Category: Culture War

The Supreme Court of the U.S. today refused to hear an appeal from the Sacramento diocese’s Catholic Charities organization, which is under a state mandate to include coverage for immoral contraceptives in its employee health insurance program.
According to CNN, California’s Supreme Court had already declared that the law was not an infringement of freedom of religion because “[t]he charity could avoid any conflict with its religious values by not offering its employees any prescription drug coverage at all.” Speaking for myself, I fail to see how that would serve the public interest, but then maybe the public interest will have to come second to the imperial will of the legislative majority.
It’ll be interesting to see how the diocese proceeds from here: Catholic Charities could

1. acquiesce under duress
2. enter into some brinksmanship with the legislature by announcing a plan to dissolve
3. reconstitute itself as a more closely controlled agency of the Church with a clearer religious mission
4. drop drug coverage from its health insurance but offer employees some other health benefit (e.g., medical savings accounts combined with high-deductible insurance)

Since the pastors of the Church tend to finesse conflicts, postpone problems, and avoid confrontations where possible, I suppose they’ll aim for the last option or something like it. I’d like to see a little more #2 and #3, though.

… and other such scary Democrat wisdom that confirms my belief we Casey Democrats are no longer welcome in the Democrat Party.

Interesting. Even Newsweek is admitting that abortion is killing the Democrat Patry by driving Catholic voters — a traditional Democrat constituency — over to the GOP. Here are some interesting excerpts from the article in question:
The Democrats are likely to lose the Catholic vote in November—and John Kerry could well lose the election as a result. It’s about abortion, stupid. And “choice,” make no mistake, is killing the Democratic Party.
[cut]
It begins with the tale of Tom Ampleman, “a blue-collar union member who lives … just outside St. Louis, says he voted for Bill Clinton twice and then Al Gore, but … is now grappling with deep religious misgivings about the Democratic Party.” He says, “I’m not happy with the moral issues at all with the Democrats. The Republicans will hurt me in the long run in providing for my family, but it’s probably more important to watch out for the unborn and that kind of stuff.”
First, I find it wonderful that there are Tom Amplemans out there for whom voting is not only an economic calculation—a what’s-in-it-for-me? decision—but a moral exercise, a matter of trying to do the right thing.
But Democrats don’t seem to get that. And they don’t get Tom at all.

Hindu militants who burn down churches and mosques, Muslims who kill Hindus and Christians in the name of Allah, Evangelicals asking “Are you saved?” to bus passengers &mdash all pretty much the same thing. Or so Algore tells us.

Gore’s mouth tightened. A Southern Baptist, he, too, had declared himself born again, but he clearly had disdain for Bush’s public kind of faith. “It’s a particular kind of religiosity,” he said. “It’s the American version of the same fundamentalist impulse that we see in Saudi Arabia, in Kashmir, in religions around the world: Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Muslim. They all have certain features in common. In a world of disconcerting change, when large and complex forces threaten familiar and comfortable guideposts, the natural impulse is to grab hold of the tree trunk that seems to have the deepest roots and hold on for dear life and never question the possibility that it’s not going to be the source of your salvation. And the deepest roots are in philosophical and religious traditions that go way back. You don’t hear very much from them about the Sermon on the Mount, you don’t hear very much about the teachings of Jesus on giving to the poor, or the beatitudes. It’s the vengeance, the brimstone.”

By the “tree trunk,” Gore (probably inadvertently) brings up an allusion to the lignum vitae, the cross on which Jesus hung. Is that really a bad thing to hang onto, whether we’re in a time of “change” or stasis?
Gore seems to be attacking religion as an independent standard for measuring whether or not a “change” is desirable. He doesn’t bother to refute this idea: he just condescendingly implies that Evangelicals such as President Bush are scaredy-cats who need their faith-blankies to make it through this life. Not like strong, virile Alpha Male Algore, who is unafraid of change. (Except climate change. That scares the crap out of him.)
Were we saved through the Sermon on the Mount? Nope. The Beatitudes, which Gore apparently thinks is separate from the Sermon on the Mount? Again, no. Are we saved by giving to the poor? Well, in a way: if we unite our wills to God’s, and perform works of mercy, that’s part of how we “work out our salvation,” as the Bible says.
Salvation begins, is sustained, and ends in the person of Jesus Christ, crucified for our sins on the “tree” which Evangelicals, like other Christians, hold onto for dear life. Algore was a divinity student for a while — maybe he skipped class the day they covered this topic. And why is he saying such nasty things about tree-hugging, anyway?

Fr. Rob Johansen reports some extremely disturbing news over at Thrownback. It appears that Terri Schindler-Schiavo’s exit protocol (aka detailed execution order) has been leaked.