Mother Angelica’s network isn’t buying Obama’s religious liberty ruse

[rug]

By Marc A. Thiessen, Monday, February 13, 11:58 AM

Don’t pick a fight, the saying goes, with a man who buys ink by the barrel. Here’s a corollary for President Obama: Don’t pick a fight with an elderly, retired, cloistered nun who founded the world’s largest religious media network.

That is precisely the mistake Obama made when his administration announced that religious employers like Mother Angelica’s Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) would be forced to provide coverage for contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs — a violation of their deeply held religious beliefs. The Obama policy, EWTN declared in a federal lawsuit last week, is “un-American, unprecedented and flagrantly unconstitutional.”

Millions of Americans agreed. And faced with a political firestorm, President Obama on Friday announced what he termed an “accommodation” of religious employers: the mandate to provide abortifacient drugs, sterilization and contraception would remain in place — but insurers will be required to provide them for “free.” The decision has been called everything from a compromise to capitulation — but in truth the president didn’t retreat one inch.

Under the revised policy Obama announced, the government still coerces religious institutions to purchase insurance policies that include services they consider gravely immoral. And put aside, for a moment, Obama’s arrogance in presuming that the federal government can simply order private businesses to give a product away for free. Liberals like Obama don’t seem to realize that there is nothing “free” in this world. Unlike many of the religious groups Obama has targeted, insurance companies are not charities. Someone will have to pay. That someone will eventually be the religious institutions. The costs will be passed on, over time, via higher premiums — which means religious employers will still be forced to pay for services they consider immoral and unjust.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/mother-angelicas-network-isnt-buying-obamas-contraception-ruse/2012/02/13/gIQAf3B6AR_story.html

Further in there's interesting information about how some religious organizations have chosen to self insure due to existing state regulations.

[CreekDog]

1. Look Obama, just climb every mountain, ford every stream...

yadda yadda yadda, do what you gotta do on contraception.

[Warpy]

2. Well, not quite, Mother Angelica

The insurance companies have to provide the coverage. You don't. Your hands will be clean, dear, and if you've done a proper job bullying the Catholics who work for you, none of them will dare to go on birth control and you'll keep having a high turnover rate due to unplanned and unwanted pregnancy.

What these fools refuse to admit to is that religious freedom is a right guaranteed to people, not organizations.

Another thing they need to realize is that the god they dare to speak for has given us all free will and it's not their job to take that away by forcing their dogma into law.

However, this article admits what the bottom line for these bastards really is: money. They and the insurance companies are terrified women are going to cost them something that men don't. And that's really what the whole stink is about: shortchanging women by denying them the health care specific to their sex.

[Thats my opinion]

3. Under the new plan----or the old one,

Nobody is forced to get or use any birth a control device. It is entirely voluntary. All that is demanded is that if you have insurance you have the availability. And that is true of all the private insurance plans around the country.

[Angry Dragon]

4. A sex boycott is called for

[izquierdista]

5. I hadn't heard that saying

I seem to recall one that says "If you visit the shit-flinging monkeys at the zoo, stand behind the glass". I think when this is all over, Obama is not going to be the one with stink on his hands.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. What do you expect from a far right partisan like Thiessen?

He's playing politics with it; that's why he dismisses Sister Carol Keehan as 'the Catholic left'.

The man is as great a wanker as he was when he wrote speeches for Dubya.

[Brettongarcia]

7. EWTN is a right-wing front; it and Angelica offer a false "Catholic" theology re relig. compromise

Against what it and some bishops say, against the compromise:

The Bible tells us to make our compromises with governments; give unto Caesar what is his; "obey your governors" or authorities. And in fact, the Bible is right in this.

To be sure, the balance between government - and between the many competing religions, too - is a delicate one, that is hard to achieve. Consider this relevant case: some Quaker pacifists for example, object that they don't want to pay the portion of their income tax, that goes to support the Defense Department. To pay for war, the military, is against the Quaker religion.

Are they allowed to do that? Are Quakers for example allowed not to fund, things they don't believe in?

In fact, they are not. What indeed would happen, if we in fact, instituted current objections to Catholics paying, however indirectly, for things they don't support? The US would collapse, among other things, from the claims of competing religions. If we allowed religions Absolute sway, the US would dissolve into a massive civil war.

And so instead? We allow the many competing religions, to have most of what they demand. But when their demands conflict with each other? Then? Then we ask them to be reasonable. And by the way? To pay their taxes, for the good of the larger community.

It is strange to think that any religion should be asked to compromise. And yet, as another example? For our Protestant founders, to even allow Catholicism within American borders, was an act of extraordinary generosity - and compromise - with other religions. As they interact with each other in the public marketplace and communities, overseen by government.

A Christian tolerance and broadmindedness - the Catholic virtue of "Charity" - is necessary here. Otherwise? Our various subcultures decend into provincial, tribal antagonisms, and anarchy.

[cleanhippie]

8. Who gives a shit, the American Public (especially women) is buying it, and thats all that matters.

I think this whole kerfuffle was great! It showed just how misogynistic and out of touch the catholic church really is, and had only served to make it even less relevant.

Thats a good thing.

[Brettongarcia]

9. Rug? Why are you buying EWTN's right wing BS?

In order for the many different religions in America, to get along, and cohere in one country? They have to compromise.