I’m now Catholic. (So are you.)

Thank your for your beautifully stated and clarion cry of support.

Paul,
I have been listening to KTBB for about 1.5 years, and enjoy most of all your on-air editorials. You speak with a clarity and pointedness rarely found on the airwaves (radio or TV…including most talk radio). Your comments are crisp, consice, and crystal-clear. And spot on. I inevitably respond with, “Wow, that was well put!”

Well, this morning’s diatribe on the un-Constitutional dictates of the HHS (an un-Constitutional dept) finally drove me to the website to give you due kudos.

Keep sounding the clarion call, Mr. Gleiser. Lord knows there are too few men who see clearly anymore.

Andy Trauger
Longview

Most Catholics use birth control anyway. This is all so politically motivated. Stupid really when our economy is the problem.

Thank you for this article. It’s what I’ve been saying for weeks now, but, since I really am a practicing Catholic, my credibility is considered suspect. Very well put.

Listening to the president’s accommodation speech now.
If the government decides that you qualify as a religious institution, they will parse out technical waiver’s for you. You will, however, remain a subject of the regime. The exercise of your freedom will still need to be weighed on a case-by-case basis.

C M Solomon has a good point. As an “orthodox” Catholic, my view is that the Bishops lay down with dogs and now are surprised to find themselves infested with fleas. It appears they are repenting of it now. I pray they do, and especially pray that they aren’t fooled by this bogus “compromise/accommodation” the administration has proffered. Don’t judge the Church by the failures of her people anymore than you judge America by the Charles Mansons and Timothy McVeighs… Both are full of imperfect people.

Well said. Thank you.

Greg, I’m Catholic, and I haven’t heard one Catholic who said they’re okay with this bill. In fact, most of the Catholics I know are not only “not okay” with this bill, they’re appalled and vehemently disagree with this bill. I’d be suspicious of any poll that “proves” what the government wants it to prove; especially when there are people in this country who will tell you they’ve personally seen the exact opposite.

Greg, the coverage rules that have existed since 2000 have much broader exemptions for religious organizations. Obamacare does not.

I quibble with the survey that claims that most Catholics support the mandate. There are many people who are only culturally Catholic (i.e., they self-identify as Catholic but do not practice the faith). The surveys aren’t designed to suss out those distinctions, thus they are misleading.

But it’s really irrelevant. In Catholicism, truth is not determined by majority vote. “By appealing to the behavior (not belief) of a particular religious group, the Administration (and others) are trying to indict the validity of an actual well-formed Catholic conscience. The claim might as well be: No one really holds that religious view so why should we respect it? This is how a government begins to form a litmus test for who’s conscientious objection is worth respecting.” – Fr. Andrew Strobl

Brad Sherman – The Church proposes, not imposes.

I am Catholic and thank you for your thoughts. While we are not the majority in the United States, we are a large (if not the largest) single denomination of any religious group and once the “firewall” of the Catholic Church in the United States is breached, all of the other religious groups will simply be a “mopping up” exercise. The political left has been battling the church for decades. The last major battle loss for the left was when Pope John Paul II visited Poland in 1979 and a million people filled the square, not to protest or be violent, but to participate in Mass and pray. The Politburo knew they lost Poland. We do need to stick together, not for this church or that church, but for the freedom of church. Note I didn’t write from church.

To Greg’s post that most Catholics agree…., two thoughts.
1. Just because a person claims to be Catholic while answering a survey does speak for all. Unfortunately there are many Name Only Catholics ie, Nancy Peloci, HHS Secretary – Kathleen Sebelius, VP Joe Biden.
2. Being a Catholic gives a person the freedom to turn his’ or her’s back from the teachings of God, but when they do turn their back, they have the knowledge of the impact their actions in this life will have in their next life, unless they are willing to repent and reconcile with God through the church.

God Bless You

Brad Sherman says:
February 10, 2012 at 12:24 pm
“Apparently, the writer doesn’t see the irony of being offended by the government getting involved in the individual lives of Catholics while the Catholic church has continually tried to impose its views of birth control and a woman’s right to choose on the rest of the World.”

Brad, It is optional to join the Church. If you have joined you are declaring yourself to believe everthing the Church teaches. Also, the Church doesn’t try to make you miserable for leaving.

I find it offensive that illegal aliens recieve free medical care provided through Catholic hospitals while my tax dollars go to pay for said free treatment. If the catholics want to pay for that care out of the collection plates, that is fine but not with my money.You can’t have your cake and eat it too. I am all for revoking the religous status of Catholic hospitals and stripping them of there tax free status. They are a money making business and should be taxed as such. Yet the Catholic church will not provide the insurance for their non-catholic employees. It is religous discrimination against anyone that is not catholic.

Really unfortunate use of the word fraught.

I’m not going to let some perverts tell me my wife can’t get the pill through our health insurance. What’s next muslim businesses forcing women who work there to wear burkas. Catholics need to keep their views in their churches, and keep their hands off little boys.

If I claim that “health care” is a “right” to be provided by the government (not an unalienable right that comes from our Creator), then who or what is obligated by force of law to provide the health care services to me. A government guaranteed “right” means that the government MUST give it to me no matter what, and without charge. Is the Doctor or Hospital and its employees down the street (my fellow Americans) therefore required to provide the government enforced “right of health care” to me? If so, then have they not become indentured servants or serfs/slaves whose services are owned, controlled, and ordered by the government to benefit me? How ignorant, stupid, calloused, selfish, covetous, and dictatorial would I be, if I held such a view. In fact, I would be a retarded adult, suffering from an infantile disease complex, by acting like an unhappy, crying baby that never grew up and didn’t understand personal responsibility.

As we have seen today, the term “health care” can mean almost anything including a woman’s normal reproductive functions if the Dictator-in-Chief deems it to be a health issue. How about food? How about a government approved proper diet? How about clothing and shelter from exposure to the elements? How about the mental stress of losing your job? How about anything that could cause mental or physical health issues? The fact is that ANYTHING can be a “health care” issue, even parents that don’t follow the proper rules of raising their own children. Is the child’s education expected to include the proper respect towards our government rulers and proper political thought on the environment, social justice, fairness, and collective responsibilities in order to avoid the stress of bad behavior based on false beliefs? There is no end once you go down this road.

I have a suggestion. For those people who demand the “right of health care” let the entire health care industry be nationalized and paid for by the government. All health care personnel would be employees of the government and there would be a “medical draft” to guarantee sufficient number of Doctors, Nurses, Hospital facilities and their non-medical staff. There would be a minimum of 20 years of obligated services to those lucky enough to be “drafted”. The government would pay for all medical school expenses. It would also provide transportation and medication as necessary to facilitate access to all Americans. Home health care would also be provided. All health care employees would be unionized with the “right to collective bargaining” and strikes, if necessary.

It gets better. Everyone will have a right to vital organ transplants or sex change operations. The organs can be harvested from criminals on death row, or the mentally disabled that are too expensive to take care of and have no useful life, anyway. Unwanted babies that would otherwise be aborted can be saved for future harvesting of vital organs.

In order to keep costs under control, there would be an arbitration panel that would dispense the health care services in accordance with the good-health behavior and track record of each individual citizen and their useful lifespan given their genetic (family) history as recorded by the government.

Please don’t cry foul with this proposal. Remember that “rights” from government are ultimately devoid of any moral or religious conviction since NO CREATOR is involved.

Those “Catholics” who agree with the mandate, with birth control, and with abortion, are not Catholic at all. You accept the teaching of the Church, or you do not, and in that you are Catholic, or you are not. Picking and choosing what to believe, like walking through the grocery store and picking certain foods over others because you may have a bad taste for some, is exactly the divisive factor separating professed Catholics from practiced ones. Saying and doing are two very different things, just like “actions speak louder than words.” I feel very sorry for our government, because in creating this mandate it has alienated a large group of people that would otherwise like to try to work with the government to promote positive, bipartisan change.

I agree completely with Ross, throw all political ideologies out the window. This is about the Freedom of Religion here, which is being crossed out by the Obama Administration. Catholic Hospitals and Organizations are, essentially, branches of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and thus should be treated as such.

The Catholic Church supports quality healthcare for all (and thus Obamacare), but certainly not the commercialization of the murdering of humans in their earliest stages.

@Greg, I dunno what those polls are asking, but I can tell you that the results are about as skewed as it gets. That “research” that showed 98% of Catholic women using Birth Control is utter BS, I know plenty of women (Catholic and non-Catholic alike) who are completely against Birth Control. It may have been “in place”, but it has not been enforced until Obama came into office.

The abortion ‘issue’ was LEGALLY resolved in 1973 with Roe v. Wade. While I do not advocate or support abortion, I am of the belief that the Consitituion was meant and intended to assure personal liberty and ensure the expansion of freedom for all citizens. Certainly, we would all agree that our country’s record in this regard is ‘spotty’ at best and, at worst, unthinkable.

Now, we are confronted with the invetitable consequences of the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Frontier, the Great Society, and the countlesss yet un-branded platforms that have ensued. We are further confronted by the politicalization of our judicial branch, corrupted by its two counterparts. We are, in fact, living with the realities of our own complacency — our own and repeated election of exactly what we do not want. We have been rewarded with what should be expected: laws, procedures, regulations, policies, infrastructures and myriad other mechanisms put into place to ensure the retention of the elected, regardless of the will of the people.

As I write this, I must note that CNN, Fox and many other networks and media outlets — let alone the internet — have cut into all normal programming to announce, review, consider, talk about and otherwise rant on about the death of Whitney Houston.

No doubt, her death is sad, tragic.

But does it truly affect anyone, in any real sense? I believe the issues of OUR day, in THIS period of US history, do not center upon the death of a singer. Rather, let us ask ourselves the relative importance if not absolute priority of our core values of freedom and liberty, and how these might be lost before our eyes through lack of care, absense of Constitutional understanding, diversion to a celebrity-driven culture, and ending up in a pile of dissatisfaction with the state of our economy, the lowest minimal standards for the least amongst us, the wars we enter, the messages we send to the world and so much more.

So, on to abortion. I personally believe it is wrong. I also think it falls into a very gray moral area, and one best left to eadh individual with me respecting my neighbor’s own judgment and conscience. I think science will coninue to grow and evolve and shed further light on this subject, and likely give all of us answers as to whether abortion is or is not “murder.”

In the meantime, let freedom reign! Let us not mandate or hold funds hostage or use politics and other means to impose one morality over another, and respect our fellow citizens. Let us not drive the Mormans west, drive the Quakers away, burn non-believers at the stake, endorse slavery, support Jim Crow and on and on.

Instead, let us be a more reasoned and respectful populace. Perhaps we might each consider the practice of voting for the satus quo and then wondering why we we have no change.

As long as we allow ourselves to become less educated, we will inevitably enlarge ourselves as a poppulation of sheep, willing to be lead to our own slaughter.

@Greg

Interesting. I read the poll. Nowhere did they ask the subject if they were Catholic.

http://publicreligion.org/site/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/January-Follow-up-Topline.pdf

So how exactly did they come to the conclusion about Catholics?

Warning – FREE advice! Please don’t take the bait from radical Left provocateurs that have commented here. If you were to look at their web pages (not recommended) you would see a hopeless victim of 90 years of the Progressive agenda that is anti-God, anti-church, anti-Creator, anti-Constitution, and hates the Judeo-Christian Heritage that built the greatest nation in the history of mankind. They have the freedom to say and believe whatever they want to, but I believe it is a waste of electrons, synapses and neuron signals to respond to the hopeless. I prefer not to soil my britches, brain, and beliefs with such garbage.

Is it too much to ask the question: Where would we be today if it weren’t for the MIRACULOUS role that the USA played in saving the world from a thousand years of murder and mayhem if we hadn’t won WWII? How many Socialists know that 20 to 70 million non-combatants were deliberately murdered by three Communist regimes in Asia in the last century? It is our LOVE for our Republic: “one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all” that rises above the dictatorships of the world and celebrates the individual freedom and responsibilities that make a great nation.

Thank God for the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that protects us from tyranny (the natural state of the history of mankind)! This is what this debate is all about. Are we willing to save this country from the unlawful actions of a rogue regime that doesn’t respect the Constitution?

Jesus on health care plans:
“But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii[c] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’”

Funny how Catholics want it both ways. Want the government to legislate for their religious beliefs against homosexual marriage, but then when the government asks institutions, which employee non-Catholics, they are upset when the government legislates into it. My advice, if you don’t want the government to legislate what your healthcare covers, stop taking the handouts of tax breaks.

In reply to Mary’s comment above: “Most Catholics use birth control anyway. This is all so politically motivated. Stupid really when our economy is the problem.”

My reply to Mary: This may be true but you are missing the point entirely. This isn’t about who does or who does not use birth control in the Catholic religion. It’s about: power and a clear and present threat to liberty.

The argument is not about theology. It’s not about abortion. It’s not pro-life versus pro-choice. It’s not about birth control.

It’s about freedom.

Interesting how so many people keep saying “most Catholics use birth control anyway”. I am Catholic and I have never seen this poll offered outside a church after mass. If we are not judging “most Catholics” on those that actually practice their faith, then we are not relying on Catholics who actually believe their faith. Anyone can check the box “Catholic” on a survey. That does not make it so. One who does not follow his faith will not feel religious oppression for going against what he does not believe in.

Thank you for your article. It reminds me of Kennedy in front of the Brandenburg Gate saying “Ich bin ein Berliner!”