Today we begin the great fast, Lent, a season for us to prepare our hearts for God. In this gift we fast, give alms, and make sacrifice. We loose those things that are staining our hearts, imprisoning our hearts, that are preventing Jesus from wholly living within us.
Make an effort this year to clean out your heart. Watch, fast, and pray.
There is no doubt that the very nature of faith means that some of our beliefs will never be the same. We read from different texts. We follow different edicts. We subscribe to different accounts of how we came to be here and where we’re going next – and some subscribe to no faith at all.
But no matter what we choose to believe, let us remember that there is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being. This much we know.
President Barack Obama
The hypocrisy would be quite amusing if it weren’t about such a serious and gravely evil act.
Help make Obama a one-term president. It is time to get this extremely anti-life, anti-freedom, anti-honesty, anti-liberty, anti-Catholic, anti-American, anti-Constitution, anti-fiscal responsibility man out of the White House.
H/T to Jill Stanek.
After reading at what some liberals have been writing on facebook, a particular point has come up.
What is the difference between a pacifist having to pay for wars, which they are morally opposed to, and Catholics having to pay for birth control, which they are morally opposed to.
Thoughts?
The last three years of the Obama administration have been a trial for Americans, especially the last few weeks. Look around, everywhere you turn is heartache, its everywhere that you go. People don’t have jobs and Obama’s economic policies are making it worse. In the midst of losing material wealth to other nations and to our super-inflated government, we now lose our basic liberties. I mean the right to life has been gone for almost forty years. Now, the right to believe freely and to act in accordance with our beliefs is also being taken away. With these two rights: life and liberty, the final right of the Declaration of Independence goes too: the pursuit of happiness. If we cannot live, and cannot have liberty, we are not free to pursue happiness, but only be forced to accept someone else’s version of it.
Yet in all of this, there is good that comes out. First there is an abundance of good coming from the Catholic Church. This has served as an eye-opener for many liberal and lukewarm Catholics to become reacquainted with the Faith as well as a moment to see Barrack Obama for the oppressive tyrant that he is. In this latest persecution, the Church will be purged if you will, and become holier, albeit, likely smaller.
There is also a personal good for me in this mandate. In the back of my mind I’ve always enjoyed history, especially American history, but I don’t know as much about the origins and struggles of our nation as I thought. And I know even less about the political principles of our government and of the systems that it was modeled after. And so this has served to fuel my desire to understand where America really came from and how we have deviated from the ideas of our founding fathers (because we most certainly have deviated from them). I’ve been enjoying reading about our country, and am very excited to sit down and read a history of the United States that I just purchased tonight. While I am first and foremost a citizen of the Kingdom of God, I am secondly an American, this is my homeland and it is my duty to understand my people, our struggles, and our foundations so that I can understand how we have gotten into this mess, and perhaps what we need to do to get out of it.
My favorite time of year is upon us. In one short week, Lent will be here, and we get a little melancholy as we make sacrifices and do penance for the continued conversion of our souls towards the abundant and infinite grace given to us by Jesus Christ. Being that my temperment is primarily melancholic, its like there is an entire season devoted to my personality. I love it!
Anyways, Lent is, for me, a reminder of what I’ve been through. For those who are converts you probably agree. Lent is the last leg of the journey into communion with Holy Mother Church. It is the last few weeks before the greatest moment of our lives takes place. Lent, being the barren desert that it is, reminds us of the personal struggle that has taken to get to this moment: the tears, the fights, the loneliness. It channels all of these things into the very heart of the Church’s life and gives them new meaning for us.
I will never forget the significance and the wonder of my first true Lent three years ago. My heart cries a little bit as I look at my beautiful sister who has had her own struggles as she has entered into the conversion process. She reminds me so much of what happened to me, and yet our conversions and journeys are completely different. And now she is about to enter the home stretch, and when Lent has passed and the Sacred Triduum culminates in the Easter Vigil, she will be fully Catholic. I am so very excited for her!
From Catholic Vote:
“Keep your rosaries off our ovaries!”
Remember that one? So charming, I know. Yet for all its shrill ugliness, this is an apt phrase for those who use it. It succinctly (and with graphic weirdness) encapsulates the notion of privacy, that highest and holiest of rights that animates the Left’s unwavering devotion to “reproductive freedom.”
The appeal to “privacy” gave life, both culturally and legally, to the acceptance of abortion and contraception on demand. From a cultural perspective, it was an appeal to the libertarian streak in every American: the guvmint ain’t got no bidness tellin’ me what to do. Hence, “my body, my choice.” Establishing privacy as a legal basis for abortion and contraception required a litte more effort, but with some dazzling Constitutional gymnastics provided by Supreme Court Justices Douglas, Brennan, and Blackmun in a string of cases during the Sixties and Seventies, the liberals achieved their goal and enshrined “reproductive freedom” among the Bill of Rights. Yay privacy.
Or at least we thought they had achieved their goal. As Carson points out, it’s not over with the Left once they have won the “right” to something over the opposition of those who favor, say, true moral freedom, the rule of law, life, etc. And in the liberal universe, this makes sense. Liberals don’t want freedom, or even license. Or rather, that’s not all they want. For the liberal, a right isn’t fully won until it is not only recognized, but alsosubsidized. For the liberal, it’s not enough that you must acknowledge his or her right to something. You must also pay for it.
And here we are today. The President, convinced that access to contraception and abortifacients is a fundamental right, has decreed that these “preventive” services must be not only accessible, but free. And since they must be free, and since that means covered by insurance, that means employers have to pay for them. (As noted elsewhere, the recent “accomodation” changes nothing.)
But what about good old privacy? Doesn’t the reproductive rights agenda run into problems here? For years, they staked everything on privacy: It’s between a woman and her doctor. Government should stay out of the bedroom. This is a private medical decision. It’s a woman’s body, a woman’s destiny, a woman’s choice. Even as recently as last month, while celebrating the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, President Obama once againacknowledged the centrality of privacy to reproductive rights, stating that government “should not intrude on private family matters.”
But now? Now the government, in order to actively ensure that those “rights” are not only recognized, but also provided and paid for, is compelling us into the bedrooms of those who choose to contracept. Gone are the good old days of “keep your rosaries off my ovaries.” Today the same crowd has the government telling us, under penalty of law, ”Hey you, with the rosaries, get in that bedroom and do whatever they tell you to with their ovaries. And bring your checkbook.”
So much for privacy.
I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison, and his successor will die a martyr in the public square.
-Cardinal George
Scenario:
I’m a liberal student at a Catholic university.
I’m also sexually active, even though I’m unmarried.
I know that the Church teaches that premarital sex is a sin, but you know what I don’t care. My body, my choice. The Church can’t tell me what to do.
I also know that my sinful choice comes with some consequences. I could get an STD. Or I could even develop a clump of cells in my uterus. Because I don’t want the responsibility that comes with being sexually active, I want to use contraception.
I also know that the Church teaches that contraception is a sin, but you know what, I need it for my health, and it is too expensive, so I think that the Church should pay for it anyway.
That’s right. I want to sin twice (premarital sex and contraception) and I want the Church to condone, approve, and subsidize it all! That’s my human right. I have a human right to birth control. I have a human right to have sex. I have a human right to make someone else pay for it.
END SCENARIO
Is it just me, or am I having a hard time thinking of the proper word for this mentality? Idiotic seems much too mild.
Last time I checked, birth control wasn’t a human right, but religious liberty was. I don’t know, though, maybe the Constitution has changed recently.
Look, as an American, I recognize that you can choose to have sex. I disapprove if it is outside the context of marriage, but you don’t answer to me, you answer to God. I also recognize that you can choose to use contraceptives. I strongly disapprove, and would encourage you to look at how contraceptives have been harmful in so many ways from their effects on women’s health, to the environment, from the objectification of woman to the decreased responsibility with sexual activity. But I’m not going to walk into your bathroom and flush your pills or puncture all the condoms in your glove compartment.
However, as an American, I have the right NOT to pay for your birth control. I have a right NOT to enable you to engage in immoral sexual behavior. You don’t have to agree with my moral standards and I don’t have to agree with your lack of moral standards. You don’t have to pay for our NFP classes, and I don’t have to pay for your birth control. It seems simple enough doesn’t it? You’d think. But some people have their heads so far up their…egos, that they just don’t get it.
It’s sad. And terrifying. But mostly sad. And terrifying.
If you keep up with current events, you may have heard about all of the Catholics who are outraged at Obama over a mandate from the HHS in regards to Obamacare.
In short, this mandate will force virtually all employers to give their employees insurance coverage that includes contraceptives, including certain prescriptions that are abortifacients (drugs that cause a fertilized egg, which is a person, to be unable to attach to the uterine wall, thus aborting the pregnancy).
Catholicism, as many know, teaches that contraception is a grave evil because it is anti-life and it dissolves the nature of the marital act which is itself a reflection on the very supernature of God.
So the Obama administration is forcing Catholic employers to purchase things for employees that are strictly forbidden by our religious precepts.
Faithful Catholics everywhere are outraged.
But the outrage is not necessarily over the contraception mandate itself, but rather in the very obvious overstep the Federal government is taking. This decision is a clear violation of the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The first amendment protects us from being prohibited from practicing our religion. Yet, this mandate directly prohibits us from practicing our religion.
This is what the real fight is about. It’s not about contraception.
Today it happens to be Catholics. Tomorrow it could be the Jews. The day after that the Buddhists. If we let the government dictate what parts of religion others of one religion are allowed to practice, there is no reason that they won’t be able to do that to all religions, even yours, whatever it may be.
If we allow this atrocious violation of religious liberty to stand, we cease to be American. America was founded on the principles of religious liberty, and it is the first right enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
So we cannot stand still and say “It’s just the Catholics, it doesn’t affect my life.” If we stand silent who will be there when they come after you?
First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
ORA PRO NOBIS
ORA PRO NOBIS
ORA PRO NOBIS
