Amish Exempt From HCR? Conservatives Say Unfair!

Hilarious! Raymond Arroyo writes at Laura Ingraham's site that it's just not fair that Amish and Old Order Mennonites are exempted from the health care mandate - but the rest of the religious groups in the country aren't!

The exemption of Amish and Old Order Mennonites is not confirmed. But it should be included: theirs is a long-standing objection to insurance of any kind and applies to health and home insurance (they don't have cars). They take care of their own community's needs by pooling money to meet health care needs of members. I wrote about this yesterday.

UPDATE: Malkin's saying it too! Nice. Wingers envying the Amish. Let them all adopt the Anabaptist faith and politics, give up their cars, wear bonnets, and drop out of politics! Anabaptists don't pay taxes because they don't use them.

The fact that Arroyo wants to exempt Catholics and, well, that new religion, teabaggers, from the mandates is silly. I don't at all agree with the way the new bill is shaping up - it severely damages women and it's a blatant give-away to the insurance company - but simply disagreeing with a bill doesn't mean you can adopt a new religious policy against insurance.

Both the Senate and House Health Care bills have one religious conscience clause. Unfortunately it only applies to the Amish and a few other religious sects. According to the Watertown Daily Times, the exception would allow the Amish to avoid the health insurance mandate and a fine should they refuse to carry health insurance.

So get this straight: the Amish, Old Order Mennonites and possibly Christian Scientists can opt out of the health care plan, with no penalty, while Catholics and other Christians are bound to pay premiums that fund abortion. How is that fair? Hundreds of Christian, pro-life hospitals, doctors and nurses may soon be forced to violate their consciences and offer or perform procedures they consider morally objectionable.

The Congress could care less. If the pro-life community fails to demand conscience clause protections, and loudly, they could find themselves morally compromised by this new health care regime. Even the leading voice for conscience clauses, the US Catholic bishops, have been muted in recent days, preferring to convey their desires via letters and statements issued by their Conference.

Now is the time for a full throated, public discussion of this critical issue. The ethical future of health care is being negotiated now in the back rooms of Capitol Hill. Of course if everyone would rather focus on Harry Reid's comments, I suppose there is the option of riding a horse and buggy to work. Though some Catholic doctors I know will look pretty silly in those straw hats. Let me know what you think at raymond@raymondarroyo.com

Know Your Christian History.

Chris Armstrong at Grateful to the Dead has a list of top ten Christian History books.

Bishops Forfeit High Ground.

At Seattle Times, Sam Sperry looks at the USCCBs involvement in health care:

The philosophical and moral aspects of the bishops' political stance are not universally accepted. Nor do they rest on as solid a basis as they might want us to believe.

First, the bishops' position reflects the church's questionable doctrine that human life begins at the moment of conception. Not only is this not demonstrable biologically. There also is no consensus among traditional Roman Catholic authorities on the point, including the venerable St. Thomas Aquinas, the foundational 13th-century scholar of the Catholic Church. When first conceived, a fertilized egg possesses only human potential, not "humanness" itself. When that occurs has never, in moral terms, been satisfactorily resolved.

Second, the bishops' position affects a quality of absoluteness that does not exist.

Catholic doctrine prohibits an abortion in cases of rape or incest. When a woman's life is at serious risk, Catholic teaching holds that her claim on life supersedes that of the fetus or child: in ethical terms, the "double effect."

Moreover, Catholic teaching admits to such taking of life as in self-defense and in its doctrine of a "just war." So even for Catholics there is no absolute aspect to the sanctity of life, however precious we hold life to be.

Finally, the Catholic Church teaches that it is up to an individual, not the church, to resolve matters of conscience as best that individual can inform her or his conscience. For some women, that may include considering an abortion.

In lobbying Congress to adopt the Church's position via the Stupak Amendment, the American Catholic bishops advocate enactment of a particular religious belief, one at odds with many other churches. Many of these churches allow for an abortion in cases of rape, incest and the health of the woman.

The Catholic bishops, then, argue that Congress should enshrine in law a particular belief of their religion. That would not be in the best interest of our multidenominational, multicultural people and would be an abuse of our democratic, nondenominational system of government.

What Is A Bishop's Place?

Timothy Egan of the New York Times takes on Rhode Island Bishop Tobin's quarrel with representative Kennedy:

In a terse exchange of letters, the bishop said it was “inappropriate” for Kennedy to receive communion. Kennedy responded: “The fact that I disagree with the hierarchy of the church on some issue does not make me any less Catholic.”He said later he would have no further comment; that it was “an issue of faith,” between himself and God.The Jesuits were also big on logical thinking, encouraging generations of mushy-headed knuckleheads like myself to bring a rigorous intellectual test to matters of the public domain. With this recent claim of his, Bishop Tobin would have trouble blustering his way past the priests who taught my freshman civics class.There are 65 million Catholics in the United States — 22 percent of the population. And a slim majority of them, 51 percent, believe abortion should be legal in most circumstances, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. A full 60 percent support the death penalty, which the church has long opposed.Those numbers mean that more than half of all American Catholics are in a position somewhat similar to Patrick Kennedy’s. To be consistent, the bishop should start checking them off at the altar rail as they line up to receive communion — sinner, saint, sinner, saint, and so on.It’s absurd, dangerous and impossible for any cleric to think he can know the precise state of grace of a fellow Catholic who feels moved to worship publicly. But that is the logical conclusion of the bishop’s campaign.American Catholic bishops wrestled with this question five years ago, regarding the faith of Senator John Kerry, a pro-choice practicing Catholic and the Democratic nominee for president.They smartly refused to issue a blanket order; most bishops wanted no part in such a political inquisition.

Don't miss the comments!

300,000 Terri Schiavos.

From David Dayen at FireDogLake on the new ANH directive from the USCCB:

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops released an “Ethical and Religious Directive” this month that would ban any Catholic hospital, nursing home or hospice program from removing feeding tubes or ending palliative procedures of any kind, even when the individual has an advance directive to guide their end-of-life care. The Bishops’ directive even notes that patient suffering is redemptive and brings the individual closer to Christ.

The Catholic bishops have become more involved in political fights in recent years, particularly the issue of abortion coverage and immigration provisions in the current health care debate. This has caused a schism in the American Catholic community, which bubbled to a head yesterday with Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) being denied communion because of his position on choice.

More quietly, however, the Church has staked out a radical position on end-of-life care, without patients of the 565 Catholic hospitals and other Catholic care facilities even knowing about it. As Barbara Coombs Lee, president of Compassion and Choices, an advocacy group, put it, “When a patient goes to one of these facilities, they don’t know that they’re choosing Catholic dogma. The bishops see the hospitals as an extension of their ministry.”

The “Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services” put out by the Catholic bishops would build upon a Papal allocution given in the wake of the controversial Terri Schiavo case, where the US Congress stepped in to keep Schiavo alive despite her persistent vegetative state and the wishes of her husband to end care. The papal elocution did state that the permanently unconscious should always have access to a feeding tube, but it did not have the force of doctrinal law behind it. “There was always some wiggle room” for Catholic care facilities, said Coombs Lee. Catholics were allowed to use something called a “benefit/burden balance” to determine the ethical, moral and compassionate result in any individual case.

Now, that wiggle room is gone. In the new directive, the bishops state that it is unethical and immoral to withhold or withdraw a feeding tube from patients, whether in cases of permanent unconsciousness, comas, or even cases of advanced dementia when the patient is unable to feed themselves.

This substitutes the wishes of the bishops for the stated wishes of families and the patients themselves, said Coombs Lee. Even if the family can produce an advance directive or living will, Catholic hospitals and nursing homes would be expected to maintain the feeding tubes. In addition, all Catholic health care workers are required by their faith to continue palliative care, according to the document. The directive even addresses patients. “These are directives for you, from the church,” said Coombs Lee.

Looking At the Manhattan Declaration from Abroad.

From Thaindian News:

Washington, Nov. 22, (THAINDIAN NEWS) The “Manhattan Declaration: A Call To Christian Conscience” was publicly announced on Friday. The declaration has a set of appeals to a rapidly tolerant society that seems to agree to those that the Christian faith allegedly condemns. The declaration clearly states that the followers would even resort to a civil disobedience movement if required, in order to uphold the principles guide-lined in the declaration. Needless to say, the declaration came as a huge threat to the LGBT community as it denounced marriage between the same sex.

The declaration also denounced anything that hinders the normal process of life, will not be followed by the Christian institutions. By “anti-life”activities, the declaration stated euthanasia, that is touted as “assisted suicide”, abortion and “embryo destructive research.” Relationships between a man and a man or a woman and a woman or between transsexuals and bisexuals were tagged as immoral by the declaration. The declaration made it very clear that such relationships will in no way be treated as normal or as marriages. The declaration also made it pretty clear that the Catholics and the Evangelists would not refrain from preaching the ideals that they have taught so far, no matter what the state decides on such matters.

The Manhattan Declaration is a direct blow to the existing system of tolerance that seems to prevail in the atmosphere regarding same sex, transsexual and bisexual relationships. It also delivers a major punch to the fact that the states are already pushing for legal euthanasia. The leaders of the Catholic, Evangelist and the Orthodox groups supported their views by saying that these convictions are the basis of their religion and that its a necessity to follow them.

A Reminder of Catholic Law on "Euthanasia."

Griffin Morality reminds us of the Catechism of the Catholic Church guidelines on euthanasia:

CCC 2276: Those whose lives are diminished or weakened deserve special respect. Sick or handicapped persons should be helped to lead lives as normal as possible.

CCC 2277: Whatever its motives and means, direct euthanasia consists in putting an end to the lives of handicapped, sick, or dying persons. It is morally unacceptable.
Thus an act or omission which, of itself or by intention, causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator. The error of judgment into which one can fall in good faith does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded.

CCC 2278: Discontinuing medical procedures that are burdensome, dangerous, extraordinary, or disproportionate to the expected outcome can be legitimate; it is the refusal of “over-zealous” treatment. Here one does not will to cause death; one’s inability to impede it is merely accepted [in the case that death is inevitable as a result of the current ailment]. The decisions should be made by the patient if he is competent and able or, if not, by those legally entitled to act for the patient, whose reasonable will and legitimate interests must always be respected.

CCC 2279: Even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted. The use of painkillers to alleviate the sufferings of the dying, even at the risk of shortening their days, can be morally in conformity with human dignity if death is not willed as either an end or a means, but only foreseen and tolerated as inevitable. Palliative care is a special form of disinterested charity. As such it should be encouraged.

The rules read sound enough. Yet the USCCB has moved to count artificial nutrition and hydration (ANH) not as "over-zealous" treatment for a dying person but as ordinary care. Currently it is legal to remove a patient from ANH in all 50 states. Soon, in all 600 Catholic hospitals, removal from ANH will be forbidden according to their Ethical and Religious Directives (ERDs).

More Criticism for the USCCB's Attempts to Amend Health Care Bill.

Some Catholic and "pro-life" groups are criticizing the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) for their efforts this weekend to encourage parishioners to advocate for changes in the proposed health care reform bill. Many feel the USCCB has not gone far enough, like American Life League's Judie Brown:

"But we remind the USCCB that Catholics cannot stop at opposing abortion and demanding conscience protection. Where is the USCCB on the health care reform bills’ potential to fund Planned Parenthood, to use our tax dollars to indoctrinate children with sex education in schools, to fund euthanasia, in vitro fertilization, human embryonic stem cell research, contraception and health care rationing?

"All of these things are present in all of the current versions of the health care bill. None of these are acceptable according to Catholic teaching. All Catholics are duty bound to reject 'health care reform' if it contains any of the above grievous offenses against human life and personhood.

"Catholics need to know why, at every level, these proposals are fraught with death and destruction of the soul.

"Finally, Catholics need to know that the USCCB, acting of itself, carries no authority to instruct the bishops on the governance of their flocks. It is imperative that each and every bishop make a public statement condemning these health care proposals until they exclude any provisions for:

- abortion

- human embryonic stem cell research

- contraceptives

- rationed care

- in vitro fertilization

- euthanasia

- sex education in schools

Conservative Opposition To Catholic-Encouraged Amendments to Health Care Reform.

At least one Catholic thinks the USCCB's efforts to motivate Catholics to change/amend the health care reform bill is - and this is kind of funny - "a co-coordinated effort between the congressional leaders and the USCCB."

Pewsitter is calling his post "The Boomerang Effect" and in some strange twist of logic, seems to think that Bishops are working for Democrats or Obama in order to bring health care reform about:

In their fantastic thinking, the bishops believe that Congress can move the entire country to a national health bureaucracy, and it will expand the medical services to people and not uniformly contract them. This utopian pie-in-the-sky error is standard reasoning from their quarter. .

There are endless ways that Congress can seemingly capitulate to the Bishops’ demands, thus giving them a green light to do what they would very much love to do, support the bill wholeheartedly.Regardless of the U.S. Bishops’ healthcare formations, there is no real way to produce this government takeover and not have more abortions, rationing, euthanasia, and coercion. It is intrinsic to the machine being set into motion. The details are incidental. Any possible protections would be temporary at best, and the bishops, poised and hoping for success of the plan, are vulnerable to a Democrat feint.

Even if the Bishops were able to force the adoption of pro-life amendments that have been introduced by Republicans and blue dog Democrats, the courts would still be free to change these provisions and unleash the pro-death lobby against the elderly, sick and unborn. The court majorities exist and most of the insidious amoral laws we suffer with today have relied upon key court interventions around the country.

We are in great danger that the bishops will turn around and bolt in the wrong direction based on some weak or deceptive accommodation- - and that much of the best part of the Catholic population--mass-going, sensible, elderly, impressed by their bishop’s pastoral attention and Washington’s new listening ears, will shift their opinions from where they are today and seal their own fates.

It’s amazing to me that a group of leaders who give so much time on behalf of the unborn, the sick, and the poor would ever support a national health scheme in the first place. Has the Conference solicited the advice of one medical professional, perhaps even the Catholic Medical Association?

Chalk one up for conspiracy-minded crazy when it comes to health care reform, a democratic government, and a black president.

Redefining "Pro-Life."

Using the story of Jesus' healing of blind Bartimaeus' as a metaphor for how "pro-life" supporters must daily open their heart to new ways of seeing and redefine the definition of "pro-life," Father Thomas Rosica writes today at Salt+Light:

Disciples of Jesus have vision problems. How often do we use the metaphor of blindness to describe our inability to grasp the meaning of the suffering we endure? We sometimes describe our blindness as an inability to see the forest for the trees, but that is a rather simplistic analysis. More worrisome is the inherited blindness which so often assumes that there are no lessons left to learn. Arrogance is very often the root of our blindness. We need the miracle of restored sight each day.

What corners of the Church, of society and of our culture need serious healing, restoration and reformation in our time? Where are our blind spots? Where are the big problems with near-sightedness and far-sightedness? How often do we prefer monologue to dialogue, refusing to believe that we might learn from those who oppose us and disagree with us; refusing to engage the culture around us and preferring a narrow, obstinate and angry way of existing? How often do we say that there are no other ways to look at an issue than our way…or the highway!

This promising plea for open minds then trails off into a reminder that abortion is not the only "pro-life" issue on the platform.

If our sight, pro-life energies and efforts are limited only to atrocities against the unborn, it can lead to blindness. We must not ignore the other great challenge faced by humanity today–the serious question of mercy killing, or euthanasia, no longer found in abstract cases and theories. It concerns ordinary people and is debated not only in Congresses or Parliaments but also around dinner tables and in classrooms. Euthanasia is false and misguided mercy.

To say that we are pro-life means that we are against whatever is opposed to life itself, such as any type of murder, genocide, abortion, euthanasia or willful self-destruction. We stand firmly against whatever violates the dignity of the human person such as mutilation, torments inflicted on body or mind, attempts to coerce the will itself, whatever insults human dignity such as subhuman living conditions, arbitrary imprisonment, deportation, slavery, prostitution, the selling of women and children, and disgraceful working conditions where people are treated as instruments of gain rather than as free and responsible persons. All of these things and more destroy human life and poison human society.

I am personally delighted by entreaties by pastors to focus on poverty, imprisonment (though he qualifies "arbitrary"), rights for the impaired, the disabled, the abused. For far too long, "pro-life" has been used to mean anti-abortion. Recent Catholic writings have worked to expand that definition to include "unjust" war and capital punishment as well as other injustices against society's disadvantaged.

Yet Rosica's call for renewing the definition of "pro-life" would be more meaningful to me if it weren't, as I suspect, being used to focus the Church on euthanasia. To be clear, as aid in dying is legal in some parts of the world, it is almost exclusively used for the terminal, in other words, for someone who is already dying from some crippling disease for which there is no cure.

The patient, of sound mind and less than six months to live, is already condemned to death. They probably love life and deeply regret its impending end, yet realize that the end is nonetheless coming. They don't wish to kill themselves - depression is not the cause of their death wish; they wish to end the suffering caused by their disease in a way that is humane and dignified.

I've read a lot of hideous commentary lately about how suffering is redemptive, how it has meaning and makes us better, how it is God's will that we should suffer to emulate his death on the cross, that God does not give us more pain and suffering than we can handle. I find it all blasphemous and degrading to the afflicted patient. It reeks of justification of illness, as illness as punishment by God.

It is the disease, which we have failed to cure, that causes the suffering. It is the disease which has determined the terminal patient's end. It is the disease which has struck them down and ended their vitality. And it is the disease that will cost them quality of life, dignity, and comfort.

Rather than see the Catholic Church promote the ghastly suffering of afflicted patients, I would prefer they focus on scientific research into the causes of these diseases, into the corporate deregulation that has allowed the polluting of our water and environment, into the medical industry that over-treats and over-medicates us so as to turn a grotesque profit on our pains.

Yet, I know that my definition of "pro-life" will have no effect on the great Catholic Church or it's teaching, I am encouraged by those denominations that do understand that "pro-life" should also include work to end suffering. These denominations espouse the true meaning of life. They are the religious left. It is their message that I find most uplifting as we face new diseases, work to end continued injustices, and challenge society to alleviate the suffering of "the least of these."

Unfortunately, the Catholic Church continues to be hindered by its own blindness.

Terri Schindler Schiavo Foundation Fundraiser Email.

Today I received this fundraising email, written by Bobby Schindler, Terri Schiavo's brother. I will see him speak on Saturday at the PA "Pro-Life" event in Scranton.

I print the letter in full so that you can see the many arguments against aid in dying from the "pro-life" standpoint. The foundation includes Schiavo's maiden name, Schindler, because the family wishes to claim back her legacy from her husband, Michael Schiavo, who successfully worked to end her "suffering" via the courts.

"As the Director of the largest organization in the Catholic Church whose exclusive aim is to bring an end to euthanasia as well as abortion, and as one of the handful of people who were allowed to be in Terri Schiavo's room during her final months and hours of life, I want to express my unqualified support and endorsement of the work of Terri's Foundation."

- Father Frank Pavone, Priests for Life

October 2009

Dear Friends,

As you probably know, it was because of Terri's inhumane suffering and death that our family established Terri's Foundation. We did this to honor Terri's legacy of love for life but, even more importantly, to make certain that the tens of thousands of families trying to protect their loved ones in situations like Terri's would never have to endure what our family experienced - having to watch a loved one barbarically die by dehydration over a two-week period.

Now more than ever all of us at Terri's Foundation remain dedicated to continuing this fight! Not only in loving memory of Terri, but now, also in memory of my wonderful father, for his dedication and his commitment to helping other families during his remaining years.

My parents were never the same after being forced to watch their daughter die such a horrific death. Especially my dad, who was unable to accept the fact that as a father, he could not protect his child from the people that were intent on deliberately killing her because of her disability.

It is Happening EVERY DAY! Please Join Us in This Fight by clicking here to Help Today!

There are countless cognitively disabled, elderly and other people with disabilities who need to be protected. In fact, this past year, Terri's Foundation has received an increasingly amount of contact from disabled individuals or their advocates asking for assistance in many different forms.

With involvement in upwards of 200 cases, and to the extent our resources have permitted, we have provided assistance, and fortunately we have played a key role in helping to save many lives. But it is clear that the need is much greater!

Moreover are the recent news stories that have been exposing the potential dangers of a government controlled health care. In particular is Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the health adviser toPresident Barack Obama, who is explicit in pushing a "quality of life" ethic, making it known that there should be some arbitrary standard in deciding not only who should get medical care but also whose life is worth saving.

Even more alarming however, is that since Terri's Foundation was established we have come to realize that these types of decisions are already being made. In many states, hospitals have formed ethics committees that are responsible for deciding who should or should not receive life-sustaining treatment. And if Obamacare takes over health care, we must realize the possibility that every American may be affected by health care rationing.

A Multi-Billion Dollar Funded Industry!

We are grateful for your past support, but we cannot do this alone. We need your help!

The culture of death movement in this nation is funded by multi-billion dollar industries seeking to gain further profit from the de-valuation and destruction of the weak, the elderly and persons with disabilities. In order to make tangible gains against the pro-death mentality and to advance the Culture of Life through loving action, education, and advocacy, financial resources are crucial.

That is why it is vitally important that you click here and help Terri's Foundation today! Please join us in the battle for the cognitively vulnerable, the elderly and chronically ill by helping today!

As we said, we are committed to not only helping families, but to exposing the dangers of a very aggressive death mentality permeating our nation today! We will continue to help keep you informed about what you can do to not just protect yourself, but your family as well.

In loving memory of both Terri and our wonderful and courageous dad, I sincerely hope that you will help us build a Culture of Life!

Sincerely,
Bobby Schindler

Pharmacists and the Conscience Clause.

Filed under the key word(s) Catholic Persecution, CausaNostraeLaetitiae relates a story of a pharmacist who is concerned that her profession as a pharmacist is being undermined by, uh, filling drug prescriptions:

My personal thought is how can one hear the whispers of the Holy Spirit while drugged up? And drug seeking behavior can be seen from people in any walk of life. Legal drug abuse is phenomenal! It is hard to believe how many drugs some people take. Then when I realized that birth control pills had abortifacient properties, I knew I could not be a retail pharmacist that dispenses those. I left my position in Jan. 1998 and wasunemployed for about 6 months. Then I was offered a position with a home health/IV pharmacy and that was great. I did that for 7 years. Then the franchise closed. A pharmacist who I had worked for in the past offered me a part time position in a grocery store pharmacy and I was allowed a conscience clause and I did that until I moved away last year. I have not found a position here where I can work in accord with my conscience. There is a nursing home pharmacy but even there I have a prejudice that many folks are in nursing homes because they take too many drugs! Do I want to be a part of that, even if legal? So you see I have many issues with my profession. And now the coming mandating of giving vaccines and shots and following that may be the dispensing of drugs for euthanasia. I cannot do that either.

My beautiful profession! Look what has happened to it."

At least he/she acknowledges their conscience as a prejudice. Among the drugs dispensed that this pharmacist objects to? H1N1 vaccine, psycho-tropic drugs, tranquilizers, sleeping medications, of course birth control, and the "dangerous Gardasil Vaccine."

Philosophically, I support the use of conscience clauses to protect the rights of the religious in the work place. But predominantly in practice the conscience clause is used to promote a moral agenda and to shut down personal rights and choice. A woman who chooses to take birth control should encounter no problems filling that prescription; the pharmacy should be required to always have someone on staff that will fill her prescription.

Denial of access has been a profoundly effective tactic by "pro-life" groups to thwart womens' use of legal medical services like abortion. This use of conscience clauses is the exercise of prejudice, not religious freedom. Religious freedom should not mean religious imposition.

Excommunicating "Red" Kennedy, Posthumously.

Kevin Roeten at TheRealityCheck continues the hideous hacking away at Kennedy's legacy that began with his diagnosis of brain cancer last year.

Roeten points out the usual evils that Kennedy committed against the Catholic church - support for women's reproductive rights, efforts to reform health care (forever now erroneously tied to state-mandated euthanasia and abortion) and includes a few new ones: collusion with the evil Russians in the 80s.

Doug Patton, whose column in GOPUSA [Let Us Not Confuse Longevity With Statesmanship], brings back one of Kennedy’s most disreputable moments. What many consider treasonous occurred during the Cold War in 1983.
Kennedy sent word to Premier Yuri Andropov offering his help in undermining the Reagan Administration in its dealings with the USSR, in exchange for Andropov’s help in defeating Reagan in the 1984 presidential election. But we all have a short memory and few remember that.
What does one think of a US senator offering to help our sworn enemy in exchange for propaganda to win an election? Of course, a true Catholic would likely not stoop to such a move much less favor any intrinsic evil.

Is (wrongly assumed) communist sympathy now an official cause for excommunication from the Catholic church? Are there black racists in the NAACP?

Height of All Self-Importance: 9.11 Catholics Against Obama Care Campaign

Surely it's a sad joke. Of course no one would try to usurp September 11th, a day when we mourn those who died in Manhattan, to prevent 50 million Americans from having health care coverage?

From one of my favorite "Catholic Moms," this trite, self-absorbed, dramatic, and untruthful "grass roots movement!" to end the impending horrors and destruction of:

*health care coverage for all

*lower insurance payments for struggling families and business

*decreased bankruptcies due to health crisis

*more affordable and accessible health care and reproductive services for women

*reduced burden of health care costs on the government

*reigned-in unnecessary testing, treating and medicating as perpetuated by a profit-driven industry

*greater choice for seniors of how they die

*return of health decisions to the patient and doctor from profit driven corporations

*Americans laughing at and not taking John Voight or Mike Huckabee seriously

Yes, let's dedicate September 11 to the continued destruction of our moral, social, and ethical fabric?! To our economic downfall?! To lies and slander and theocracy?! And to the diminisment of our personal rights?!

For the rational I refute this one sentence (because the wacky text below will make any other points for me): Rosemary Bogdon quotes Jean Heimann: "Mandated abortion, health care rationing, and euthanasia are not health care."

Indeed! And thankfully, there is no such thing in any of the proposed health care bills. Such nonsense is pure partisan fear mongering perpetuated by the power-and-money motivated and the wilfully stupid.

Abortion is currently covered by 83% of insurance companies. Abortion is never mandated, in fact, because the right to abortion is based on a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body. Duh.

Health care is certainly rationed when 50 million Americans are kept without it and corporations make their decisions based on profit. That's what opponents of health care reform want. They say they don't want rationing and what they mean is they don't want the poor, ill, infirm, and disabled to have equal access to health care services.

A senior's decision to not have extreme, artificial treatments to prolong their death is their right. Euthanasia is illegal in the US. Death with Dignity is legal in Oregon, Washington, and Montana - a patient must be diagnosed as terminal, mentally sound, and must self-administer the medication. Death with Dignity is not end of life counseling. And that section of the bill, article 1233, has unfortunately been removed from reform anyhow.

Catholics Against Obama Care!!!
Beloved Catholic blogger Jean Heimann of Catholic fire has started a grassroots movement called
Catholics Against Obama Care

Today Jean has sent out the following press release:
Catholics Against Obama Care set September 11 as Day of Prayer and Fasting for defeat of Health Care Reform

For Immediate Release

(September 8, 2009) Catholics Against Obama Care is calling Catholics as well as those of other denominations to participate in a day of prayer and fasting on September 11, 2009, for the special intention that Obama health care reform be defeated.

Catholics Against Obama Care acknowledges that Catholic Church has always advocated health care reform; but Obamacare, as delineated in the HR-3200 Bill, is not health care -- it is death care. Mandated abortion, health care rationing, and euthanasia are not health care. Obamacare is government control over people's lives and, as Jon Voight points out the removal of a person's free will. Voight said in an interview on Fox News with Mike Huckabee, "They're taking away God's first gift to man -- our free will and no man no matter what his title, even if he's president of the United States, has the consent of God to decide he's God."

I'm not sure what free will Jean Heimann is referring to when she obviously doesn't believe in religious freedom, personal autonomy, or individual rights.

Graham Greene's Catholicism.

I've been reading The End of the Affair the past few days so when the opportunity came up to catch a Graham Greene double feature at Film Forum last night with two of my favorite religion scholars, I jumped.

Elizabeth Castelli, Chair of the Department of Religion at Barnard College, is author of Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making. Angela Zito is professor of Anthropology and Religious Studies at New York University and author of, Of Body and Brush: Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in 18th century China. Time with them is like a seminar in how to read, that most basic human task of observing and interpreting experience, be it a film, a social situation, family relations, a book, or a favorite TV show. I'm always richer for their company and conversation.

It was Elizabeth who remarked, prior to the films, on Graham Greene's astute writing on Catholicism. Greene wrote 26 novels, many of which address religion, and a handful of which were made into movies. In The End of the Affair Sarah promises God, when a bomb falls on her lover's flat, that she will believe in God should he survive. He does and it is this promise, in the midst of her avoided, latent faith, that cuts short their affair. Years later, as they try to reconcile, she decides to become Catholic but is struck down by a sudden illness.

From the book:

...Suddenly I saw her for what she was - a piece of refuse waiting to be cleared away: if you needed a bit of hair you could take it, or trim her nails if nail trimmings had value to you. Like a saint's her bones could be divided up - if anybody required them. She was going to be burnt soon so why shouldn't everybody have what he wanted first? What a fool I had been during three years to imagine that in any way I had possessed her. We are possesed by nobody, not even ourselves.

*

(From a letter from Sarah to her lover, Maurice Bendrix, a novelist, received after her death.) I love you but I can't see you again. I don't know how I'm going to live in this pain and longing and I'm praying to God all the time that he won't be hard on me, that he won't keep me alive. Dear Maurice, I want to have my cake and eat it like everybody else. I went to a priest two days ago before you rang me up and told him I wanted to be a Catholic. I told him about my promise and about you. I said, I'm not really maried to Henry any more. We don't sleep together - not since the first year with you. And it wasn't really a marriage, I said, you couldn't call a registry office a wedding. I asked him couldn't I be a Catholic and marry you? I knew you wouldn't mind going through a service. Every time I asked him a question I had such hope; it was like opening the shutters of a new house and looking for the view, and every window just faced a blank wall. No, no, no, he said, I couldn't marry you, I couldn't go on seeing you, not if I was going to be a Catholic. I thought, to hell with the whole lot of them and I walked out of the room where I was seeing him, and I slammed the door to show what I thought of priests. They are between us and God, I thought; God has more mercy, and then I came out of the church and saw the crucifix they have there, and I thought, of course, he's got mercy, only it's such an odd sort of mercy, it sometimes looks like punishment.

In both the films we watched last night, it is knowledge or truth - or the resolution of plot - that hinge on relics: in The Fallen Idol, it is Mrs. Baines' footprint in spilled dirt; in Brighton Rock, it is a phonograph record made by Pinky for his new bride, Rose. Both "villains," tortured by their inability to love or be loved, experience "an odd sort of mercy" that "looks like punishment."

The Fallen Idol and Brighton Rock are showing as a double feature at Film Forum through Tuesday, September 1.