Our Home-Grown Threat To Freedom

Written by Connecticut Catholic Corner contributor: Tim S.

As of this writing, the Conference of Catholic Bishops has filed a suit in federal court against provisions of the Affordable Care and Patient Protection Act which mandate the provision of contraceptive, sterilization, and abortion-inducing measures by people of conscience, including hospitals and other health care facilities run by the Catholic Church. This suit has the support of many non-Catholics as well as Catholics. As Mike Huckabee, former Arkansas governor and an evangelical minister, succinctly put it, "We should all be Catholics now."

Though the specific issue at hand is religious freedom, the matter in fact goes far beyond just that. We should have seen the warning red flags long before the election of 2008. Barack Obama ran on a platform highlighted by such nebulous slogans as, "Hope And Change" and "Change We Can Believe In." Neither of these slogans was specifically defined, and we now know that the omission was intentional. Equally intentional was the withholding of vital information about the candidate Obama, such as where he was born (supposedly Hawaii), his college transcripts, his medical records, and so on. Even more disturbing was the deliberate withholding of information about Obama's radical associations past and present, including numerous members of the Communist Party of the United States of America. The stand of the Catholic Church against communism is one of long standing.

Yet it goes beyond even this. The real culprit here is a growing tide of secularism which has largely overtaken not only the United States, but much of the developed world as well. When did it all begin? I would say it began in 1964, a time when the Catholic Church was at its height in America and the rest of the world as well. For it was in 1964 that we stopped listening to God and started listening to Madalyn Murray, who succeeded in her effort to get prayer banned from the public schools, and would have stricken the motto, "In God We Trust," from our currency.

Shortly after Obama's election there were several disturbing events. One was his instant abandonment of the economy as an issue, turning instead to socialized medicine, a goal long coveted by his political party, the Democrats. Bolstered by Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, Obama was given carte blanche to do what he would with our government, and he wasted no time in exercising that carte blanche. Against the will of the American people, Obama had the Affordable Care and Protection Act, better known as Obamacare, railroaded through a partisan Congress and enacted into law. The insurance mandate of this law, requiring the purchase of health care insurance by all Americans, was ruled constitutional in a 5-4 vote of the Supreme Court, on the grounds that it was a "tax." This and Obama's "stimulus" were instrumental in propelling our national debt to nearly $16 trillion dollars.

Even more disturbing, however, were instances in 2009 of school children being forced by their teachers to sing hymns of praise to Barack Obama. This struck a raw nerve not only with people of most religious faiths, but also with those old enough to remember Nazi Germany who were able to see eerie similarities here. We will recall from the Gospels that when a man knelt before Peter, Peter admonished the man to rise to his feet, gently reminding the supplicant that he (Peter) was only a man himself. Obama, however, made no similar protest at deification, as any of his predecessors certainly would have. On the contrary, by his silence he seemed to be encouraging it. His advocacy of late-term abortions, even to the point of killing infants outside the womb, put him on the fringes even in the minds of those who would permit abortions to victims of rape and incest. His latest moral outrage is in his advocacy of same-sex marriage, in effect redefining the holy sacrament of Matrimony for the entire nation as it has already been redefined here in Connecticut. But note the language used here: Obama and his apologists in the press say that he has "evolved" on the issue of same-sex marriage. Had a Republican done the same thing, it would have been called a flip-flop.

In the meantime, Obama, through federal "bailouts" of the banking, insurance, and automotive industries has, through the purchase of stock at taxpayer expense, in effect taken over substantial portions of those industries. Obamacare, if not repealed, will nationalize roughly one-sixth of the entire U. S. economy. The more astute among us will recognize here a threat to our legacy of freedom, and the looming specter of communism in the very country which for so long during the Cold War fought against that oppressive form of government.

The choice Americans face this November couldn't possibly be more stark. It's a choice between a political party which would preserve our freedom and one which would take that freedom away. It's a choice between a candidate who, while of a different religious persuasion, is nevertheless a devoted follower of Jesus Christ, and one who has permitted the closest thing to emperor worship yet witnessed on American soil. It's a choice between a party which supports the right to life and traditional marriage, and one which stands for abortion -- the willful taking of unborn life -- and whose party platform this year will include a redefinition of marriage to include "marriage" between principals of the same sex. Treating homosexuals with dignity and respect is one thing. It is quite another, however, to sanction homosexual activity and afford it the status of Matrimony.

It couldn't be more obvious which political party represents religious freedom and which represents secularism. Let us the faithful keep this in mind when we enter the voting booths in November.

-Written by Tim S.-
Connecticut Catholic Corner Contributor