Wednesday, March 14, 2012

A Path Of Continued Confrontation

Faculty members of Jesuit-run John Carroll University in Cleveland have urged U.S. Catholic church acceptance of the Obama administration’s contraceptive insurance regulation as adapted Feb. 10. The federal Health and Human Services regulation mandates that nearly all employee health insurance plans cover artificial contraception and voluntary sterilization services, including plans for employees of many religiously run institutions, even if the sponsors of those institutions are morally opposed to the use of those prescriptions or medical procedures. The faculty letter is in sharp contrast to the stance of the U.S. bishops’ conference, which has waged a high-profile campaign against the mandate, labeling it as a violation of First Amendment religious liberty rights. In a letter Feb. 14 to university president Jesuit Fr. Robert Niehoff, 48 John Carroll faculty members said, “We are all troubled that the bishops have chosen a path of continued confrontation” over the latest version of the Health and Human Services regulation. The signatories said they are all “committed to freedom of conscience and religious liberty,” but they “also believe that access to contraception is central to the health and well-being of women and children.” “The American bishops have accused the Obama administration of attacking religious liberty in mandating insurance coverage of contraception,” the faculty members wrote. “On the contrary, we believe the insurance mandate is driven by a concern for women’s health.” The faculty members asked Niehoff and presidents of other Catholic universities to “urge the bishops to avoid the inflammatory rhetoric they have been using to attack the administration’s policy ... [and] endorse a policy of insurance coverage of contraception that respects the religious liberties and health of all who teach and work at Catholic colleges and universities.”
Link (here) to  National Catholic Reporter for the full story,

4 comments:

Maria said...

Our Catholic Responsibility

The Title of this talk is, “Our Gravest Moral Responsibility is to Convert the Contraceptive Mentality.”

This is not symbolic language. It is stark reality. We Catholics are in possession of the fulness of truth. Truth, we know, is conformity of the mind with reality. The millions of our contemporaries who believe in contraception are living in a dream world of unreality.

This dream world is being fostered by the modern media of communication, which Marshall McLuhan correctly said, are "engaged in a Luciferian conspiracy against the truth."

For five years, I was on the faculty of a state university, teaching Catholic theology. When I finished my tenure I published a book, entitled, The Hungry Generation. The more than 2,000 students, mainly non-Catholic and even non-Christian, taught me something I want to share with you.

The people of our country are starving for the truth. They are hungering for the only food that can nourish the human mind, which is the truth.

Over the years, I have defined peace of mind as the experience of knowing the truth.

On these premises, we see that the contraceptive mentality is only the tragic symptom of a deeper malady - which is starvation for the truth.

What is our Catholic responsibility? It is painfully obvious.

Our duty is to KNOW THE TRUTH revealed by Christ and taught by His Church.


Our duty is to LIVE THE TRUTH, as Christ who is Truth Incarnate showed us by His life on earth how we are to live in this passing world of space and time.


Our duty is to DEFEND THE TRUTH, because we realize how disastrous are the consequences of error and how blessed are the fruits of possessing the truth.


Our duty is to SHARE THE TRUTH with others, because this is the highest practice of charity, on which our salvation depends.


Our duty is to SUFFER FOR THE TRUTH. We are to rejoice as Christ tells us when people oppose us, criticize us, speak all kinds of calumny against us - in a word - when we are persecuted for proclaiming the truth which God, who is Truth, became man to reveal. Our Lord, Truth Incarnate, was crucified for proclaiming in Palestine.


The contraceptive mentality is a challenge to our zeal to re-evangelize a paganized America. Christ will use us as channels of His grace in this massive task of conversion on one condition: that we are willing to live a martyr’s life and, if need be, die a martyr’s death for the salvation of our beloved country; salvation in time and a heavenly eternity. Amen.
--John Hardon SJ

Anonymous said...

"we are willing to live a martyr’s life and, if need be, die a martyr’s death for the salvation of our beloved country; salvation in time and a heavenly eternity. Amen."

Wow--heavy man. Strong words from an armchair radical cleric.

Maria said...

He has a way of showing you who you are, don't you think?

Andrew said...

As a graduate of JCU, this really bothers me. It's stuff like this that has caused me to stop donating to my alma mater.