This week Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. conference of Cathlic Bishops, urged Catholic parishoners to become politically involved in order to join a "freedom of religion battle" against the Obama administration. Dolan's complaints have become a standard rallying cry for Republican presidential candidates Romney, Santorum and Gingrich. During the February 22 debate, Romney put the matter in extraordinarily stark terms. "I don't think we've seen in the history of this country the kind of attack on religious conscience, religious freedom, religious tolerance that we've seen under Barack Obama,"
I entirely agree. During the period in which Obama has been in office, we have indeed witnessed an assault on religious freedom unprecedented in recent history. And the Conference of Bishops, the GOP candidates, and everyone else should be outraged.
Just imagine any period since the 1960s in which law enforcement agencies send agents to infiltrate and spy on religious communities. We are not talking, mind you, about following a lead on a suspect that leads to a religious organization, we are talking about spying on congregations in the hope of finding something incriminating on some of its members. That is what the New York Police Department has been doing, both in New York City and in cities as far away as New Jersey. The NYPD Intelligence Division sent agents to infiltrate mosques and report on what was said during religious services, snapped pictures and collected license plate numbers of congregants as they arrived to pray, eavesdropped in cafes and monitored Muslim neighbourhoods. Muslim student groups were infiltrated, and new Muslim converts who took Arabic names had those names compiled in police databases. Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence David Cohen is quoted describing the approach as, "Take a big net, throw it out, catch as many fish as you can and see what we get." Cohen's ambitious goal, according to officials, was to have an agent in every mosque within a 250-mile radius of New York City.
How can there fail to be a "chilling effect" on the free exercise of religion under those circumstances? Here, unmistakably, is a pattern of infringement on religious liberty taking place during Obama's presidency. And in the face of this obvious governmental intrusion into the lives of religious communities the position of the GOP candidates thus far has been... nothing. The same goes for the Conference of Catholic Bishops (at least, nothing that I can find on their website, or publicly proclaimed to the congregations in sermons and to the media in press conferences) and various evangelical organizations of the religious Right. Dolan is Archbishop of New York -- one might have thought that his principled stand on behalf of religious freedom extended at least as far as his own bishopric. But apparently nothing that the government has done to infringe on the religious liberties of Muslims has caused any of these spokesmen for the cause of religious liberty any discomfort.
What the candidates and the bishops are upset about, of course, is the Obama administration's insistence that if they fit certain criteria, religious employers are required to provide their employees with health insurance that includes a menu of coverage including contraception. Churches and other organizations that primarily employ and serve their co-religionists are exempt from the requirement, as it happens, but Catholic universities and hospitals are not. But anyway, that, we are continually being told, is not the point. The GOP candidates and the Conference of Bishops are not taking up this cause on behalf of Catholics, they are making a principled stand on behalf of all Americans of faith. That's why the Blunt Amendment that was defeated in the Senate would have required exemptions for all employers who have religious or moral objections from contributing to the cost of insurance for any service to which they have religious or moral objections. (I will leave it to the readers' imaginations to come up with possible candidates for such "moral objections." Consider the fact that Bob Jones University banned interracial dating until 2000, and take it from there.)
There is a great deal that may be said about the contraception coverage requirement. As a policy matter, of course, the problem is that our entire system is based on getting employers to carry the costs of health, unemployment and disability insurance. Insisting that any employer should be able to opt out of any coverage requirements on grounds of conscience, as the Blunt Amendment would have required, poses the risk of wrecking the system's ability to ensure the broad availability of health care. (The problem, ironically, would not exist in a single payer government-funded system.) As a matter of current constitutional doctrine, in 1990, the U.S. Supreme Court (opinion by Scalia) ruled that under the First Amendment there is no requirement to exempt religious actors from the requirement of a "generally applicable" law. Employment Division, Oregon Dept. of Human Services, v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990). That case was controversial, and I believe it was wrongly decided, and in any case there is certainly nothing wrong with the Catholic Church or anyone else asserting that the Court got something wrong. But in the absence of a change in constitutional doctrine, there is little in the law that can be said here.
That leaves politics. Scalia was quite forthright in his description of the likely consequences of his opinion in Smith. "It may fairly be said that leaving accommodation to the political process will place at a relative disadvantage those religious practices that are not widely engaged in; but that unavoidable consequence of democratic government must be preferred to a system in which each conscience is a law unto itself."
And there you have it. Our religion is widely practiced and has political power, therefore it deserves accommodation. Your religion is not as widely practiced, therefore we have nothing to say on the matter. Romney, in particular, might have been expected to articulate a more consistent principle that would benefit minority religions, but apparently the rigors of a presidential campaign do not permit such vacant philosophizing.
So I repeat, I am in agreement with the complaints of Romney, Santorum, Gingrich and Cardinal Dolan that freedom of religion in America is threatened. And I will take those complaints very seriously -- the instant they show signs of extending that freedom to any religion but their own.
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But these modern Pharisees would rather parade their piousness around then help the poor.
Jesus is the god of the poor. The "christian" right worship money.
--Robert Heinlein, Time Enough for Love
This quote shows exactly what's wrong with the Santorums of the world, and why we on the left need to fight for the rights of ALL to keep religion out of government!
He, no Make'a da rules.
-- Earl Butz
Its a matter or religious freedom alright. Its a matter of religious institutions insisting that they have a right to tell their employees how they can spend the money they earned, and to prevent their employees from having the freedom to practice their religion, or not, as the employee sees fit.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/03/us/milwaukee-archdiocese-angers-many-by-contesting-abuse-claims.html
Maybe not, and it's a good thing we hire people to make these decisions.
While I do believe that the different religions should be left alone by our government, Islam is very different from all the other religions present in this country.
Islam is not only a religion, it is also a form of government. A form of government whose ultimate goal is to destroy our government and to convert everyone to their religion and government. Something Muslims around the world have no shyness in expressing.
This makes it a completely different issue than simple religious freedom.
I happen to prefer the individual liberties and rights that are protected by our government. I do not want other forms of government, especially those that have no respect for individual liberty and that do not seem to know what an individual right would be.
And let's not forget that many of the same sort of government representatives have been infiltrating Christian churches, Jewish synagogs, Buddhist temples and any other religious organization's gatherings places. It's been going on for centuries.
The funny thing is that none of then other religious organizations have as their central theme the destruction of this country. (due to the infiltrators?)
Let the infiltration continue.
Gingrich would say 1+1=3 if he thought it would win him votes. My dog barking has more meaning than one of Newt's character attacks.
One thing that I have always wondered if how on Earth the GOP got to be the standard bearer for Christianity. Liberals want to help the poor, those in prison and the downtrodden, meeting GOP opposition every step of the way. The GOP is quick to pull out the issue of Gay rights as some sort of insult to Christianity. Yet I somehow can't imagine Jesus condemning someone for loving someone else. Then there's abortion. But I can't remember him saying a single thing about it. I do, however, remember him embarrassing those who were to carry out civil justice by stoning a prostitute and then talking to her in a 1-on-1 regarding her behavior, the content of that discussion revealed in the gospel story but quite honestely irrelevant given that it was private.
We ow see our illustrious GOP candidates, stepping all over each other, a contest on how much abjest hate they can spit at Barack Obama, Muslims and liberals. Who's off message now?
NOT TO MENTION that we are also responsible somehow to pony up for the poor nations of the rest of the world - most of which ends up in the hands of dictators and bankers. Even better we are also now in the business of removing dictators from other countries so they can be run by the Muslim Brotherhood. Tell me where I have in a say how the IRS extortionists are using my redistributed money and who it is "helping"?
Bloated unions and going beyond helping the truely needy does exist. Agree and conceded. But don't throw the baby out witht he bath water and don't ignore the many. many more truely needy that do get helped. I hated paying taxes in 04 and beyond knowing that some of it was being spent on the Iraq war (a.k.a. an oil grab gone bad). Still, I have to bite my tongue and, by the argument I made above, have to say that "WE" decided to do this together. And I do not characterize the $$ that the government pulled out of my hide as extortion.
Back to the point... the left advocates public support of the needed (despite some abuses) whereas the right advocates voluntary giving. Given how top heavy our wealth distribution is, the voluntary system seems not to be working very well. Regardles, the intent definately lines up well with Christianity (as Jesus taught it anyway) as opposed to a "let them rely on voluntary charity". And its no wonder. The very nature of capitalism it to select against those who give money away.
Meaningless. The state is not a religious institution nor do they force the churches in their states to violate church doctrine.
"altered... to accommodate... Would an oppressive administration do that?"
This administration hasn't altered anything, it did not accommodate the church. Making administration sympathizers who believe they caved a little is the value of their double-speak. In fact, anyone who thinks it did alter anything needs to take a few course from a school of critical thinking.
"Religion has to evolve with the culture"
Nonsense. Religion has to do nothing. If some don't like what the church teaches, you have the perfect opportunity to stay away.
"eat meat on Fridays" An many Catholics use contraception. So what. This just shows that the church does not have as much of a grip on people has the left would have you think.
"personally find it hard to sympathize with a group who whines about abortion, but then whines about a major prevention method..."
Whines about killing innocent babies? It seems someone has to defend the defenseless and it may as well be the church. Government has given up on the job and our population doesn't seem to up to the task on our own.
But, being the opposition researcher who has had to make do in America's complete and total absence of any liberal mainstream media, I have something to add.
It was the Supreme Court of 1963 -- yes, that hated 1963 of rulings against public school sponsored religion -- that began granting conscience exemptions like that which the Catholic bishops seek -- and what Scalia's ruling abolished.
It was called the Sherbert-Yoder doctrine.
Google away, folks.
Something about an extended work week....which included a day the church required be 'a day of rest'....GOOD RESEARCH!