As we all know, with the HHS Mandate, our friends at the USCCB have been doing everything to preserve "Religious Liberty." I've mentioned off hand that I disagree with the concept of Religious Liberty and we should be arguing the HHS Mandate upon a different point rather than the religious liberty argument.
a. A Pluralistic society, not in of itself a problem...but a problem nonetheless.
Let me start by proposing a simple question: "Where does life begin" Different groups have different answers to this question....let's look at the possible answers:
Group A: Life begins at conception
Group B: Life begins when a baby comes out of the mother.
Group C: Life begins at the first heartbeat
Group D: We can't have a definite answer of when life begins
Group E: Life does not begin until you graduate from college
Group F: Life begins when you die.
Each of these answers would be respectable to give in a debate. There is of course an objective correct answer to this question of when life begins. I suppose that someone could technically ignore the question and leave everyone to their own devices. Of course the reality is that this can't be ignored because of the implication of different aspects of our lives. From when do our rights begin, to what sorts of laws can be applied.
We have seen in our society a tendency to want to ignore fundamental questions. In the whole debate on abortion, euthanasia, ESCR, it comes down to a simple point...where does life begin (that has been answered) and where do rights begin (subject to the laws of each country). This is by no means a perfect example, I am just using it to illustrate what happens when fundamental questions are ignored.
In American society, we have many different religions, that so seem to co-exist relatively peacefully. The government plays to the role of neutral when it comes to the matter of which one is right. Does anyone see the problem in this?
The whole notion of Religious Liberty has bothered me from the beginning.If you want to see real Religious LIberty being violated, I suggest you read this article....here
The HHS mandate is not a violation of religous Liberty, as the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is not illegal, and priests will still be able to teach the Faith. It is however, a material cooperation with evil, and that is something that we as Catholics can't accept. This is what we should be fighting the HHS mandate on, we are cooperating with evil. We are cooperating with the destruction of innocent human life.
My problem is that we're not calling evil evil, we're just dancing around the issue like we have been expecting different results...
When o when?
As someone who's been at the heart of the Religious Liberty effort, I have to agree with you. Our appeals to constitutionality have been falling on deaf ears. Whereas abortion is a polarizing issue, it seems like with religious liberty, no one cares because we haven't demonstrated how it directly affects us. Most of us don't work for religious employers.
ReplyDeleteOh, the counter-argument you'd get from folks in the RL movement is that you've described "freedom of worship," not "freedom of religion." And the Obama Administration wants to redefine the constitutional right from "freedom of religion" to "freedom of worship."
ReplyDeleteAnd my response to the counter argument, that would be the case if the Faith was not being allowed in the public square. But the Catholic Faith is being allowed in the public square, it's not being made illegal to talk about Catholicism in public, or even let the Faith influence policies. The cooperation in material evil though is not a condition for these things to exist. It's a condition to purchase health insurance...which isn't obligatory for people to have (Well, it shouldn't be anyway)
ReplyDeleteWhat I find fascinating is that the Left (e.g., the ACLU) took the side of Humanitarian Law Project (HLP) in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project (SCOTUS case) wherein HLP argued that they should be able to support organizations listed as terrorist organizations provided that "some" of their activity was not terrorism. In other words, if Al Qaeda has a tree-planting venture on the side, it would be okay to give to Al Qaeda. The Left is okay with that, but doesn't want us to be able to object to material cooperation in evil. By the way, Elena Kagan argued for the government agaings HLP. (She had to, of course. I'm glad she won.)
ReplyDelete*...argued for the government against HLP."
ReplyDeleteOf course if the left actually used logic, they'd be on our side ;)
ReplyDelete