishop Joseph Galante has joined with Catholic leaders across the country in rallying against a health care plan by President Barack Obama’s administration that would require nearly all employers to offer health coverage that includes contraceptives.

A letter from Galante, in which he accused the federal government of denying to Catholics the “first and foremost fundamental freedom” of “religious liberty,” was read at parishes in the Diocese of Camden on Sunday. The letter called for parishioners to contact Congress to support legislation to reverse the health care policy.

“We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law,” Galante said in the letter. “People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens.”

A similar message from Bishop David O’Connell was read to parishioners in the Diocese of Trenton last month.

At issue is the Jan. 20 announcement of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that the nation’s new health care law requires nearly all employers to provide insurance plans that offer free birth control to women. While the Obama administration had already stated that churches and houses of worship would be exempt from that provision, Sebelius said religious-affiliated institutions like hospitals, colleges and charities must comply.
Sibelius at that time said her decision “strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious freedom and increasing access to important preventive services.”

Women’s rights groups praised the decision, saying women who work for religious employers should not have to accept a lower standard of health coverage.

The issue, however, has become a hot button for Catholics.

Peter Feuerherd, director of communications for the Diocese of Camden, said a central issue is the question of religious liberty and the government’s more narrow view of religion than that of the church.

Feuerherd said it’s no secret that the Catholic Church’s stance against contraceptives is a “difficult one” for many parishioners. However, he said there is a unity in the belief that the “government should not have the right to define what your teachings are or what your mission is.”

“It’s not about the pill. It’s about the Bill of Rights,” he said. “It’s about the First Amendment, the right to religious freedom.”

Officials at Our Lady of Lourdes Medical Center in Camden referred questions on Monday to Catholic Health East, which operates 34 East Coast hospitals, including Lourdes.

“We are disappointed that the recent announcement by HHS does not grant an exemption to all religious-sponsored institutions,” said a statement from Catholic Health East. “The challenge that these regulations pose for many religious organizations remains unresolved and could undermine current conscience protections in law.”

Under the health care law, nonprofit groups that do not currently offer contraceptive coverage because of religious beliefs would have an extra year to comply with the policy.

The National Council of Catholic Women, which has some 4,000 chapters across the country, has also taken a stand against the measure. President Judy Powers said in a statement the council is “extremely disappointed by the Obama administration decision” and stands with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in urging the ruling be overturned.

But Sarah Lipton-Lubet of the American Civil Liberties Union praised the policy, saying religious-based institutions like hospitals and colleges with diverse employees should have to follow the same rules as all other companies.
“Taking a job at a hospital or university isn’t the same thing as joining a church,” she said.

Planned Parenthood of Southern New Jersey also praises the health care law on its website, which includes a page for supporters to sign a card thanking the president.

“Despite incredible pressure from anti-women’s health groups and legislators determined to undermine women’s access to birth control, you stood strong and did the right thing,” the card reads.

Romney Says Obama Infringing Upon Religious Rights


KMBC.com

Related To Story

By Rachel Streitfeld CNN Political Producer


POSTED: 9:20 pm CST February 6, 2012
UPDATED: 7:40 am CST February 7, 2012
Mitt Romney accused President Barack Obama of infringing upon Americans' religious rights in a fiery address to more than 2,500 supporters Monday in Colorado.

"The Creator gave every human being his rights," Romney told the audience, to sustained cheers. "I'm just distressed as I watch our president try and infringe upon our rights."

In recent weeks the GOP frontrunner has signaled he would attack the president over the charge his administration has rolled back the rights of religious individuals and institutions. Romney went further at his Monday rally and publicly detailed specific examples of Obama's "violation of conscience."

Romney cited a new policy from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that requires some religious institutions, including schools and hospitals, to provide coverage of birth control to their employees.

Outraged opposition to the mandatory contraceptive coverage is gaining steam among many Catholics and conservatives, who charge the requirement is a violation of religious rights.

"Think what that does to people who are in faiths that do not share those views. This is a violation of conscience," Romney said. "We must have a president who is willing to protect America's first right, our right to worship God."

Opponents point to a law passed while Romney was governor of Massachusetts that required hospitals--including Catholic ones--to provide emergency contraception to rape victims. A spokeswoman for the campaign said Romney had vetoed the original bill. That veto was overruled by the state legislature.

"The governor's position on this law was that it never should have gone into effect in the first place, which is why he vetoed it," Romney spokesman Andrea Saul said.

In Colorado, Romney also pointed to a unanimous Supreme Court decision in January that gave religious institutions wider leeway in determining who could qualify as a "ministerial employee." At issue was a teacher at a Michigan religious school who tried to sue under the Americans with Disabilities Act after she was fired.

The woman lost her suit when the high court determined she was indeed a "minister" 
under a narrow reading of the law and the specific circumstances of her duties.

"Did you understand that this administration argued before the Supreme Court that a church should not be able to determine who their ministers are, but the government should decide who qualifies to be a minister?" Romney asked incredulously Monday as 
the audience booed.

-CNN's William Mears and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report. -- Copyright CNN 2012


Read more: http://www.kmbc.com/politics/30393767/detail.html#ixzz1lnHg37Cc

Catholic outcry over Obama administration's birth control decision could be factor in presidential race



Published February 06, 2012
| FoxNews.com


Catholic pulpits and pews are increasingly inflamed with talk of a war on religion after the Obama administration's recent decision on employers' birth control coverage.

“There can be no doubt that religious liberty in our country is in jeopardy,” Monsignor W. Ronald Jameson warned on Saturday from inside Washington’s historic Cathedral of St. Matthew. “This is the time to speak up. This is the time for all voices to be heard.”

Jameson’s dire warning to the Catholic faithful was focused on the controversial ruling that President Obama made last week, mandating that all employers, as part of the 2010 health care overhaul, must cover in full the cost of female contraception. The Roman Catholic Church, as a matter of doctrine, opposes the use of birth control.

In an op-ed published Monday in USA Today, the president’s top health official, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, defended the ruling as striking the right balance between respecting religious freedom and providing critical health services to women.

“This is not an easy issue,” Sebelius wrote, adding that the Obama administration had taken pains to make allowances for the church. “We specifically carved out from the policy religious organizations that primarily employ people of their own faith. This exemption includes churches and other houses of worship, and could also include other church-affiliated organizations.”

In a rebuttal editorial published on the same day, however, USA Today condemned the rule as “bad policy and bad politics.” If enacted, the paper’s editors said, Catholic-run institutions that employ diverse populations “would be put in the impossibly awkward position of facilitating contraception even though the church teaches that it is ‘intrinsically wrong.’”

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney also noted the exemption, but told reporters Monday: “Those institutions where women of all faiths, many faiths work need to have the same kind of coverage that all other American women have.”

Leading Catholics and other religious figures pointed out that large Catholic-affiliated organizations – schools and colleges, hospitals, charities and the like – employ tens of thousands of people of all religious faiths, and as such will not qualify for the administration’s exemption. The White House and HHS, in turn, have granted such organizations an extra year to come into compliance with the rule.

On the campaign trail, the Republican presidential candidates have turned the issue into a rallying cry. Front-runner Mitt Romney on Monday used Twitter to appeal to Catholic voters and link them to a petition his campaign crafted. “If you've had enough of the Obama Administration's attacks on religious liberty,” Romney tweeted, “stand with me & sign the petition.”

That was mild compared with the strong medicine doled out by Newt Gingrich. “The Obama administration has declared war on religious freedom in this country,” the former House speaker sternly told reporters in a news conference in Las Vegas on Saturday night. “This is a decision so totally outrageous, an illustration of such radical secular ideology, that I believe [the church’s] hierarchy will oppose it every inch of the way.”

In an interview with Fox News religion correspondent Lauren Green, John Garvey, the president of Catholic University of America, framed the issue more charitably. “I don’t think that this is a case of the government as out to get religious institutions, as though they’re the focus of its attack. It's more a kind of lack of concern or appreciation for real religious concerns and values,” Garvey said.

“It shows an attitude on the government's part that religion is something we'll protect if it's just happening in church on Sunday, or in the mosque on Friday, but if it has to do with your daily activity or the life you want to lead, it's not something we want to protect.”

What remains uncertain is whether President Obama, who won the Catholic vote in 2008 by a 9 percentage-point margin, will pay a political price for the ruling this coming November.

Even if Gingrich’s prediction of robust opposition from the church hierarchy proves true – and the nationwide spate of sermons devoted to the topic over the last two weekends suggests it will – the predilections of ordinary Catholic parishioners appear more difficult to gauge. Polling conducted by the Pew Research Center has found Catholics as evenly divided over the legality of abortion, for example, as the rest of the country.

However, the importance of the Catholic vote cannot be underestimated. Of the 68 million Catholics in America, roughly 35 million voted in 2008, accounting for 27 percent of the total electorate. And a review of data from seven battleground states – Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin – shows Catholics comprising roughly one-quarter or more of the electorate in each.


Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/02/06/catholic-outcry-over-obama-administrations-birth-control-decision-could-be/#ixzz1lnGjtB78