Catholics hatin’ on Obama? That can’t stand. So Captain Kmiec, Obama apologist, flies in to the rescue in the pages of the National Catholic Reporter.
Sometimes one is tempted to say a plague on both your houses. We’re not even close to the 2012 election season and already there are overheated claims that the Obama administration is at war with Catholics.
It is not.
Kmiec knows better than the bishops. Kmiec knows better that the presidents of Catholic college. He seems to be saying that Obama couldn’t be at war with Catholics mainly because Obama, is a man of faith. But that hardly refutes the facts of the case.
Kmiec seems to be saying that forcing Catholic institutions to pay for coverage for contraceptives (including abortifacients) and sterilization procedures isn’t asking them to act against their religious beliefs at all.
That the law may specify that abortion or contraceptive coverage be included as choices for employees ought not be seen as making the employer contributing to the legally imposed medical premium complicit in the act itself. To think that an authorizing statute or executive decision violates principles of religious liberty or free exercise merely because it allows a choice contrary to faith is to misunderstand the nature of democracy and individual freedom. It also vastly understates the responsibility of the church’s own obligation of moral formation — including effectively revealing to married couples the sublime joy and significance of intimacy that is total and ever open to new life.
At present, however, both political parties are remiss in not reminding the body politic how the principle of religious liberty actually operates. This has permitted some media voices, like the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson, to perceive religious hostility where there is none. There is no violation of religious liberty when HHS announces a temporary (or permanent) regulation requiring all employers — religious or nonreligious, Catholic or not — to provide employees with an insurance benefit for artificial contraception. Yes, it would be more congenial if the HHS administrative process adopted the Catholic view of contraception over that of other churches, but that declination was a choice the church herself since Vatican II has conceded belonged to Caesar. Had the HHS regulation gone farther and demanded a religious employer to affirmatively endorse or require the use of artificial contraception or any other choice contrary to its own teaching or face a penalty, that would violate the principle of religious liberty.
So making Catholic institutions pay for abortifacients isn’t forcing them to act against their conscience, but asking them to say they liked it, would be?
Huh? I’m not sure where the distinction lies?
This leads me back again to the shift in language from this administration to “freedom of religion” to “freedom of worship.” It’s a subtle shift with big implications. The freedom to worship seems to me to be a bit narrower. It says you can worship in your mind and sing whatever you want in the place of your religious tradition but don’t you bring your religion out into the real world. This HHS mandate seems to say that you can believe what you want as long as it doesn’t have any real world application.
It just reminds me a little too much of the short poem by Russian poet Tanya Khodkevich who was sentenced to ten years in the gulag by the Soviets for writing this:
You can pray freely
But just so God alone can hear.
November 23, 2011 at 3:08 am
Someone wants his ticket to Malta back! But, it looks like he'll paying for it with a trip to somewhere warmer.
November 23, 2011 at 3:58 am
This guy is too much of a tool to even comment on.
November 23, 2011 at 4:12 am
lol 🙂
November 23, 2011 at 4:19 am
It's time for the bishops to revoke the privilege of use of the title "Catholic" for the fishwrap. This is utterly depressing to me; I have to keep reminding myself that the gates of hell will not prevail against Holy Mother Church. These people are no more Catholic than Gene Robinson is.
November 23, 2011 at 11:15 am
Another pseudo-Catholic who worships at the altar of "democracy". Keep putting your trust in men alone, Kmiec, see where it gets you.
November 23, 2011 at 12:21 pm
useful idiot
November 23, 2011 at 3:47 pm
Forgive him, Father, he cannot possibly know what he is doing!
November 23, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Has he repented yet for driving while under the influence of medication that caused him to crash his car and kill one of his passengers, a priest?
November 23, 2011 at 10:25 pm
God, Kmiec, give me that damned Kool-Aid, will ya?
November 23, 2011 at 10:48 pm
P.S. Do yourself and us all a favor by seeing an expert who can help you develop some common sense.
November 24, 2011 at 4:27 am
Here's a little thought experiment for Mr. Kmiec. Some employers make matching charitable contributions. Let's say Congress mandates all employers to match employee contributions to the Ku Klux Klan.
Including employers that happen to be historically black colleges.
Got a problem with that, Mr. Kmiec?
November 24, 2011 at 5:17 am
The Master of Lies and Deceit takes great pleasure when we lose sight of the fact that this is a battle of powers and principalities, not a secular political battle against the holder of a political office. Focusing on non-Catholic politicians serving in a secular political office i.e.President Obama, does NOTHING to advance the peace and salvation of all the world. We really need to focus are energy on prayer, fasting and ammending our own ways. We could start by fostering greater devotion and reverence to the Holy Eucharist.
November 25, 2011 at 5:17 am
Its the subtle changes in language that scare me the most. From Health Insurance to Health Care. From Abortion to Choice (not so subtle…) and now this religion to 'worship' business.
These folks are masters at changing the discussion to suit their ideologies and their wish to loot from the taxpayers.
That a Catholic paper goes along with this is madness for sure.
November 25, 2011 at 2:17 pm
I agree, as long as we don't fall into the partisan trap of having to choose political alliances. I'm getting tired of the either-or political climate that's being forced on us. This all-or-nothing-at-all partisan dogma that seems to dominate politics in our nation is hurting all of us. Don't buy into it. We can and should reject this destructive partisan hackery.
November 25, 2011 at 5:28 pm
Mr. Kmiec is a lawyer. The type was neatly analyzed in Plato's THE SOPHIST; the sense of which is that it does not matter which side of the argument you are on, so long as you get paid; and how language can be used confusedly to cover your tracks. ["It depends on what you mean by 'is'" said lawyer Clinton].
November 26, 2011 at 7:13 pm
Professor Kmiec sincerely believes that the Catholic Church changed the Faith into something new at Vatican II, and surrendered the determination of good and evil to Caesar. There are a very great many bishops who obviously agree with him. All of them are heretics. It's very simple. Ultimately, the logic of Professor Kmiec's argument will require that all forms of religion are acceptable to Caesar, except one. That would be the Catholic Faith which comes to us from the apostles. Professor Kmiec will argue that these folks reject the decision of Vatican II and hence must be punished as criminal by the state and as heretics by the Church. Then it will be morning.
November 27, 2011 at 1:10 am
We forget that Kmiec was part of Obama's 2008 campaign where he was one of a carefully selected few dissident Catholic 'scholars' to use their propaganda to confuse Catholics that it was OK to vote for the most pro-abortion candidate ever.
Kmiec is getting an early start on the 2012 campaign. He was probably urgently pulled in when the USCCB's started speaking out against the Obama administration's deletion of the conscience clause in HCS – which the bishops feel is a direct attack on the Catholic Faith.
In 2008, he was refused Communion at a Red Mass for lawyers that conveyed how the bishop felt about his propaganda.
November 28, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Kmiec apparently feels that it doesn't matter if you kick believing Catholics out of your administration, as long as you're a good liberal.