The President and his bumbling HHS bureaucrats take on the impious Galileans.
“During a recent conversation about the HHS anti-conscience mandate, a friend who is neither Catholic nor particularly religious asked the following rhetorical question about the Obama administration: Do these people know who they’re messing with? Her point, of course, was that the Church has spent nearly two millennia crushing attempts by secular rulers to dictate the way it carries out its charitable ministries. Commanding Catholic hospitals to fund sterilizations, contraceptives, and abortifacients isn’t like twisting the arm of some roundheel congressman. It’s going to take more than the usual Chitown chicanery to cow a venerable and well-funded organization that has brought more than one emperor to his knees.
“The Church’s charitable work has been seen as a threat to the power of the state as far back as the reign of Julian the Apostate. Julian was the Roman Emperor who tried to drag his subjects back to the crumbling altars of the old state gods a half a century after his uncle, Constantine I, had legitimized Christianity by converting to the new faith. Julian’s project didn’t go well, and he complained in a letter to one of his high priests that the effort was failing because “the impious Galileans support not only their own poor but ours as well.” What’s an Emperor to do with opponents whose tactics include such dirty tricks as lending aid and comfort to all who need it, including people with religious and political views that differ from their own?
“Julian tried to counter the effect of such “impious” tactics by restructuring the imperial administration in such a way that it could compete with the “Galileans” in good works and thereby erode the connection in the public consciousness between charity and the Church. In a move that eerily echoes the progressive vernacular of our own age, Julian issued the Tolerance Edict of 362. The purpose of this decree, like calls for tolerance from modern liberals, was precisely the opposite of its ostensible intent. It reprivileged the old pagan cults, rescinded religious freedoms recognized by Constantine and attempted to sow dissention among Christian ranks by reigniting long-resolved doctrinal controversies.
“The Tolerance Edict” and a variety of similar edicts flopped. And, after Julian’s short reign ended, his successors gave up his pagan revival project as a bad job. But the meaning of Julian’s failure has been lost on many subsequent rulers, and Barack Obama is among the slow learners who refuse to heed the lessons of history. The president, like Julian, wishes to “transform” his country into a place in which every aspect of the citizen’s life is connected to and controlled by the state. He wants the federal government to be seen as the ultimate arbiter and provider of the electorate’s needs. Obviously, however, this can’t be managed while large and influential institutions like the Catholic Church and its charitable ministries remain in place…… MORE HERE
Believers feeding the hungry ...
While it is a dangerous game to call a person on their personal beliefs, in this case, if you stand back far enough, the scope of the, not anti-religion, but anti-biblical Christian Church – Catholic or Protestant – the scope of the encroachment into our “religious freedom,” has been growing since the early 60’s when prayer was removed from schools. Little by little, attitudes in media (including Hollywood) have grown increasingly anti-Christian. From the old Archie Bunker, who was portrayed as a bigot and misogynist against the liberal, compassionate, know-it-all college student son-in-law, “Meathead”, the media began to turn our culture upside down. What was good (kindness, gentleness, neighborly sharing) is now bad, and what was bad (gangsta, promiscuity, infidelity) is now good.
Attitudes tend to trickle down from the top, so whatever the attitudes of the leadership of a company, organization, or nation are, even without open discourse on the topics, those attitudes tend to trickle down to the membership, co-workers, and population. Clearly, the anti-Catholic/ anti-Christian rhetoric today has been growing beneath the surface for decades, but is now breaking forth into the open because of the attitudes of our current American leadership. Call it “conspiracy”, call it an agenda, call it apostasy … whatever we call it, it is more seditious, more dangerous to the American Dream, the American life-style, and the American ethos than any of the major issues we face as a nation.
What non-practicing Americans do not understand is that faith is not something a person does or doesn’t do. Faith is part of our being, our identity. Faith is how we look at life, how we walk through life, and how we face hard realities. Faith – real faith, cannot be put on a shelf. It is not put on Sunday morning and removed after a dutiful gathering. Faith cannot be divorced from the faithful individual, whether that faith in Judaism, Catholicism, or any of the Protestant-isms. However, within each of these groups is also a segment who are not faithful, but dutifully attend for any of several reasons we need not discuss here.
The point is our religious freedom is guaranteed in the Bill of Rights. “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;” The fact that Congress is dis-allowed from prohibiting the free exercise of one’s religious beliefs is what this whole debacle is about. In his effort to establish HIS Obamism-religion as a national religion, he has mandated behavior and payment for behaviors deemed unacceptable within a majority of adherents to an opposing, but predominant group of faithful Americans. Congress has so far been completely impotent in stopping or even discouraging him in his efforts. The question remains, are the faithful Americans going to be verbal enough to stop his mandates and those to come? Be assured, this healthcare edict is just the beginning!
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