The President of Belmont Abbey College President said he would close the college before submitting to the HHS mandate that would require them to provide coverage for contraceptives and sterilization procedures, according to Campus Notes.
Now that’s a Catholic college! Wow. President Bill Thierfelder gets some major CMR kudos for that. Now, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. As he said, there’s many stops to go before even considering something like that. But just that willingness to stand for something should inspire us.
But it’s clear that one of the goals of leftism is to drive the Catholic Church out of the public sphere.
What would happen though if they succeeded and the Catholic Church stopped being so darn Catholic and did things like help people.
I compiled a small list last year at the National Catholic Register of things that would happen if the Church stopped doing what the Church does.
Almost 7,000 schools would close in the United States alone. Already under-performing public schools suffering from overcrowding would likely collapse under the weight of about 2.6 million children showing up at the door expecting a free education. You think test scores are low now? Wait until 2.6 million more kids show up.
Over 200 Catholic colleges and universities with over 600,000 students would suddenly be without a school, leaving supply diminished and demand unchanged thus skyrocketing the already exorbitant cost of college.
The over 200 Catholic residential homes for children, or orphanages, which serve 50,000 children in a given year would be gone. The children would be shuttled into already crammed government programs or lost completely.
The over 84 million people who receive care at any of about 600 Catholic hospitals every year would be forced to seek help elsewhere, clogging up hospitals. The more than 15 million emergency room visits per year to Catholic hospitals would be headed to other hospitals already suffering from financial losses of emergency rooms. Emergency vehicles would also have increased travel times, driving up fatality rates.
The Catholic health care network, which also includes over 400 health care centers and over 1,500 specialized homes, would shut down. Many assisted living facilities, adult day care and senior housing would be gone.
Many crisis pregnancy centers would vanish, leaving women without options or help when they need it most.
Many homes for pregnant women or abused women would disappear, forcing women to the streets or a return to a perhaps abusive relationship from which they sought escape.
Nearly 70% of U.S. dioceses sponsor housing or housing-related services. That would stop, and homeless numbers would rise.
Over 135 national and hundreds more local Catholic lay organizations that serve the Church and provide services in communities throughout the United States like the Knights of Columbus and the Society of St. Vincent de Paul would disappear. To get an idea, in a given year, the K of C donated $139,711,619 to charity and volunteered 64,039,706 hours. All of that would be gone. The Society of St. Vincent de Paul has about 120,000 members serving 15 million people per year, which include 646,820 home visits, 360,596 hospital visits, 361,420 aged daycare visits, 159,257 prison visits, and $392 million in total expenditures and volunteer services. All gone.
The Catholic Church and organizations supported by the Catholic Church are the largest care providers of HIV and AIDS in the world. All of that would be gone.
The Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which has granted hundreds of millions to thousands of community-based, self-help projects initiated and led by people living in poverty, would cease all grants, leading to the destruction of programs aimed to help the poor.
Catholic Relief Services spends millions to help provide clean water, improve agriculture, and educate the young in countries with little access to any of it. But that too would all be gone along with programs that deliver mosquito nets to prevent malaria in Africa, without which thousands more would likely die needlessly of malaria.
Catholic Charities—which alone is the fourth largest charity in the United States, above the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, and consists of 1,400 agencies that run soup kitchens, temporary shelters, child care, and refugee resettlement all around the country and provides help for 6.5 million people, regardless of religious, social, or economic backgrounds—would be gone.
That’s not even close to a complete list. The Catholic Church is THE most charitable organization in the world. Bar none.
Yet still, the Church is viewed as the enemy of leftists in many cases and therefore must be wiped out. But the leftists are smart. They’re not going to attempt to wipe the Church out so much as make it non distinctive from the rest of the world. Assimilate it. Secularize it. Leave it as a shell.
And it’s that which Belmont Abbey College is standing up to. God bless them. It’s a fight worth fighting.
For more info check out Campus Notes.
November 22, 2011 at 4:56 pm
I am the proud sister of a 2011 Belmont Abbey grad. The school is amazing and they are being bullied. So major kudos to them for standing up where others would cower.
November 22, 2011 at 7:00 pm
But isn't closing the College exactly what they would want?
That seems like Rosa Parks boycotting public transport.
November 22, 2011 at 8:15 pm
Kudos to Belmont Abbey! I have a HS Freshman who wants to go there…
November 22, 2011 at 8:29 pm
What the Enemy wants is to remove the salt and light the Church provides to the world – so that the world will become "rotting darkness".
November 23, 2011 at 3:58 am
But isn't closing the College exactly what they would want?
Bingo. You don't close down. You stay open and you defy an unjust law.
November 23, 2011 at 12:14 pm
If a student asks for any contraception, throw them out.
November 23, 2011 at 12:54 pm
I know our local Catholic Hospital (run by the Sisters of St. Francis of Perpetual Adoration, who are awesome: http://www.ssfpa.org/Index.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=1 ) has said that if these mandates are enforced, it would have to close. That would be a HUGE LOSS to the community, but I'm really glad we have a hospital run by sisters who are true to the faith!
November 23, 2011 at 4:20 pm
I think they should really go a bit further here. Belmont Abbey, and all other Catholic institutions, should offer health insurance that explicitly defies the Sebelius mandate. And they should make this case: "We have a moral obligation to offer health insurance to our employees and students. We have a deeper obligation, one founded on the Eternal Truth that we live by, to offer such insurance that does not pay for baby-killing or for contraception. A Government that presses such an obligation is a Government that pushes the Reign of Evil. We answer to a higher authority. We defy you and your baby-killing mandates, and we dare you to put us in the dock about this."
November 24, 2011 at 3:53 am
When I worked for the Archdiocese of Indianapolis, the insurance did NOT cover contraception, abortion, sterilization or IVF. However, it covered adoption at 100%, just like it covered pregnancy.
It was an awesome testimony to the Diocese's commitment to the faith…
November 24, 2011 at 3:41 pm
It may come to closing up as a last resort, but I agree with those who advocate staying open and defying an unjust law non-violently. A quote from the movie "Gandhi": "I, for one, have never advocated passive anything. We must never submit to such laws. And I think our resistance must be active and provocative!"
AuntieD
November 24, 2011 at 3:57 pm
Your list of the consequences is excellent. But, you see, that won't phase the enemies of Catholicism one whit. It is a scorched-earth policy they have been intending all along, and don't delude yourself into thinking that the Republicans will come charging to the rescue.
But closing colleges, campuses, etc. is not the answer. The answer is to say "no". Just say "no". Ignore their mandates. Stand firm. Don't let these bastards intimidate you. If they send in troops, like they famously and outrageously did in the 60s down in Alabama, let the public see with their own eyes the persecution of Catholicism. Let them watch the thuggery from Washington. Some will cheer the government on. But others will start to put some puzzle pieces together in their minds and will begin to shake off their Americanism and start smelling the coffee.
Don't close up. Resist them. That is the only thing these criminals will understand.
November 24, 2011 at 11:40 pm
Just stop all the help. The world will collapse in about a week and then we can rebuild!
November 25, 2011 at 3:31 pm
It is absolutely not true that, for example, if "Catholic" Relief Services went out of business, then "thousands would die needlessly of malaria." Those "millions" that CRS spends come from…the government, and are not spent in any way that is distinctively "Catholic." If CRS closed its doors, which it should, those millions — which come from the government — would immediately be shifted to another secularized humanitarian agency, and absolutely no change would be evident. I have worked for 30 years for agencies such as "Catholic" Relief Services, the kind that the drafter of the second half of the pope's first encyclical, Cardinal Cordes, called "no different from a UN agency or the Red Cross." Cardinal Cordes was right. Many/most of those "Catholic" agencies are not Catholic: they are secularized government contractors. It would be a blessing and an honesty if they were closed. Then maybe Catholics would start supporting REAL Catholic agencies and stop depending on other people — i.e., non-Catholic taxpayers; i.e., the government — to do their charity work for them.
November 26, 2011 at 11:31 am
The only problem in offering insurance that doesn't cover contraception, abortion, sterilization or IVF (but covers adoption and pregnancy at 100%) is that even if a Catholic College chooses to resist the State, there might not be an *insurance company* with the cojones to write a policy that contravenes the law.
It may come down to "bad insurance" or "no insurance" unless the college can self-insure.
This is why we need to stand with them and terminate Sebelius' tenure (and that of her boss) at the polls.