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TIGHT ROPE
WITH MODESTO P. SA-ONOY

No Catholicism

TIGHT ROPE
WITH MODESTO P. SA-ONOY

This is a reprint of the CBS News written by Terence P. Jeffrey and published on November 21. The article is entitled “Will Obama Allow Americans to Practice Catholicism? No!” This was forwarded to me last and I find it important to share with our readers this article because of the debate now in Congress on the Reproductive Health bill with the proponents arguing using a lot of “data” and information from the United States.

It is sad that so many other information are not coming in to the Philippines because of the clear bias of leading national dailies and thus mislead our people, particularly our legislators who ought to have their staffs do basic research.

Our readers will note that the same arguments are now being parlayed in Congress by the pro-RH solons. The issues are the same. In the debate in the Senate, Sen. Pia Cayetano would have the private and public institutions, including local government to appropriate money for contraception and if they failed to do so and there is a demand for contraceptives, the employer, private or public will be penalized.

This in effect, forces the employer to go against his conscience or his faith and therefore violates this religious liberty.

I know that is rather difficult to discuss in a limited forum but the way Cayetano and her supporters in the Senate want it, we can be penalized for doing what is contrary to our beliefs.

The same thing is now happening in the US and although Barack Obama won the election, his Obamacare that mandates the dispensing of contraceptives and abortion is not an authorization for him to force people to go against their faith.

This is the reason that we must oppose RH bill more than ever because the pro-RB bill are strengthened by the Obama election.  Those who have watched the arguments in the Senate during the period of amendments will readily see the relevance of this article.
 

The article is long but it would destroy its essence excerpted so I am cutting it into two segments This article is also going into the social media, the internet because of the arguments that capture the issue here and in the US.

"Catholicism teaches that it is a sin to use, provide, or otherwise support contraception."

These words are not from the Catholic Catechism or a sermon by a Catholic bishop. They are excerpted from the preliminary injunction U.S. District Judge Robert H. Cleland issued last month temporarily stopping the Obama administration from forcing a family-owned outdoor-power-equipment company to comply with an Obamacare regulation that requires virtually all health care plans to provide women (but not men) with co-pay-free coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.

The judge stated the Catholic teaching on contraception as an undisputed fact of the case. He could have made similar statements about sterilization and abortion.

The Obama administration is not arguing that the Catholic Church does not actually teach that artificial contraception, sterilization and abortion violate the natural law and are intrinsically immoral, and that Catholics cannot be involved in them.

What the Obama administration argues is that it has the authority to tell Americans they can no longer practice Catholicism. What the Obama administration argues is that it can order Catholics to act against their faith.

In the case of Daniel Weingartz v. Sebelius, the administration specifically argues it can order a Catholic business owner to provide his employees with coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs — and thus act against the teachings of his faith on a matter that involves the destruction of innocent human life.

Elsewhere, the administration argues it can order Catholic institutions — such as the University of Notre Dame — to provide its employees and students with coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.

Still elsewhere, by mandating that all individuals must buy government-approved health-care plans (whether through an employer or a government health-insurance exchange), the Obama administration argues that it can order all Catholic laypersons in the United States to act against the teachings of their faith.

The Catholic bishops of the United States have unanimously declared that the Obama administration's contraception-sterilization-abortifacient regulation is "an unjust and illegal mandate" that violates the freedom of conscience not just of Catholic institutions and Catholic business owners, but also of individual Catholic laypersons who do not own businesses or manage Catholic institutions.

The regulation, the bishops said, is a "violation of personal civil rights."

Let us continue tomorrow with this article that has tremendous impact on our lives as a people and as Catholics because it presents in a clear way the teachings of our Church and how the Americans, faced with the massive funding and pushed from President Barack Obama are finding their bearings to oppose this affront to their liberties. *

           

 

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