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Friday, February 03, 2012

An Alienable Right?

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…
~ The Constitution of the United States: Amendment 1

The “free exercise” of religion? In the United States? Not anymore, not for Roman Catholic institutions.

President Obama has sold the Catholic Church down the river. After luring American bishops into support of his monstrous federal healthcare program with the shiny object of “social justice,” he has slammed the door on religious freedom by ordering church institutions, such as Catholic hospitals, charities, and universities, to offer contraception coverage to their employees.

This is tantamount to ordering a Muslim or Orthodox Jew to eat pork. It is a blatant violation of the right to the “free exercise” of religion. And then this demogogue has the stunning gall to attend a prayer breakfast and tell the audience that Jesus would want him to tax the rich, citing Luke 12:48, “For everyone to whom much is given, of him shall much be required."

Obama is very selective in quoting scripture. I doubt we’ll ever hear this pro-abortion president quoting Matthew 19:14, which describes the kingdom of heaven as belonging to little children. Maybe Jesus told him he could skip that one. And while I’m on this particular rant, I have a rhetorical question—can you imagine the media frenzy if George W. Bush had been using the Bible to frame his public policy at a prayer breakfast? To be ecumenical about it, oy vey.

But back to the crisis du jour, Obama’s brazen war on religious freedom. The argument that “a lot of Catholics use contraception” is beside the point. The Catholic Church says its wrong. There are a lot of Catholics who lie, steal, and commit adultery, but it’s still against our religion. As for the non-Catholic employees working at these faith-based institutions, they were aware of the moral restrictions when they took the job and, unlike the federal government, these employees respect the religious requirements of their employer.

Don’t be fooled—the issue is not about birth control; it’s about government control. If government gives you a right, then government can remove that right--or otherwise trample it, as with the contraception mandate in the “right to healthcare.” But if people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” then our freedoms come from God and government has no “right” to interfere.

Letters of outrage from betrayed bishops were read in Catholic churches last weekend. Despite media indifference, that’s not the last we’ll hear of this latest travesty from the Obama administration. The Supreme Court ultimately may have to decide if private faith-based organizations in this country will remain free to follow their own religions, or if the “religion” of government has successfully established a mandatory secular creed positioned to eventually enslave us all.

With each passing day of the rolling disaster that is his presidency, Barack Obama is increasingly successful in “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” into an unrecognizable totalitarian state. At least he’s good at something.