February 1, 2012
Dear friends in Christ,
The United States Department of Health and Human Services announced on January 20 that almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.
In so ruling, the current Administration has undermined both the principle of religious conscience and the First Amendment to the Constitution in an unprecedented way. Unless the ruling is overturned, faithful Catholics will be forced either to violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees and suffer the penalties for doing so. The Administration’s only concession was to give our institutions a one-year delay to comply. This is not merely inadequate. It is dangerous. And it betrays the good faith of many Catholics who — until now — have supported the current Administration with an honest will.
Bishops and lay Catholic leaders across the United States have made it clear that we cannot comply with this unjust law without compromising our convictions and undermining the Catholic identity of many of our service ministries. This is not just another important issue among the many we need to be concerned about. This ruling is different. This ruling interferes with the basic right of Catholic citizens to organize and work for the common good as Catholics in the public square.
Today, I ask of you two things. First, we need to pray for our country, for our Church, and for our own right to work freely as a believing community through our ministries in the public square. Second, we need to act. Please visit the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference website at www.pacatholic.org to learn how to contact your federal Representative and Senators. Write them, call them, visit them — and help them understand the deep resistance of Pennsylvania Catholics to this dangerous ruling. Please also visit www.usccb.org/conscience, to learn more about this attack on religious conscience, and how to work to reverse the Administration’s decision.
Your action on this issue matters — not just today but for many years to come; and in ways that will shape the ability of the Church to witness the Gospel publicly through her ministries well into the future. Please know that you have my gratitude and daily prayers. And please remember me in your prayers as well.
Sincerely yours in Christ,
Most Reverend Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.
Archbishop of Philadelphia
(Editor’s note: Catholics can call their Congressional representatives at the U.S. Capitol at 202-224-3121 to voice rejection of the HHS ruling and ask for their support of the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, HR1179/S 1467.)
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A Petition for all Freedom Loving People to Sign
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/yimcatholic/2012/01/a-petition-for-all-freedom-loving-people-to-sign.html
Please sign and share it with your contacts.
Archbishop Chaput, you are awesome! We are so proud that our Bishops are standing strong and united! Thank you!
More is happening of which many Catholics might be unaware.
Catholic Charities in states which have passed gay marriage laws have already been told that they must give infants in adoption to homosexual couples or be in violation of discrimination laws. They have closed in response to this rather than violate the Church’s teaching. Catholic Charities had also been receiving a government grant which they were using to aggressively thwart the sexual human trafficking of children. This grant has been rescinded by the Obama administration because Catholic Charities refused to offer abortion and birth control services.
Also, student loans are no longer offered by any private bank in the United States. All students loans in the US are now government loans, and the government will not provide student loans for any school which does not provide free birth control and abortion services to their employees and students.
Our Bishops have written a letter responding to these unjust laws against the Catholic organizations saying that “we shall not comply with these unjust policies!” Many Catholic priests have been reading the letter at Mass and posting the letter in the back of their churches.
The Archbishop who is in charge of Catholic military chaplains sent out the same letter. However, a declaration from the Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains was issued to all military priests-chaplains forbidding them to read the letter to their military congregations! To resolve this issue, the Bishop was told to remove the line, “We shall not comply with this unjust law.” He did so and the chaplains were then allowed to distribute the censored letter. Meanwhile the Archbishop said that such a directive from the Army constituted a violation of his Constitutionally-protected right of free speech and the free exercise of religion, as well as those same rights of all military chaplains and their congregants.
This is an all out war on the Catholic Church! Prayer is our first weapon. Contacting our congressmen/woman is the next.
God bless you Archbishop and God be with the Church.
This is not just war on the Catholic church but on all Christians. It will take all Christians of all denominations to take a stand along with God as our leader.
Your Grace,
I wonder who you are actually trying to communicate with.
I’m sorry to see the appeal to the scribblings of the Man-made and consequently unstable Constitution instead of to the rock solid faith of Catholic Truth. As Chesterton said, “Why should I trust my conscience any more than my rotting teeth or failing eyesight?”
Why not actually make the stand that it’s immoral? Do you think God actually cares if our “rights” are being trod upon? Don’t stand up for us and our rights. Stand up for Christ and His Angels. THAT is where the problem lies. Wanting to be exempt on a purely civil matter and wash hands like Pontius Pilate is simply not good enough. Evil will not be satisfied by leaving us alone. It’s a predator. It’s time to face up to the real battle.
My recommendation (with no weight other than that of a Catholic layman ) is to teach the Catholic faith unashamedly and spend less time worrying about politics. Win the Catholics back to the Catholic Church with the Catholic faith in its entirety and the political results will irresistably eventually follow due to God’s grace and nothing of our own making.
As it stands now, most Catholics are in apostasy and don’t even believe the teachings of the Church or the exclusive privileges of the one, true Church founded by our Divine Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. A simple quiz in the pews would show this. The empty pews already bear witness to it. Soon it will empty and closed Churches bearing witness to it.
Think I’m over-emphasizing the problem? Have them recite the introduction to the Athanasian Creed before Mass each week and see the howls of dissatisfaction and denial from the congregation. “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the Catholic Faith. Which Faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled; without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.”
I would bet 90% of Catholics in the pews believe that the doctrine of the Church can actually change. So, many Church attending Catholics would not in principle be opposed to anti-life contraception and the bloody slaughter of children in the womb. Why would God even respond in the positive from the prayers of such apostates? Because our “Constitutional rights” (none of which allow for His Church to have any privilege above all other false Churches) are being violated? Why should HE care? The babies die by the 10s of millions with our without the Consitution. Sodom and Gomorrah were probably paradises compared with the mess we are in. Herod’s slaughter was nothing compared to these numbers.
After marinating for decades in indifferentism and syncretism while suffering under the delusion that there is no battle for the salvation of souls, nor enslavement to sin nor need to resist the world, the flesh and the Devil, you have no soldiers to call upon. They drifted away in the fog of the 70s 80s and 90s. The Bishops have willfully allowed the faithful to fall into this apostasy, because it can’t be said with certainty or in many cases credibility that the bishops hold the Catholic faith.
Given a choice between following Church leaders vs. Civil leaders that the people have a stake in electing, their democratic “ideals” will trump any natural or supernatural heirarchy. And if it isn’t obvious by now, no matter what grand gestures and outreach the Church has made in decades to make itself “friends” with the world, the world and the Church are enemies and only a renunciation of the faith will satisfy the world. Since the Church is indefectible, it will be forced to cease all formal social work and disappear from the public square. It’s a win-win situation for the secularists since the Churchmen were negligent in their duty. And God will allow it to happen since the Churchmen became worldly and forgot the essentials of His message of Salvation through His Divinely established Church alone.
The real solutions are completely impractical to our modern minds, but they will work.
Publicly consecrate the archdiocese to Our Lady and win grace for conversions. Stamp out the liberal dissidents in the parishes, proclaim the whole, politically incorrect Catholic faith without nuance, fear or shame. In other words, fight for souls. “Think globally and act locally” actually does have some merit in this case.
God Bless and be assured of my prayers.
If I understand it correctly, the implementation day for this injunction is August 1, 2012. Is this true?
My letter to Obama
RE: HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES DECISION REQUIRING CATHOLIC INSTITUTIONS PROVIDE CONTRACEPTION, ABORTIONS AND THE LIKE TO EMPLOYEES
President Obama;
The most fundamental of all Human Rights is the Freedom of Religion.
On January 11, 2012, the UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT overturned an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s lawsuit, filed on behalf of an employee, against the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church and School, citing First Amendment Religious Freedoms (Hosanna v EEOC). The decision was unanimous (9-0).
In a concurring opinion, Justices Thomas and Kegan write:
“To safeguard this crucial autonomy, we have long recognized that the Religion Clauses protect a private sphere within which religious bodies are free to govern themselves in accordance with their own beliefs. The Constitution guarantees religious bodies “independence from secular control or manipulation—in short, power to decide for themselves, free from state interference, mat¬ters of church government as well as those of faith and doctrine.”
In light of this ruling, how is it that your Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, can issue an edict that Catholic Institutions must provide Contraception Coverage, Abortion Coverage, and the like to its employees, knowing full well such services are in direct conflict with the teachings of the Catholic Church? This edict is abhorrent, Anti-American, Anti-Human Rights and Unconstitutional. It is also a vile insult to Americans in general and especially to Catholic Americans as it indicates a total disregard for our Religious Freedoms by your Administration.
As President, sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America, you MUST IMMEDIATELY rescind this edict.
Archbishop – While I am grateful for this response, I am dismayed that it has been so long in coming. The current Administration has been hounding Christians of good faith since President Obama took office; the battle for conscience exemptions for health care workers and the liberty of Catholic hospitals to refuse to provide abortion services began almost immediately after Obama took the Oath of Office, and the government’s insistence that gay couples be allowed to adopt children was another of the earlier assaults on our religious liberties.
I am deeply concerned that our earlier complacency will make this current battle all the more difficult.
However, better late than never. You’ve been a staunch advocate not only for the sanctity of life, but perhaps even more for the sanctification of human souls.
God bless you.
Thank you, Bishop Chaput, for leading this fight against the loss of personal freedom. And that is what this is about: the loss of our personal freedom,and in particular, the freedom of conscience guaranteed by our Constitution. Every American, not just Catholics, should be concerned and express their outrage at this Administration which has been trying to effect the demise of our Constitutional Democracy. The media, et al, has tried to place the focus on artificial contraception knowing that most Americans of child-bearing age participate. However that issue, while serious, is not the primary issue here. The media knows this and thus tried to deflect the fight from one for freedom to one about contraception.
Please Bishop Chaput, make this call from all the pulpits in the Philadelphia Diocese, by allowing your letter to be read this Sunday. As some have pointed out here, the bulletin does not have the same impact as would the voice of your authority read from the pulpit.
God bless you Bishop and God bless the USA!
Maybe it took this great evil; violating the First Amendment to get our Bishops out of their cushy chairs, or focusing primarily on the poor, but never the middle class. It’s about time, the money that runs the parishes is not from the very rich and certainly not the poor.
But it is the middle class that needs that insurance on our jobs and for our children. Insurance should be cafeteria style you should be able to opt out of anything they offer; there shouldn’t be a one size fits all type of medical insurance… never heard of such a thing. You can opt out of long term care coverage and dental. This should be a third option. And as Catholics we should be just flat fighting mad about it!! (all things in moderation pray for something to stop this blatant evil).
and is my possible death from Stein-Leventhal syndrome due to lack of availabilty of proper treatment for control from a Catholic employer PRO-LIFE?????????
Frank Weathers says “There is a petition at the White House that folks can sign as well.”
What is the site for signing this petition?
I already sent an email to the general White House site stating that I will refuse to comply with the HHS Mandate.
That petition is right where the Administration can see it. Right in their own living room. Right on the White House website. http://wh.gov/kl3
Excellency, also in Italy we’ll pray for this issue. I think in Western countries, Latin Catholics perform the same sins of others, they of course divorce, contracept and abort, but they still keep the truth of their Pastors, of the Holy Father. They think abortion is evil. They are still only incoherent. I don’t know about future. New generations, in fact, are all literally “survivors” of libertinism and af the positive laws against true love and life, that’s moral realitivism.
We pray, fast and hope, the true theological hope, alleluia!
Also …go to the http://catholiclane.com/a-petition-for-all-freedom-loving-people-to-sign/ or directly to the Whithouse.gov site, http://wh.gov/kl3,to SIGN THE PETITION to have this removed. Do what is suggested by the article FIRST, and then sign this petition!!!!!!!
You have to be proactive or ALL CHRISTIANS will be lamenting the loss of liberty, walking around saying WHAT HAPPENED?
Archbishop, many Catholics in Brazil are following up on the subject although it seems to be an American issue, because if such a decision were to be eventually “validated” by Church’s immobilism, it would immediately be followed here and in other Latin American countries on the grounds of an innovative example coming from above, from a very developed nation.
God bless the move.
I think we have been in the defensive position for way too long! More than 40 years! We need to be proactive. This country was built on Religious Freedom! Not on Atheist Freedom! The atheists can have their day but not 360 days! They can have their space but not the entire public sphere!
We have cowered as Christians for too long! We need to take back time and space in the public sphere! We need to take back our schools (first and foremost), our streets, our pulpits, our hospitals, our Court Houses, our malls, and place them under the mantle of the Creator. This is Rosa Parks for Catholics, Christians and all persons of faith! Let us use it to our advantage! Let us wake the sleeping Giant for the sake of future generations! Let us race for Religious Freedom! God is on our side and so is the Constitution! We need leaders!
I think a national day of prayer and fasting should be scheduled! All people of faith should take a day off and gather to pray, march and fast for religious freedom! No work that day! It is time to awaken the giant to move our Nation back to Our God! The German people woke up too late! They missed their wake up call and it was a very deadly mistake! Let us learn from their mistake!
Thank you, Archbishop Chaput, for your courageous defense of our essential religious liberties. Many of us predicted that if the federal government could mandate that every American purchase medical coverage at all, it would eventually mandate coverage of abortifacients and contraceptives.
The source of this attack on religious liberty is the federal individual mandate. That is why many state lawmakers, like me, are joining together, on behalf of the American people, in the filing of an amicus brief urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the federal individual mandate. Unless it does so, all our liberties will be at risk.
Archbishop, in South Africa are people praying for you and all Catholics in America. Maybe we should also see this as a test from God – a test of our faith in His providence in all areas of our lives?
God give strength to you, bless you and keep you.
I hope to hear this from the pulpit this weekend as well. We need to fight this because this is only the opening salvo. We need to stand up for everyone. And, then, we need to actively fight government support for abortion. Archbishop, if you will lead, we will follow.
There is a petition at the White House that folks can sign as well. If everyone who walked in the March for Life signed this, it would help show our nation’s leaders that we stand behind our Bishops.
If you are Catholic – sign the petition please! https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/%21/petition/rescind-hhs-dept-mandate-requiring-catholic-employers-provide-contraceptivesabortifacients-their/lBxr7SdP?utm_source=wh.gov&utm_medium=shorturl&utm_campaign=shorturl –
How do we go about signing this petition?
Instructions and link for the petition are available here:
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/yimcatholic/2012/01/a-petition-for-all-freedom-loving-people-to-sign.html
This affects the man or woman in the pew in two ways. 1. We no longer have the freedom to buy health insurance that does not violate our own consciences. 2. The coverage, which faithful Catholics would never use, could end up being used by one’s own minor children, without the parent’s knowlege. Thus a father could end up paying for the abortion of his own grandchild.
Archbishop thank you for your work and faithful service. I have a couple of questions: 1. Will there be a message from the pulpit on Sunday regarding this? It seems to me that if we as the Catholics in the pews heard the message from the pulpit we would be forced to confront this issue head-on as opposed to just a letter in the local parish bulletin (which we could ignore). 2. How can we in the pews personalize this issue; IE how does this affect me? I personally am looking at this as a religious liberty issue, as you have outlined in your letter. I am struggling with this in my own “domestic church” so I understand this issue well I think. 3. How can we help; become agents of change, etc…? God bless you Archbishop. You are in my prayers.