Peoria Bishop Daniel Jenky orders priests to read anti-Obama letter at Sunday sermons

Manya A. Brachear | Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO — Joining the chorus of Roman Catholic clergy in Illinois criticizing President Barack Obama before next week's election, Peoria Bishop Daniel Jenky ordered priests to read a letter to parishioners on Sunday before the presidential election, explaining that politicians who support abortion rights also reject Jesus.

"By virtue of your vow of obedience to me as your Bishop, I require that this letter be personally read by each celebrating priest at each Weekend Mass," Jenky wrote in a letter circulated to clergy in the Catholic Diocese of Peoria.

In the letter, Jenky cautions parishioners that Obama and a majority of U.S. senators will not reconsider the mandate that would require employers, including religious groups, to provide free birth control coverage in their health care plans. "This assault upon our religious freedom is simply without precedent in the American political and legal system," Jenky wrote.

"Today, Catholic politicians, bureaucrats, and their electoral supporters who callously enable the destruction of innocent human life in the womb also thereby reject Jesus as their Lord," Jenky added. "They are objectively guilty of grave sin."

Earlier this year, Jenky delivered a controversial homily criticizing the contraception mandate. The bishop included Obama's policies in a list of historic challenges the Catholic Church has overcome in previous centuries, including Hitler and Stalin's campaigns.

Jenky is the third Illinois Catholic leader to offer pointed guidance for Catholic voters in recent weeks. Last month, Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki offered a commentary on the Democratic and Republican parties' platforms that he said wasn't intended as instruction, but guidance.

"There are many positive and beneficial planks in the Democratic Party Platform, but I am pointing out those that explicitly endorse intrinsic evils," Paprocki explained in the Springfield Diocese newspaper.

"Again, I am not telling you which party or which candidates to vote for or against," he said. "But I am saying that you need to think and pray very carefully about your vote, because a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy."

Furthermore, in the Rockford Diocese, Vicar General Eric Barr compared Obama's support of religious freedom in Muslim countries to his lack of support for Catholic liberty.

"Meanwhile, Obamacare marches on, steamrolling Catholic morality and the First Amendment under its weight. How can that be tolerated by citizens?" Barr wrote.

"Nothing justifies this peculiar and unreal stance of the president," he said.

Spokeswoman Colleen Dolan said she doesn't expect Chicago's Cardinal Francis George to issue any statements before the election.

Link:

• Bishop orders priests to read anti-Obama letter at Sunday sermons

First non-Catholic business sues HHS over contraceptive mandate

By Andrew Evans

(The Washington Free Beacon) An arts and crafts business with more than 500 stores across the country launched a lawsuit against the U.S.

Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) implementation of Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate Wednesday, the Becket Fund announced.

Hobby Lobby is the first non-Catholic business to file a lawsuit objecting to the mandated coverage of certain contraceptive drugs that it considers abortion inducing.

Hobby Lobby “should never be put in a position of choosing their faith over their business,” Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund, said this morning in a conference call with the press.

“We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate,” said David Green, CEO and founder of Hobby Lobby.

Hobby Lobby will have to comply with the mandate or face fines totaling over a million dollars.

Green emphasized to reporters that his family’s Christian faith is important to his business.

Duncan pointed out that the business closes on Sunday and provides spiritual counsel to its employees.

The government under Obamacare requires employers to provide their employees health insurance that covers contraceptive drugs, including morning-after and week-after pills that some consider abortion inducing.

Hobby Lobby is not the first non-Catholic institution to file suit over the mandate. Wheaton College, an evangelical college in Illinois, sued in July. The federal court subsequently dismissed Wheaton’s suit because the Justice Department expanded the “safe harbor” accommodation that gives nonprofit institutions longer to comply with the regulation. That rendered the suit premature.

Hobby Lobby, however, is the first non-Catholic business to file suit against the mandate. Duncan pointed out that the only other business to file suit received an injunction.

Duncan said that the Justice Department has not issued any comparable accommodation for for-profit businesses. What’s more, Hobby Lobby is self-insured, so the so-called “accommodation” for nonprofits that requires the insurers to cover the objectionable drugs would not provide relief to the business.

The Becket Fund, which represents Hobby Lobby, describes itself as “a non-profit, public-interest legal and educational institute that protects the free expression of all faiths.”

Link:

• First non-Catholic business sues HHS over contraceptive mandate

Democratic Convention: Cardinal Dolan Prayed for God to Protect the Lives of Those “Waiting to be Born”

h/t the Blaze

Inviting Obama to Dinner - The Vortex With Michael Voris

Links:

• The Vortex: Inviting Obama to Dinner
• Oh, Puhleeeze!

Related:

• Catholics For Obama: "President Obama to be honored guest at Al Smith Dinner"
• Bishop Rene Gracida: Michael Voris Pierces the Veil Surrounding the Invitation of Obama to the Al Smith Dinner
• Nancy Pelosi denied photo-op by Pope Benedict XVI
• Sign the Petition
• AONY Blog Response
• Disinvite Obama
• Clear as MUD! (Obama Invited to Alfred Smith Dinner by Archdiocese of New York)

Oh, Puhleeeze!

Links:

• Oh, Puhleeeze!
• ChurchMilitantTV

Related Links:

• Nancy Pelosi denied photo-op by Pope Benedict XVI
• Sign the Petition
• AONY Blog Response
• Al Smith Foundation Board of Directors
• Disinvite Obama
• Clear as MUD! (Obama Invited to Alfred Smith Dinner by Archdiocese of New York)

Pope: U.S. faces threats to religious freedom of ‘unprecedented gravity’

By Patrick B. Craine

ROME, Italy, August 7, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Pope Benedict XVI is warning that the United States is facing threats of “unprecedented gravity” to religious freedom.

In a letter on behalf of the pope to Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone observed that “concerted efforts are being made to redefine and restrict the exercise of the right to religious freedom.”

The comments come as the U.S. bishops campaign for religious liberty in the face of attacks such as President Obama’s HHS mandate, which requires employers to cover contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs in their health insurance packages.

The bishops recently concluded their “fortnight for freedom” - two weeks of intensive “prayer, study, catechesis, and public action.” Shortly before launching the event, the bishops had reaffirmed their condemnation of the HHS mandate, nothing that the rule effectively punishes Catholic institutions for operating in the public sphere.

“Those deemed by HHS not to be ‘religious employers’ will be forced by government to violate their own teachings within their very own institutions. This is not only an injustice in itself, but it also undermines the effective proclamation of those teachings to the faithful and to the world,” they wrote.

Writing in advance of the Knights of Columbus’ annual Supreme Convention, which opened Tuesday in Anaheim, the prelate praised the Knights of Columbus for working “tirelessly to help the Catholic community recognize and respond to the unprecedented gravity of these new threats to the Church’s liberty and public moral witness.”

In his letter, Bertone quoted remarks by Pope Benedict in January in which he called on America’s bishops to “counter a reductive secularism which would delegitimize the Church’s participation in public debate about the issues which are determining the future of American society.”

Link:

• Pope: U.S. faces threats to religious freedom of ‘unprecedented gravity’

Supreme Court delivers a knockout punch to the White House (Ministerial Exemption)

By Peter Johnson Jr.

(Fox News) Wednesday the United States Supreme Court delivered a knockout blow to the White House in the cause of religious liberty.

Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for a unanimous court swatted away the government’s claim that the Lutheran Church did not have the right to fire a “minister of religion” who, after six years of Lutheran religious training had been commissioned as a minister, upon election by her congregation.

The fired minister -- who also taught secular subjects -- claimed discrimination in employment. The Obama administration, always looking for opportunities to undermine the bedrock of First Amendment religious liberty, eagerly agreed.

There was just one big problem standing in the way of the government's plan: the U.S. Constitution. For a long time American courts have recognized the existence of a "ministerial exemption" which keeps government’s hands off the employment relationship between a religious institution and its ministers or clergy.

Here, in this case, the Department of Justice had the nerve to not only challenge the exemption’s application but also its very existence.

But, Chief Justice Roberts pushed back hard, telling the government essentially to butt out:

“Requiring a church to accept or retain an unwanted minister, or punishing a church for failing to do so, intrudes upon more than a mere employment decision. Such action interferes with the internal governance of the church, depriving the church of control over the selection of those who will personify its beliefs. By imposing an unwanted minister, the state infringes the free exercise clause, which protects a religious group’s right to shape its own faith and mission through its appointments. According the state the power to determine which individuals will minister to the faithful also violates the establishment clause, which prohibits government involvement in such ecclesiastical decisions.”

Citing well-known legal precedent dating as far back as Reconstruction, the court made it clear that it is not up to the government to contradict a faith’s determination as to who should -- and should not -- be performing religious functions...

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