Our Shepherd Among Us: Reminiscences and Reflections (Part Two)

by Justin Soutar


The Prayer of the Church

After leaving the White House, Pope Francis headed to St. Matthew’s Cathedral in downtown Washington, a beautiful and historic church whose unusual Romanesque architecture evokes an earlier era of Christianity. This was the parish of America’s only Catholic president to date, John F. Kennedy, during his administration (1961—1963); his remains are buried beneath a circular marble slab in front of the cathedral’s main altar. Here the Holy Father joined Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, and several hundred bishops from around the United States for midday prayer. Francis then delivered an hour-long address in Italian in which he shared with the bishops his own experiences as a pastor, focused on the basic qualities needed in a shepherd, and praised their defense of the unborn and their assistance to immigrants and refugees. After greeting a few of the bishops personally, the pope had Cardinal Wuerl tell them in English that he was sorry he couldn’t greet each of them individually. He tapped his watch and looked at them with an expression of wide-eyed regret. They understood and applauded.

Later that sunny Wednesday afternoon, Pope Francis proceeded to the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and officiated at the canonization Mass of Father Junipero Serra, the famous eighteenth-century Franciscan priest who founded many of the California missions and who was beatified by Pope John Paul II. The Mass took place outside the basilica to accommodate the large and remarkably diverse crowd of bishops, priests and thousands of lay faithful from across the nation who took part in this historic ceremony--the first canonization ever performed on US soil. In his homily, Francis urged his listeners to guard against the apathy that often creeps into their hearts through the monotony of daily routines by going outside of themselves to proclaim the joy of the Gospel to others, following the missionary example of Father Serra. Early that evening, before retiring to his quarters for the night, the Holy Father paid a surprise visit to the Little Sisters of the Poor at their home in northeastern Washington; the religious congregation's ongoing legal fight against the HHS mandate has been making national headlines for several years.

Francis Makes History

On Thursday morning, September 24, Pope Francis headed to the US Capitol for another historic event: the first-ever papal address to a joint session of Congress. Respectfully welcomed and escorted into the packed semicircular House chamber, the 78-year-old Argentinian pontiff took the podium and slowly delivered his lengthy, masterfully written prepared text in his heavily accented English. As I joined millions of viewers across our country and around the world watching the unprecedented event live on EWTN, I was pleasantly surprised at how remarkably well Francis’ address was received by these members of Congress. He was interrupted over and over again by vigorous applause, receiving at least a dozen standing ovations from the entire assembly. I think this impressive reception was due not only to the respect which most of these senators and representatives already had for Pope Francis, but also to the power of the religious and moral truths which he was proclaiming authentically and with conviction. As human beings fashioned in God’s image, we are made for truth, so when we hear it faithfully proclaimed, it resonates deep within us; this holds true even for corrupt politicians who routinely ignore and betray such truths in the daily business of government. The thread of Francis’ speech was brilliantly woven around four great Americans whose anniversaries are being celebrated this year: Abraham Lincoln, “the guardian of liberty, who labored tirelessly that ‘this nation, under God, [might] have a new birth of freedom’”; Martin Luther King, Jr., who marched as part of a campaign “to fulfill his ‘dream’ of full civil and political rights for African Americans”; Dorothy Day, “who founded the Catholic Worker Movement” and whose “passion for justice and for the cause of the oppressed, were inspired by the Gospel”; and Thomas Merton, “a thinker who challenged the certitudes of his time and opened new horizons for souls and for the Church.”

Francis began his address by reminding the assembled lawmakers of the fundamental truth—-often obscured these days by corruption and partisan rhetoric—-that the real business of politics is the pursuit of the common good. Next, turning to the grim situation of a contemporary world marked by hatred and violent conflict, the Holy Father urged vigilance in combating the dangers of religious and ideological fundamentalism. He also warned against the temptation of “the simplistic reductionism which sees only good or evil; or, if you will, the righteous and sinners,” a temptation to which certain Americans often succumb in the realm of foreign policy. Francis added some welcome words of wisdom: “The contemporary world, with its open wounds which affect so many of our brothers and sisters, demands that we confront every form of polarization which would divide it into these two camps. We know that in the attempt to be freed of the enemy without, we can be tempted to feed the enemy within. To imitate the hatred and violence of tyrants and murderers is the best way to take their place.” The pope encouraged a different response to evil, “one of hope and healing, of peace and justice…We must move forward together, as one, in a renewed spirit of fraternity and solidarity, cooperating generously for the common good.”

Turning to the refugee crisis in the Middle East and the ongoing phenomenon of mass migration across our nation’s southern borders, Pope Francis began to quote the Golden Rule from Matthew 7:12 but was interrupted by a full standing ovation from the overwhelmingly Christian assembly. “Let us treat others with the same passion and compassion with which we want to be treated,” said the Holy Father. “If we want security, let us give security; if we want life, let us give life; if we want opportunities, let us provide opportunities.” Indeed, the pope was right: this core teaching of Christ should be the main reference point guiding our nation’s approach to these complicated and controversial issues. Of course, allowing this teaching to guide our immigration policy doesn’t mean we should leave our borders entirely unsecured or grant unconditional amnesty to millions of undocumented immigrants who are desperate to feed their families, but it does mean we should treat these people with basic respect for their humanity and concern for their welfare while working to reform our bureaucratic immigration system and address the root causes of mass migration to the US. While on the topic of the Golden Rule, Francis did not fail to remind the legislators of their responsibility “to protect and defend human life at every stage of its development,” a clear reference to the rights of the unborn that drew vigorous applause from this largely pro-life Congress.

Seizing the Moment

After briefly discussing the need to address poverty, hunger, and “environmental deterioration caused by human activity,” Pope Francis tacitly lauded the recently restored diplomatic relations between the US and Cuba—a rapprochement in which he himself played a critical role behind the scenes. "When countries which have been at odds resume the path of dialogue – a dialogue which may have been interrupted for the most legitimate of reasons – new opportunities open up for all,” he said. The Holy Father pointed out that such a reconciliation between formerly estranged peoples “requires courage and daring,” which he distinguished from “irresponsibility.” In this context, Francis defined a good political leader as “one who, with the interests of all in mind, seizes the moment in a spirit of openness and pragmatism.” I find it telling that the pope used the word “pragmatism” in this sentence instead of the word “idealism” that one might have expected him to use. Clearly, he was warning us against the dangerous tendency to view reconciliation between enemy nations simply as an idealistic dream that is not practical or attainable in the real world. The pope realizes that such a defeatist mentality would discourage us from sowing and patiently nurturing the seeds of dialogue that can, with time, ultimately yield the abundant harvest of reconciliation. Francis was pointing out that tearing down a wall of division between two peoples should rather be viewed as something of practical urgency, something that should be done as soon as circumstances permit, a concrete response to a profound human need for social communion, something with positive real-life consequences for millions of people on both sides. The pontiff then urged Congress to stop the global arms trade and work to end the many armed conflicts around the world—again, not as idealistic dreams, but as practical goals to be accomplished as soon as possible for the good of the entire human family.

Francis concluded his historic address to the Senate and House of Representatives by turning to the subject of the family. He reminded his audience how essential the family has been to the building of this country and expressed his concern about contemporary threats to marriage and family life. "Fundamental relationships are being called into question, as is the very basis of marriage and the family,” said the Holy Father, apparently referring to attempts to redefine marriage based on gender ideology and to equate deviant homosexual relationships with traditional marriage. Focusing mainly on the challenges young Americans currently face, the pope lamented that many “seem disoriented and aimless, trapped in a hopeless maze of violence, abuse and despair.” “At the risk of oversimplifying,” he continued, “we might say that we live in a culture which pressures young people not to start a family, because they lack possibilities for the future. Yet this same culture presents others with so many options that they too are dissuaded from starting a family.” The pontiff’s diagnosis is accurate: we live in a highly secularized materialistic culture that glorifies individualism and eschews long-term commitment, while an unfavorable economic climate makes it difficult for many young Americans to start a family and prosper. Francis declared that we need to face these problems “together, to talk about them and to seek effective solutions rather than getting bogged down in discussions.”

After leaving the House chamber and briefly greeting an enthusiastic crowd of some 50,000 people gathered on the Mall in front of the Capitol, Pope Francis paid a midday visit to the homeless and poor of Washington in Saint Patrick’s Church. Before leaving the city later that afternoon, His Holiness made another unscheduled visit that eloquently underscored his heartfelt concern for religious liberty. He stopped by the Vatican embassy to meet with Kim Davis, the Christian county clerk from Kentucky whose refusal to issue marriage licenses for homosexual couples based on her religious convictions led to her arrest and imprisonment earlier in the month. “Thank you for your courage,” the pope told her in English. “Stay strong.” President Obama had made his point at the White House the day before; now Pope Francis had made his.

New York and Philadelphia

Partly cloudy and windy conditions greeted the Holy Father as he arrived at JFK Airport in New York City around 5 PM. Under heavy security, he was transferred from the American Airlines jet to a police helicopter, from helicopter to the Fiat, and then from Fiat to popemobile. Surrounded by dozens of police vehicles, Francis made his way up an empty stretch of Fifth Avenue to pray Vespers in the historic and magnificently renovated Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. On Friday morning, September 25, he became the fourth pope to visit the United Nations headquarters and address the General Assembly. In his long and well-written speech, Francis commended the organization for its important work for world peace during the last seventy years, condemned the gender ideology that blurs the differences between men and women, and urged respect for the human rights and dignity of all peoples and families. Afterward, the Holy Father participated in an inter-religious memorial service at the former World Trade Center site, where he reiterated his predecessors’ forceful condemnation of violence against innocent human beings and prayed fervently for peace.

That evening, Francis presided over a spectacular Mass at the iconic Madison Square Garden arena, which was filled to capacity. Near the end of the liturgy, when Cardinal Dolan thanked him for coming to visit, the throng of at least 20,000 worshipers gave the pope a standing ovation that lasted several minutes. It was a moving and unforgettable moment to witness live on television. America’s Catholics had truly embraced Pope Francis. He was their loving Shepherd who had gone beyond his comfort zone to reach out to them, and they, his loyal flock, were now responding with love and gratitude. “Thank you, and please, don’t forget to pray for me,” the Holy Father added with a smile as the liturgy concluded.

(To be continued)

Quote of the Day

"The degree of progress of a civilization is measured by its ability to protect life, especially in its most fragile stages, rather than by the spread of technological means. When we speak of man, let us never forget the attacks on the sacredness of human life. The scourge of abortion is an attack on life. Leaving our brothers on the boats in the Sicilian channel is an attack on life. Death in the workplace is an attack on life because the minimal security conditions are not respected. Death by malnutrition is an attack on life. Terrorism, war, violence and also euthanasia are an attack on life. Loving life means always to take care of the other, to wish him well, to cultivate and respect his transcendent dignity."

--Pope Francis

Two Important Victories for Life and Liberty

Thanks be to God and to His Holy Mother, Mary Immaculate, Patroness of the United States, for granting our nation two important victories for life and liberty at the end of last month. Both of these victories were decisions handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court during the third annual Fortnight for Freedom.

On June 27, the Supreme Court unanimously ruled unconstitutional a law in Massachusetts that prohibited peaceful pro-life prayer warriors, protestors, and counselors from setting foot within thirty-five feet of an abortion clinic. No doubt strongly supported by Planned Parenthood, this so-called "buffer zone" law was a direct attack on freedom of speech. It was also an indirect attack on innocent human life, since its effect was to increase the number of abortions in the state of Massachusetts. Although the Court remained silent on the morality and legality of abortion, it had enough sense to clearly perceive the freedom of speech issue involved here. Now the pro-life movement in Massachusetts is free to do its important, life-saving work without interference from the state government. No doubt thousands of innocent unborn lives there will be saved in the coming years. Thanks be to God.

Then on June 30, the High Court handed down its widely anticipated decision in the Burwell v. Hobby Lobby case. By just one vote, the Court ruled in favor of Hobby Lobby and against the Obama administration, striking down part of the HHS mandate within ObamaCare that requires owners of secular for-profit businesses to include abortion-inducing drugs and contraceptives in their health insurance plans for their employees, even if this violates their religious beliefs and moral principles. The Court ruled that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed by Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1993, applies to owners of for-profit businesses, and that the federal government cannot force them to violate their consciences. This is a great victory for our First Amendment rights, for our right to act in accord with the law of God, and also for the unborn across our country, many of whose lives will be spared as a result of this decision. Moreover, this ruling has significant implications for what is left of the HHS mandate and ObamaCare, which are both looking more and more like Swiss cheese. If for-profit owners of secular businesses who object to providing abortifacients and contraceptives for religious and moral reasons are exempt from the anti-life mandate, then why shouldn't directors of religious and secular not-for-profit organizations who object to it for similar reasons be exempted as well? Why shouldn't EWTN and Catholic and Christian colleges and hospitals be exempted? Why aren't their CEOs legally free to follow their religious and moral beliefs in their administration of education and health care?

The Obama administration's exemption for religious institutions currently in force is based on a very narrow definition of "religious institution" as an organization that primarily hires and serves members of its own faith. That leaves out practically 99 percent of religious institutions in this country, most of which are not exclusive or cultist but part of the broader society, hiring and serving people of all faiths and none at all. Some of these religious institutions have rightly won their own exemptions from the mandate in state and federal courts. The remainder are still being coerced by the Obama administration against their religion and conscience, and against the First Amendment, into providing coverage for anti-life drugs that have no health benefits whatsoever. This has to stop. The Supreme Court must confirm the more than two dozen injunctions already granted by lower courts to dozens of religious organizations, and extend them to all religious institutions in America. The federal government has no right to pick and choose who can freely practice their religion and follow their conscience and who cannot. Our Constitution forbids the government from prohibiting the free exercise of religion. Therefore, the High Court must uphold the religious liberties and moral conscience rights of all Americans without exception. And that, necessarily, will mean the death of the HHS mandate and the demise of ObamaCare.

Once again, thanks be to God and His Holy Mother for these two victories for human life and liberty in our nation. We must keep praying and taking action to defend our God-given rights and liberties. Let freedom ring!

Forty-Plus Years of Legal Mass Murder

Today we Americans observe with great sorrow the forty-first anniversary of the unconstitutional, unjust, and tragic Roe v. Wade decision.

On January 22, 1973, seven men on the U.S. Supreme Court arbitrarily decided that a woman has a right to kill her innocent unborn child for any reason whatsoever. In producing this ruling, the Court misinterpreted the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution, which states, “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This passage, along with most of the Fifth Amendment, was written to protect the rights of persons accused of crimes. When our nation’s Founders authored this text, they meant that no one could be executed or deprived of his freedom or land without first being properly tried and convicted of a crime. But the irresponsible activist Court led by Chief Justice Warren Burger chose to ignore the intent of the Constitution’s authors and, through some incomprehensible twist of logic, arbitrarily reinterpreted the Fifth Amendment due process clause to justify legalizing the murder of innocent unborn persons—something the Founders would never have approved of in their wildest dreams. Roe v. Wade represented nothing less than an attack on the integrity and meaning of the Constitution of the United States by the very institution that is supposed to protect it, the U.S. Supreme Court.

Not only was Roe v. Wade an unconstitutional decision, it was also an unjust decision. In the Declaration of Independence, we the people of the United States declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights with which God the Creator has endowed all human beings. This right to life is an “unalienable” right, meaning that it cannot be taken away. Human life is sacred because it is a gift from God the Creator. To deprive an innocent human being of life is a violation of that person’s unalienable right to life. It is also a violation of the Fifth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Our nation’s devout Christian Founders took these principles of the natural law for granted. They could scarcely have imagined that, two hundred years later, the judicial branch of government would somehow justify allowing innocent human beings to be killed in their mothers’ wombs right here in the United States of America. They did warn, however, that the United States would not long endure without what George Washington referred to as the “indispensable supports” of religion and morality. If the people of a nation don’t believe that human rights—especially the right to life—come from God, then those rights will be perceived as coming from the state and the state will claim the authority to give or take away those rights as it sees fit. And if people don’t believe that it is wrong to deprive an innocent person of his or her right to life, then human life will not be respected.

Finally, Roe v. Wade was an immensely tragic decision. During the past forty-plus years, some 56.5 million innocent unborn human beings—an average of 1.38 million a year—have been murdered in their mothers’ wombs through legalized abortion. That is an alarming and staggering figure. That’s more than nine times the number of innocent Jews murdered in the Holocaust. It’s also more than the fifty million people killed in World War II, the deadliest conflict in modern human history. It is difficult to comprehend the full magnitude of this loss of life or to calculate the full impact of this massacre of the unborn on our nation over the past forty years. Excluding miscarriages, accidents, disease, and other causes of death outside the womb, our country is currently missing some 56 million inhabitants; in addition, many of those aborted in the 1970s and 80s would now be married and raising children of their own, so our country is really missing somewhere around 70 million people, and our nation’s population should be around 388 million instead of the 318 million it is now. Think of how much different—and better—things would be in our country if we had all these missing people contributing to our economy and using their God-given talents to serve our nation in a variety of professions and fields. We will never know how different the United States would be in 2014 if nearly all the innocent unborn had been born and were alive today. The absence of 70 million citizens is an incalculable loss to our nation.

Blessed John Paul II once said, “The condition for the survival of America is to respect every human person, especially the weakest and most defenseless ones, those as yet unborn.” The appalling legal mass murder of the unborn in our nation must be brought to an end. Roe v. Wade must be overturned so that the unalienable, God-given right to life of every innocent unborn human being in the United States is once again protected by our Constitution and guaranteed by our laws. We must not rest until we achieve that goal.

Quote of the Day

"Children and the elderly represent the two poles of life and also the most vulnerable, often the most forgotten. A society that abandons children and marginalizes the elderly cuts off its roots and darkens its future. Every time that a child is abandoned and an elderly person is marginalized, not only is an act of injustice committed but the failure of that society is confirmed. To take care of little ones and the elderly is a choice of civilization."

--Pope Francis

Quote of the Day

“Every unborn child, condemned unjustly to be aborted, has the face of the Lord.”
--Pope Francis

55 Million Dead, 55 Million Wounded: The Legacy of Roe v. Wade

A few months ago, on January 22, 2013, we marked the fortieth anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade—an unconstitutional, immoral, and tragic decision that has unleashed a torrent of murder and misery upon our nation.


On January 22, 1973, seven Supreme Court justices decided that a woman has a right to kill her innocent unborn child for any reason whatsoever. In producing this ruling, the Court misinterpreted the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution, which states, “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This passage, along with most of the Fifth Amendment, was written to protect the rights of persons accused of crimes. When our nation’s Founders authored this text, they meant that no one could be executed or deprived of his freedom or land without first being properly tried and convicted of a crime. But the irresponsible activist Court led by Chief Justice Warren Burger deliberately chose to ignore the intent of the Constitution’s authors and, through some incomprehensible twist of logic, reinterpreted the Fifth Amendment due process clause to justify legalizing the murder of innocent unborn persons—something the Founders would never have approved of in their wildest dreams. Roe v. Wade represented nothing less than an attack on the integrity and meaning of the Constitution of the United States by the very institution that is supposed to protect it, the U.S. Supreme Court.

Not only was Roe v. Wade an unconstitutional decision, it was also an immoral decision. In the Declaration of Independence, we the people of the United States declared, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The right to life is the most fundamental of all rights with which God the Creator has endowed all human beings. This right to life is an “unalienable” right, meaning that it cannot be taken away. To deprive an innocent human being of life is a violation of that person’s God-given unalienable right to life. It is also a violation of the Fifth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Our nation’s devout Christian Founders took these principles for granted. They could scarcely have imagined that, two hundred years later, the judicial branch of government would somehow justify allowing innocent human beings to be killed in their mothers’ wombs right here in the United States of America. They did warn, however, that the United States would not long endure without what George Washington referred to as the “indispensable supports” of religion and morality. If the people of a nation don’t believe that human rights—especially the right to life—come from God, then those rights will be perceived as coming from the state and the state will claim the authority to give or take away those rights as it sees fit. And if people don’t believe that it is wrong to deprive an innocent person of his or her right to life, then human life will not be respected.

Finally, Roe v. Wade was an immensely tragic decision. During the past forty years, some 55.5 million innocent unborn human beings—an average of 1.38 million a year—have been murdered in their mothers’ wombs through legalized abortion. That is an alarming and staggering figure. That’s more than nine times the number of innocent Jews murdered in the Holocaust. It’s also more than the fifty million people killed in World War II, the deadliest conflict in modern human history. It is difficult to comprehend the full magnitude of this tremendous loss of life or to calculate the full impact of this massacre of the unborn on our nation over the past forty years. Excluding miscarriages, accidents, disease, and other causes of death outside the womb, our country is currently missing some 55 million inhabitants; in addition, many of those aborted in the 1970s and 80s would now be married and raising children of their own, so our country is really missing around 70 million people, and our nation’s population should be around 385 million instead of the 315 million it is now. Think of how much different—and better—things would be in our country if we had all these missing people contributing to our economy and using their God-given talents to serve our nation in a variety of professions and fields. We will never know how different the United States would be in 2013 if nearly all the innocent unborn had been born and were alive today. The absence of 70 million people is an incalculable and irretrievable loss to our nation.

Unfortunately, this unimaginable abortion massacre is still in progress. Between 3,000 and 4,000 abortions continue to take place in the United States each day. Most of the women who are having these abortions are not having them because they want to, but because they feel they have no other choice. The vast majority of them are black or Hispanic single teenage mothers who live in inner cities under the poverty line and cannot afford to raise the child they have conceived. Many of them are pressured into having an abortion by friends or family members. And so, despite their misgivings and their inner awareness of the evil of abortion, they end up going through this awful experience that they will regret for the rest of their lives. Some do not realize what they are doing when they go to have an abortion, but once they have had one, they know that what they did was wrong and they deeply regret it.

There is a huge gap between the rhetoric of abortion proponents and the reality of what takes place in the abortion industry. Abortion “rights” advocates claim that a woman has “the right to choose” to terminate her pregnancy. In practice, however, as noted above, most women who have abortions do so because they perceive that no other options are available to them. For them abortion is a desperate last resort, not a free and willful choice.

Supporters of abortion talk about keeping the procedure “safe,” but there is nothing safe about it. Abortion has traumatized and damaged the health of the tens of millions of women who have gone through it. As a result of their abortions, they have suffered from breast and ovarian cancer, pregnancy complications, post-traumatic stress disorder, grief, depression, anxiety, and guilt feelings, and some have even committed suicide.

Abortion advocates also deny that racism or eugenics play any role in the abortion industry. However, according to research carried out by Protecting Black Life and the Life Issues Institute, a whopping 79 percent of abortion clinics in the United States are situated in or near black and Hispanic neighborhoods. These organizations observe that Planned Parenthood is still following the eugenics philosophy of its foundress Margaret Sanger, who regarded blacks and poor Americans as “unfit” to reproduce and who dedicated her life to controlling the population of these “undesirables” through the promotion of contraception and sterilization in their neighborhoods. Planned Parenthood is now using abortion to further this eugenics agenda. For many years the rates of black and Hispanic abortions have far exceeded the rate of white abortions. According to the National Vital Statistics Report issued by the U.S. government, African-American women on average have five times the number of abortions that white women have, and Hispanic women have 2.3 times that number. In fact, abortion is the leading cause of death among African-Americans, exceeding all other causes put together. (Ironically, the political party generally favored by these minority ethnic groups—the party that claims to represent their interests—is the party that obsessively promotes the murder of the unborn.)

Back in the 1950s, 60s, and early 70s, prior to the legalization of abortion in the United States and elsewhere, abortion was widely viewed as beneficial to women and to society. Today, however, after forty years of legalized abortion, the research clearly shows that the opposite is true. Without exception, abortion has been a profoundly negative experience for every single woman who has had one. The collateral damage to women and society from abortion is immense. It has left 55.5 million women deeply wounded mentally, emotionally and physically and has deprived our society of tens of millions of members. This is the legacy of Roe v. Wade, the most catastrophic Supreme Court decision in American history.

The good news is that, as the disastrous effects of abortion have become more clearly evident and widely known over time, they have helped to fuel a growing pro-life movement throughout the United States. Today this popular movement is massive and strong and includes many young people as well as women who have had abortions. More Americans now identify themselves as pro-life than at any time since Roe v. Wade. Meanwhile, the number of voter-supported state restrictions on abortion continues to grow; 38 such restrictions were enacted in 2012 alone. Of the approximately 400,000 individuals who took part in the 2011 March for Life in Washington, D.C., a majority were young people born since Roe v. Wade. In addition, the “40 Days for Life” campaigns of prayer, fasting, community outreach and silent vigil in front of abortion clinics in the United States and other countries have resulted to date in 6,749 lives saved from abortion, 75 abortion workers quitting their jobs, and 25 abortion facilities closing their doors.

Furthermore, in recent years we are seeing a positive national trend toward fewer and fewer abortions. U.S. abortion rates have been steadily going down since the early 1990s and are now at their lowest levels since the early 1970s, when abortion first became legal. The number of abortion providers has also decreased substantially since the early 1980s, with fewer doctors now willing to perform abortions. Additionally, the number of operating Planned Parenthood clinics in the U.S. has declined from a peak of 938 in 1995 to 785 in 2011 and is continuing to trend downward.

Due to the gradual but steady decrease in public demand for abortions, the industry that provides them has been shrinking. However, abortion remains a big moneymaker for the doctors and institutions involved in it. According to the watchdog agency Stop Planned Parenthood (STOPP), in 2010 abortions accounted for 51.5 percent, or about $500 million, of Planned Parenthood’s total income. Planned Parenthood performed 329,445 abortions that year, so it made an average of about $1,500 per abortion. For those involved in this lucrative enterprise, the prospect of ultimately going out of business is unacceptable. To prevent this from happening, the sinking abortion industry has turned to the U.S. government and the Obama administration for a helping hand.

As a result, a significant challenge to ending legalized abortion in the United States now looms. Paradoxically, at a time when more Americans are pro-life than ever before, their federal government is controlled by a radically anti-life, anti-religious and immoral administration that is determined not only to keep abortion legal, but to increase the number of abortions. On January 20, 2012, with Congressional authorization through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services issued a directive forcing nearly all businesses, charitable organizations and religious entities in the country to provide health insurance coverage that includes contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, regardless of any moral or religious objections to the provision of these “preventive services for women.” This insidious, coercive anti-life policy is designed to revitalize the abortion industry under the guise of health care; while performing fewer surgical abortions in clinics, Planned Parenthood can now sell abortifacient drugs by the tens of millions to American businesses, charitable organizations and religious institutions that are required by law to purchase them. We Americans must vigorously oppose this outrageous government policy. We cannot allow such an immoral and unjust law as the HHS mandate to stand. It must be repealed. We must demand that our government protect life and stop promoting the murder of the innocent unborn.

Unfortunately, while a majority of Americans describe themselves as pro-life, slightly over half of American voters chose to re-elect President Obama, the most radically pro-abortion president in American history. This is a serious, if temporary, setback for the pro-life movement at the federal level, where we can expect to make little progress toward ending legalized abortion over the next four years. President Obama is likely to appoint one or two new Supreme Court justices who will favor keeping Roe v. Wade in place. Hopefully, in 2016 American voters will have the sense to elect a pro-life president who will take vigorous action to end legalized abortion. Pro-life Americans must stand united and translate their beliefs into consistent political action if the pro-life movement is to achieve its goal of ending the legal slaughter of the innocent unborn.

What can we do—as individuals, as communities, and as a nation—to end the terrible scourge of abortion? Here are ten recommendations.

1. Reach out to women in crisis pregnancies. We must open more crisis pregnancy centers in our cities where abortion clinics are located. There should be one such center for every abortion clinic. We need more volunteers to reach out to more women in crisis pregnancies and offer them the help, counseling, support and encouragement they need to choose life for their unborn babies.

2. Stay informed and take action. Contact your elected representatives in Washington, D.C. by letter, email, phone and fax and demand that they rescind the anti-life HHS mandate immediately. When your state legislature proposes a pro-life bill, contact your representatives and urge them to support it. Conversely, when your legislature proposes a pro-abortion bill, contact your representatives and urge them to oppose it. You can sign up with various pro-life organizations and Catholic advocacy groups to receive email alerts when pro-life issues come up in your state. Also, you can write letters to the editors of your local newspapers in which you express and defend your pro-life convictions.

3. Vote pro-life. As American citizens and as Catholics, we have a duty to elect representatives to public office who will defend the right to life of the innocent unborn in their mother’s wombs.

4. March for life. Publicly demonstrate your support for unborn human life by participating in pro-life marches and rallies. These events send a clear message to our elected representatives that the American people are strongly in favor of ending legalized abortion. History shows that mounting public pressure over a long period of time is ultimately successful in achieving political change. The civil rights movement is a good example of this.

5. Join the 40 Days for Life campaigns. As noted above, these campaigns have proven effective in saving lives from abortion, causing abortion workers to quit their jobs, and leading to the closure of abortion clinics. Visit 40daysforlife.com to find out how to sign up for one of these campaigns, which are held in cities all across America several times a year.

6. Donate to pro-life organizations. The American Life League, Americans United for Life, the National Committee for a Human Life Amendment, and Priests for Life are just a few of the organizations that are doing excellent work in the pro-life movement. They are not-for-profit organizations that depend on donations to sustain their work.

7. Support and promote pro-life films. The battle against abortion is not only a political battle, it is also a cultural battle—a battle for the hearts and minds of the American people. The cinema exerts a major influence on American culture. When a beautiful pro-life film such as Bella or October Baby comes out in theaters, we should watch it and tell other people about it.

8. Demand the de-funding of Planned Parenthood. In recent years America’s largest abortion provider has become increasingly reliant on public funds. In 2010 Planned Parenthood received a total of $487.4 million in U.S. government funding, which accounted for 46.5 percent of its revenue that year. Thus, cutting off government funding for Planned Parenthood would severely cripple the organization and lead to a dramatic decrease in the annual number of U.S. abortions. We must urge our elected representatives to de-fund Planned Parenthood.

9. Demand the reversal of Roe v. Wade. This will end legalized abortion in the United States. It may be unlikely to happen in the near future, but we must not allow ourselves to become discouraged. Justice and morality demand that the right to life of every unborn American be protected by law. This should motivate us to remain steadfastly committed to getting Roe v. Wade reversed.

10. Pray and fast for the end of abortion. These are the most important and effective things we can do to end the killing of the unborn. The pro-life battle we are fighting is not just a political or legal or cultural battle; it is fundamentally a moral and spiritual battle of good against evil. God is on our side, so we know that we will ultimately be victorious.

Pope John Paul II once said, “The condition for the survival of America is to respect every human person, especially the weakest and most defenseless ones, those as yet unborn.” The appalling mass murder of the unborn in our nation has gone on for too long and must be brought to an end. Roe v. Wade must be overturned so that the unalienable, God-given right to life of every innocent unborn human being in the United States is once again protected by our Constitution and guaranteed by our laws. We must not rest until we achieve that goal.


Copyright © 2013 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.


ENDNOTES

1. Steven Ertelt, “79% of Planned Parenthood Abortion Clinics Target Blacks, Hispanics,” LifeNews.com, 10/16/12. http://www.lifenews.com/2012/10/16/79-of-planned-parenthood-abortion-clinics-target-blacks-hispanics/

2. Ibid.

3. National Vital Statistics Reports, Vol. 60, No. 7, June 20, 2012, p. 6, Figure 7. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr60/nvsr60_07.pdf

4. Ertelt, "79%".

5. “AUL’s 2013 Life List: Mapping the Momentum Toward a Pro-Life America,” Americans United for Life. http://www.aul.org/auls-life-list-2013/

6. “Youth Turnout Strong at US March for Life,” ZENIT, Jan. 25, 2011. http://www.zenit.org/article-31557?l=english

7. 40 Days for Life. http://40daysforlife.com

8. Steven Ertelt, “Planned Parenthood: 51% of Its Clinic Revenue Comes From Abortions,” LifeNews.com, 1/5/12. http://www.lifenews.com/2012/01/05/planned-parenthood-51-of-its-income-comes-from-abortions/

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.

11. Ibid.

Reflection for Mother's Day

Motherhood involves a special communion with the mystery of life, as it develops in the woman's womb. The mother is filled with wonder at this mystery of life, and "understands" with unique intuition what is happening inside her. In the light of the "beginning", the mother accepts and loves as a person the child she is carrying in her womb. This unique contact with the new human being developing within her gives rise to an attitude towards human beings - not only towards her own child, but every human being - which profoundly marks the woman's personality. It is commonly thought that women are more capable than men of paying attention to another person, and that motherhood develops this predisposition even more. The man - even with all his sharing in parenthood - always remains "outside" the process of pregnancy and the baby's birth; in many ways he has to learn his own "fatherhood" from the mother. One can say that this is part of the normal human dimension of parenthood, including the stages that follow the birth of the baby, especially the initial period. The child's upbringing, taken as a whole, should include the contribution of both parents: the maternal and paternal contribution. In any event, the mother's contribution is decisive in laying the foundation for a new human personality.

--Blessed John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem (1988)

What's Wrong with the HHS Mandate?

by Justin Soutar

(Originally published on Intellectual Conservative 4/17/13 at http://intellectualconservative.com/index.php/what-s-wrong-with-the )


On January 20, 2012, under the direction of President Barack Obama, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced an unprecedented new law: As of August 1, 2012, all forms of health insurance coverage provided by businesses to their employees and by not-for-profit organizations to their clients would have to include artificial contraceptives, sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs. This official announcement aroused an immediate and fierce storm of protest throughout the United States. Catholic bishops, Protestant ministers, Jewish rabbis, hospital owners, charity CEOs, heads of colleges and universities, big and small business owners, state and federal government leaders, and ordinary American citizens all declared in no uncertain terms that they could not possibly comply with such a directive. The reason? It would force them to act in violation of their religious beliefs and moral convictions—and they were not about to blithely discard those sacrosanct tenets.

In response to this massive wave of protest, a few weeks later on February 10, 2012 the HHS announced a “compromise” to its sweeping mandate, in which two “exemptions” were handed to religious believers. First, “houses of worship” (i.e. churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.) would be exempted from the new law. Second, religious institutions that only hire and serve members of their own faith would not be compelled to furnish certain health care items if furnishing such items violated the principles of their religion. However, this “compromise” did little to abate the storm of protest against the new federal contraceptive, sterilization and abortifacient law. The Catholic bishops objected that it failed to adequately address the serious religious liberty issues raised by the HHS mandate. How so? Well, the second exemption to that mandate is extremely narrow and very few religious organizations qualify for it. Whether schools or hospitals or charities, most religious institutions in America are not exclusivist, hiring and serving only members of their own faith. Rather, most are—as they should be—part of the broader society, and as such they hire staff on the basis of merit and serve people on the basis of need, without discriminating on the basis of religious affiliation. So this HHS “compromise” still left an overwhelming majority of religious institutions legally compelled to act against their beliefs.

A few months later, the U.S. Supreme Court completed its review of the encyclopedic Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, which authorized the Obama administration to issue the healthcare mandate in the first place. On June 28, 2012, the Court ruled that the entire Act is constitutional and that the HHS mandate is simply a legitimate exercise of Congressional power to lay and collect taxes. In his written majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the mandate is not really coercive in violation of the First Amendment because religious entities and business leaders that object to it can choose between obeying the law or paying the tax fines imposed for noncompliance with it. According to Chief Justice Roberts, these fines are not so crippling that they force compliance with the mandate; therefore, the healthcare law leaves religious institutions and business owners still free to act in accord with their beliefs.

This landmark decision was quickly followed by another national wave of public outcry. What was wrong with the ObamaCare ruling? Critics pointed out that, contrary to Roberts’s claim, the tax penalties for noncompliance with the HHS mandate are indeed severely crippling; a religious organization or business that refuses to obey the law will be subjected to fines as high as 15 percent of its annual income or $100 per employee per day. Thus, for a typical institution—be it religious or secular, for-profit or not-for-profit—with dozens or hundreds of employees that refuses to offer contraception, sterilization and abortifacient drugs in its healthcare plan, the tax fines will amount to hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per year. Fines of these magnitudes will force many religious institutions and businesses across America to shut down. This is precisely why the National Federation of Independent Business took the Obama administration to the U.S. Supreme Court over the PPACA and the mandate—because they are coercive: Businesses are either forced to obey the law or forced to pay unsustainable fines. Furthermore, fines by their very nature are meant to ensure compliance with a law and to deter and punish noncompliance with it. The notion that the healthcare mandate is not coercive is total nonsense. By allowing ObamaCare to stand unchallenged, the Supreme Court left the First Amendment rights of religious institutions and business owners still exposed to the full onslaught of the HHS mandate.

Facing a barrage of more than forty lawsuits in federal courts across the nation—eleven of which had already been decided in favor of the plaintiffs at this writing—the Department of Health and Human Services held out its most recent olive branch to the American public on February 1, 2013, proposing certain “accommodations” to make its controversial healthcare mandate more palatable to the stubbornly religious masses. Although initially the public wasn’t sure what to make of these complex new “accomodations,” Catholic bishops and lawyers were soon sounding the alarm that the newly proposed HHS regulations do little if anything to allay their deep concerns about the mandate’s violation of religious freedom. In an op-ed entitled “Making Sense of Another Ambiguous ‘Compromise,’” Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia warned that the healthcare mandate “remains unnecessary, coercive and gravely flawed.” On EWTN’s news program The World Over Live with Raymond Arroyo, attorney Kyle Duncan of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty flatly dismissed the new “accommodations” as “window-dressing.” And Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, in an official statement on behalf of all the bishops, declared, “Throughout the past year, we have been assured by the Administration that we will not have to refer, pay for, or negotiate for the mandated coverage. We remain eager for the Administration to fulfill that pledge.”

So what is lacking in this latest “compromise” from HHS? According to Cardinal Dolan, three issues remain unresolved: 1) The federal definition of a religious ministry remains extremely narrow. 2) Nearly all religious institutions are still compelled to fund and facilitate "services" such as contraceptives, sterilization, and abortifacients. 3) No protection is afforded to the conscience rights of for-profit business owners.

We’ve already discussed how the mandate affects religious institutions. But what about religious owners of secular for-profit businesses as well as of nonreligious charitable organizations who object that the HHS mandate violates their personal religious beliefs? No legal exemption from the mandate is afforded them. Lawyers for the Obama administration maintain that secular businesses must comply with it regardless of their owners’ personal religious objections to handing out artificial contraceptives, sterilizations and abortifacients in their healthcare plans. In other words, under the Obama regime it is a crime for a religious person who runs a secular business or not-for-profit organization to do so in line with his or her religious convictions if such convictions prohibit the distribution of abortion pills, contraceptive drugs and/or sterilization procedures. Forcing individual believers to violate their faith is as much an attack on the First Amendment as forcing entire religious institutions to do so.

And what about the conscience rights of that small but significant group of non-religious owners of secular businesses and charitable organizations who object to providing abortifacients on moral rather than religious grounds? Why should they be exempted from the HHS mandate? After all, according to the Obama administration, this healthcare law is driven by “a compelling public interest”: for their own good, the American people must have unrestricted access to abortifacient drugs, birth control pills and sterilization procedures. The answer is that the moral right to refuse to provide abortion-inducing drugs is found in the moral law, also known as the natural law—a set of universal principles of right and wrong which come from God and which are inscribed in the human conscience. This moral law guided the thinking and actions of our nation’s great founders and, together with faith in God according to the Judeo-Christian tradition, served as the framework for our country’s two principal founding documents: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States.

The Declaration of Independence states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to ensure these Rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” This solemn statement is becoming all the more remarkable as our nation becomes more secularized, rejecting the firm foundations of religion and morality on which it was built. In this text, our nation’s founders acknowledged as self-evident truths that God created all human beings equal in dignity and endowed them with certain “unalienable” rights, i.e., rights that cannot be taken away, and that the role of government is to protect these rights. The founders knew that the moral law requires respect for the right to life of every innocent human being and forbids murder. They also knew that the Fifth Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” is merely a direct external confirmation by God of a law that he had already written in the human heart. Moreover, in acknowledging “Liberty” as an unalienable human right, the founders understood liberty as 1) the freedom to act in accordance with the moral law, and 2) the freedom to practice one’s own religion without government interference. The former aspect—what we refer to today as “freedom of conscience”—was taken for granted by the founders; we refer to the latter aspect as “freedom of religion.”

In our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, the First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Having come to this land from Europe, where some theocratic monarchs forced the state religion on their subjects and outlawed the public practice of other religions, our nation’s founders clearly understood that freedom of religion is a fundamental human right that requires legal protection from the opposing threats of single-religion dictatorship and religious persecution. Thus they wisely crafted a law that on the one hand forbids religious compulsion by the government, and on the other hand guarantees the freedom to practice one’s own religion without interference from the government.

The Fifth Amendment to our Constitution protects our unalienable rights to both life and liberty from arbitrary revocation by the government. It states: “No person shall be…deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This passage, along with most of the Fifth Amendment, was written to protect the rights of criminal suspects. When our nation’s Founders authored this text, they meant that no one could be executed or deprived of his liberty or land without first being publicly tried and convicted of a crime. Unfortunately, some two hundred years later in the infamous Roe v. Wade decision, the U.S. Supreme Court led by Chief Justice Warren Burger deliberately ignored the intent of the Constitution’s authors and, through some incomprehensible twist of logic, arbitrarily reinterpreted the Fifth Amendment due process clause regarding the confinement and execution of criminals to justify legalizing the murder of innocent unborn persons. As a result of this infamous decision, over the last forty years nearly 56 million innocent unborn Americans have been deprived of their unalienable right to life, and with it all their other rights as well. A woman’s supposed “right” to an abortion on demand has no authentic legal basis in the Constitution.

The most fundamental of all human rights—the right to life—as well as the rights to moral and religious liberty are explicitly acknowledged in our nation’s founding documents. By compelling individuals and institutions to help women kill their innocent unborn children regardless of moral objection to an intrinsically evil practice, the HHS mandate violates our sacred rights to life and liberty enshrined in the Declaration and the Constitution. Abortion violates the unalienable rights to life and liberty of the innocent unborn human being in its mother’s womb; therefore, it is both murder and tyranny and constitutes a violation of the Declaration and the Fifth Amendment. The HHS mandate violates not only the unalienable rights to life and liberty of the innocent preborn, but also the unalienable right to liberty of the American people, i.e., their freedom to act in accord with the moral law and with their religious beliefs; therefore, it is both murder and tyranny and constitutes a violation of the Declaration, the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment.

Abortion is clearly gravely immoral, so the case for refusing to cooperate in it is pretty clear-cut. But would a secular nonprofit or business owner have the right to object to providing artificial contraceptives on strictly moral grounds? The answer is yes, and here’s one good reason: Studies prove that many birth control pills act as de facto abortifacients—instead of preventing the conception of a child altogether, they merely prevent a newly conceived child from implanting in its mother’s uterus, resulting in its abortion. Thus a secular nonprofit or business owner may rightly refuse to provide artificial contraceptives to employees on the ground that this would make him or her complicit in the grave moral evil of abortion.

But even if artificial contraceptives did not behave like abortion-inducing drugs, there would still be another argument for a secular nonprofit or business owner to justify withholding them from his or her employees: The use of artificial contraception by married couples is gravely immoral. Non-Catholics may object that this is exclusively a doctrine of the Catholic Church, not a tenet of the universal moral law. However, it is worth remembering that prior to 1920, every single Christian denomination in the United States taught that the use of artificial contraception by married couples was a gravely immoral practice. In doing so, they rightly stood alongside the Catholic Church in upholding a key truth of the unchanging law of God. The fact that most Christian churches in America no longer teach this, and the fact that most Americans who object to the use of artificial contraception within marriage are now Catholic, does not change the truth of the moral law. It merely demonstrates that only the Catholic Church has continued to faithfully proclaim the truth of the immorality of artificial birth control for use by married couples. If something is immoral it is immoral for everyone of all times, regardless of their religious faith (or lack thereof) and regardless of whether certain churches teach the truth of it or not.

The mission of civil government is to protect the God-given rights of its citizens and to promote the common good of society. Religion and morality are powerful allies in achieving both of these objectives. They are what George Washington referred to as “indispensable supports” of our nation’s liberty, the essential foundations of human society. Atop this foundation of religion and morality, the traditional family is the essential basic unit of human society, the place where new human life is welcomed and nourished and where religious and moral values as well as civic duties are inculcated in the next generation of American citizens. Government has a solemn duty to respect religion, morality and the family and to avoid making any policies that would threaten their wellbeing. A government that dares to attack religion, morality, or the family is attacking the very foundations of human society. The Obama administration has dared to attack all three of these foundations of our republic by issuing a law that violates religious freedom, promotes immorality, and discourages families from welcoming new human life into their midst.

Our nation’s founders prophetically warned that the United States would not long endure without the twin pillars of religion and morality, that is, faith in God and adherence to his moral law. If the people of a nation don’t believe that human rights—especially the rights to life and liberty—come from God, then those rights will be perceived as coming from the state and the state will claim the authority to define their limits and to give or take away those rights as it sees fit. And if people don’t believe that it is morally wrong to deprive an innocent person of his or her right to life or liberty, then human life and liberty will not be respected.

Unfortunately, religion and morality mean nothing to the Obama administration. Its healthcare mandate and other radical policies are grounded in the dangerous philosophy of radical secularism, which is the antithesis of everything our nation’s founders believed and did. The central idea of this philosophy is that human society and politics are better off without God and without the constraints of an unchanging moral law. Unlike today’s radical secularists, those few of our nation’s founders who were nonreligious men were not at all hostile to religion. Benjamin Franklin did not refuse to sign the Declaration of Independence because it mentioned or referred to God in several places. On the contrary, the nonreligious founders warmly supported and encouraged the public exercise of religion, recognizing its key importance to the welfare of the nation. With its outright rejection of religion and moral absolutes, radical secularism is a recipe for national disaster, grimly exemplified in totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and Maoist China.

Despite the claims of the Obama administration, the HHS mandate has nothing to do with looking after the health of the American public, and it makes no sense whatsoever when viewed from that standpoint. For one thing, with this law the federal government is unnecessarily forcing health insurers to include coverage of an over-the-counter drug that is already inexpensive and widely available. Those who do not object to the use of artificial contraceptives within marriage as immoral can easily purchase them at the nearest drugstore for the price of a small bag of dog food. For another thing, giving women drugs to kill their unborn children is not caring for the health of either mothers or preborn infants, and giving people artificial contraceptives (many of which are de facto abortifacients) and surgical sterilization procedures so that they can’t have children is not health care either. None of these so-called “preventive services for women” are necessary or even beneficial to the health and well-being of American women; on the contrary, they are unnecessary and harmful to both. The negative effects of abortion on the physical, mental and emotional health and well-being of women are now well documented: cancer, pregnancy complications, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety, depression, guilt feelings, and suicide. Furthermore, artificial contraceptives have been shown to be harmful to the natural environment; their chemical waste byproducts pollute our nation’s water and soil and end up contaminating our food supply, which also degrades our health. Seen objectively, the HHS order is an irrational and self-destructive national policy of population control: By helping American women to not bear children, it places the future of our entire nation at risk. Leaving aside for the moment all considerations of morality, religious liberty, and constitutionality, these facts alone would render the “healthcare” mandate a grossly irresponsible, foolhardy and unethical decree of the federal government.

So if the HHS mandate is not about health care, what it is about? The answer is: money. The mandate is driven by powerful corporate interests—specifically the abortion, pharmaceutical, and insurance industries—which stand to profit immensely from legally mandated consumption of their products. Unfortunately, these wealthy and influential corporate giants are better represented in Washington, D.C. than the American people themselves are. They have bribed the Obama administration to give them exactly what they want—and they will do whatever it takes to ensure that the “healthcare” law remains firmly in place, no matter how destructive it is to our country.

To summarize: what is wrong with the HHS mandate?

1. It is unpopular. The HHS mandate is being imposed on our nation by Washington bureaucrats in the face of massive and sustained opposition from the American people. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, which gives the Obama administration the authority to issue the HHS mandate, was rammed through Congress and signed into law by President Obama despite the vociferous and well-founded objections of a large majority of his constituents that it failed to adequately protect their moral conscience rights and religious freedoms. Polls taken from 2009 up to today have consistently registered two-thirds of Americans as strongly opposed to ObamaCare, which makes it the most controversial and unpopular reform legislation in American history.

2. It is unjust. Never before in U.S. history has the federal government enacted a law that forces people to violate their moral consciences and religious precepts. Such compulsion is unjust because it infringes on the basic human rights to act in accord with the moral law and with one’s religious faith.

3. It is unconstitutional. The HHS mandate violates our First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion as well as the Fifth Amendment rights of unborn and born Americans not to be deprived of life or liberty, respectively, without due process of law.

4. It is immoral. It is one thing and bad enough for a government to legalize a gravely immoral act such as abortion. However, it is another thing and far worse for a government to legally compel its subjects to violate the moral law. No government has the right to order certain people to help other people do gravely immoral things such as murder their preborn children or render themselves infertile. Yet this is exactly what the federal government under the Obama administration is doing with the HHS mandate: forcing American citizens to participate in the gravely immoral acts of abortion, contraception, and sterilization.

5. It is an attack on religion, morality, and the family—the three basic pillars of human society and national life.

6. It is grounded in the dangerous philosophy of radical secularism, the idea that God and the moral law must be expelled from public life.

7. It is unnecessary. Abortion is not health care, and artificial contraceptives are already inexpensive and widely available for those who do not object to their use.

8. It is destructive to the public health. Abortion is harmful to the health of women, and artificial contraceptives generate toxic waste.

9. It is irresponsible. Preventing women en masse from having children is a recipe for national suicide.

10. It is driven by corporate greed. At bottom, the HHS mandate is nothing other than pork barrel for the abortion, pharmaceutical, and insurance industries.

Since announcing this high-handed and unprecedented “healthcare” directive over a year ago, the Obama administration has utterly failed to grant American religious institutions and business owners the basic freedom to act in accordance with their moral convictions and religious beliefs. The two HHS “compromises” presented thus far, with their narrow “exemptions” and dubious “accommodations,” are mere facades, totally devoid of genuine protections for the religious liberties and conscience rights of the American people. They’re carefully calculated political gestures designed to give the appearance of compromise and intended to weaken public resistance to a law that is immoral, unjust, and unconstitutional—a law that President Obama and his tyrannical accomplices have foisted on our nation without our consent, a law that they have no intention of rescinding or of substantially altering to comply with the First and Fifth Amendments.

The HHS mandate has been and continues to be loudly decried as an attack on religious liberty and the First Amendment, which it certainly is. But even more fundamentally, it is an attack on the moral law and on our right to act in accordance with that law. Perhaps, in our response as Catholic American citizens to the Obama administration’s radical anti-life policy, too much emphasis is being placed on the religious liberty and legal aspects of the issue and not enough on the moral and human rights aspects. The core of the issue is that the mandate forces American employers to purchase and distribute to their employees things that are gravely immoral for use either by pregnant women or by married couples. As Catholics, we need to articulate a more coherent defense of the moral law and of our right to act in accordance with it—defending principles that we hold in common with other religious believers as well as with many atheists and agnostics—in order to combat the insidious propaganda of the Obama administration more effectively.

The HHS mandate is an immoral and unjust law; therefore, we the people of the United States have not only the right but the moral duty to refuse to obey it—and to work for its full reversal. It’s not enough to merely demand further exemptions from the mandate; this approach is inherently flawed because it implies tacit acceptance of an unacceptable law. For the reasons given in this article, the so-called “healthcare” mandate in principle is intrinsically, profoundly and irredeemably flawed, and because of that it must be completely overturned. We must not allow ourselves to become discouraged by the obstacles we face in achieving this necessary goal. We must not give in to a subtle defeatist mentality and cowardly surrender to the mandate as though it were somehow irreversible. Such a dangerous and evil law cannot stand for long without wreaking tremendous havoc on our nation. We the people of the United States must keep up the pressure on the Obama administration to revoke this terrible law—and if it refuses to do so, we must use our heads when we next go to vote and select responsible leaders who will protect and defend our God-given unalienable rights to life and liberty, so that we will once again be “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”


Copyright © 2013 Justin D. Soutar. All rights reserved.

March for Marriage

From the Virginia Catholic Conference:

"Next Tuesday, March 26, 2013, several organizations from across the country will join together to stage a National March for Marriage in Washington, D.C. The March presents a significant opportunity to promote and defend marriage and the good of our nation, to pray for our Supreme Court justices, and to stand in solidarity with people of good will. It also complements a Call to Prayer for Life, Marriage and Religious Liberty announced last November by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Joining the USCCB’s Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, the Virginia Catholic Conference encourages Catholics to attend and support the March for Marriage.


"The March marks the two days --- March 26 and 27--- when the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in two cases related to so-called same-sex “marriage.” Petitioners are asking the Court to rule on the constitutionality of limiting marriage to a union of a man and a woman. Currently nine jurisdictions, including Maryland and the District of Columbia, have redefined marriage to include same-sex relationships.

"Our own Virginia bishops, in their 2006 pastoral letter on marriage, noted that marriage “is inscribed in our human nature.” Further, the U.S. bishops in 2009 pointed to the Second Vatican Council, which reminded us that “marriage is not a purely human institution’’ but one “established by the creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws.” The unique, fundamental meaning and purpose of this universal institution is to unite a man and a woman with each other and with the children born from their union. In fact, government has long recognized marriage because it is the institution best designed to protect children and their families. Those who want to redefine marriage claim marriage exists to satisfy an emotional need or to support voluntary relationships. However, the institution of marriage is not simply one of many alternative kinds of relationships. Rather, it is the very building block of the family and of society. Because of the unique contributions this institution makes to the common good, it must be clearly distinguished from other relationships.

"In 2006, Virginia voters passed a constitutional amendment to protect marriage and prevent legislators and judges from redefining it. The Supreme Court’s upcoming decision could have a profound impact on marriage laws across the nation and could even put individual and organizational conscience rights in jeopardy.

"To learn more about what the Church teaches about marriage, see the USCCB site as well as Marriage: Unique for a Reason.

"The Virginia Catholic Conference encourages all those who are able to attend the March for Marriage on March 26 and provide public witness as well as prayer on this critical issue."

Great idea. Life, marriage, and religious liberty are under attack in our nation today as never before. We Catholics need to stand up for what we believe and join with other people of goodwill to defend the traditional values on which our nation is built. We have the annual March for Life in Washington, and now there will be a March for Marriage.

Thankfully, our Catholic bishops have been doing a fine job of leading this effort to protect the sanctity of human life, traditional marriage, and our religious freedom and moral conscience rights. I think the bishops should go one step further and organize a massive march on Washington for life, marriage, and religious liberty. If it was well organized and well presented, millions of people--Catholic and non-Catholic alike--would attend. This could make an impact similar to that of the civil rights march of 1964: the federal government might actually listen to the people and take meaningful, decisive political action to protect their God-given human rights in response to massive public pressure. Let's hope and pray that this happens in the near future.