“We bishops are pastors, we’re not politicians, and you can’t compromise on principle,” said Cardinal-designate [Timothy] Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “And the goal posts haven’t moved and I don’t think there’s a 50-yard line compromise here,” he added.
“We’re in the business of reconciliation, so it’s not that we hold fast, that we’re stubborn ideologues, no. But we don’t see much sign of any compromise,” he said.
“What (Obama) offered was next to nothing. There’s no change, for instance, in these terribly restrictive mandates and this grossly restrictive definition of what constitutes a religious entity,” he said. “The principle wasn’t touched at all.”
Obama didn’t want to solve the problem to the satisfaction of Catholic bishops and pro-life Christians, as they wouldn’t vote for him anyway. He wanted to give left-leaning cafeteria Catholics a fig leaf to wear to the voting booth in November. The equivocation about the HHS mandate not about “fooling” anyone, it’s about enabling those already fooled but the Culture of Death to stay foolish in comfort.
#1, I suspect that you nailed it. But it’s always speculative to guess about leader’s motivations.
In any case, Cardinal Dolan is absolutely right, and he gets the tone of his message right too. The pope made a great choice in elevating him to stand at the helm in New York.
This is a momentous, make-or-break issue that could prove disastrous for Obama this fall. I sure hope so. All Christians, whether Catholic or Protestant, Orthodox or Anglican, need to stand together against this outrageous and intolerable action by the Obama administration.
David Handy+
[url=http://anglicanprayer.wordpress.com/2012/02/14/respect-for-rights-of-conscience-act/]Prayer[/url]
The Democrats have all their spinners out on the web today, talking about how the President’s actions have solved the problem. But even there, the brainwashing is scary. For example, one common theme is that Christians only have a “freedom of worship,” not freedom of religion. In other words, so long as the government still allows you to “worship” on Sundays, it can do anything else it wants to you. The leftist view of the First Amendment is that is all it means as to the Free Exercise Clause. Of course, the other part is overarching, which is the Establishment Clause means that there can be no public expressions of Christianity. If they get the courts to buy their restatement of the Free Exercise Clause and then essentially have written the First Amendment completely out of existence, we are in real trouble.