(NOTE FROM JOHN: I want to welcome Mirth, one of our longtime commenters, as a new blogger on the home page. Joe and I have been really impressed with Mirth's writing, and ideas, and asked her to join us for the occasional blog post (or more if she likes), and she agreed. She won't always agree with the rest of us, but variety is the spice of blogging. So welcome Mirth :-)
Catholic Bishops Demand Changes to Health Bill
From The Hill:
"On behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), we are writing to express our disappointment that progress has not been made on the three priority criteria for health care reform that we have conveyed previously to Congress," the bishops wrote in an open letter to members of Congress. "If final legislation does not meet our principles, we will have no choice but to oppose the bill."Thomas Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists affirming their protection from a government-sanctioned religion is where the "wall of separation" between church and state originated. The Supreme Court has through the years ruled affirmatively on this governing principal, from Justice Hugo Black's succinct "In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state" to later Court rulings restricting use of public schools for religious purposes and, later still, defining cases that would pass constitutional muster being those with a secular purpose that neither advanced or inhibited religion and fostered no excessive entanglement between church and state.
So how did we get to the audacity of threats and retribution from such as these Catholics leaders - William Murphy of Rockville Center, Justin Rigali of Philadelphia, Josh Wester of Salt Lake City - to our secularly elected officials of our secular government concerning secular law?
Follow the trail of a continually shifting-right Supreme Court issuing increasingly limited and at times conflicting rulings on church/state cases right up to George Walker Bush's establishment of the White House Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives which earmarked billions of dollars from five federal departments for religious organizations while allowing them discriminatory hiring practices based on religious beliefs, the main purpose of which was to strike a final blow to FDR's New Deal and to Johnson's War On Poverty by replacing, not augmenting, federal social services and to further blur church/state separation.
Continuing this erosive process, constitutional scholar President Barack Obama's White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnership - change of two words from GWB's - but (surprise!) hedging in how it may function:
From U.S. News and World Report:
"He's leaving all the substantive options and directions open" on the question of faith-based hiring, says Ira Lupu, a George Washington University Law School professor who specializes in church-state issues. "He's saying, 'Let's see what the lawyers tell me.'"Which means, of course, that very deep digging will be necessary for any citizen to discover which religious organizations are getting how much money from which federal department for what changes in their hiring practices. Good luck with that.
More troubling to me than government-sanctioned discrimination in faith-based hiring is an additional demand from the Bishops: Include in the bill the right of healthcare providers to deny service based on their personal religious beliefs.
And who is forcing this shift away from established and honored and vital law of church/state separation? Why it's the very ones who are now screaming that they want their government back, that they want a return to our founding principles. Plus, don't forget, while demanding new laws, they want government off their damn backs. All the while, and it never fails at their gatherings, carrying photoshopped signs with pictures of "murdered babies" who are the gestational length of my thumb.
We've tried voting for change, and not just with the current WH occupier, and we all know the herculean task of replacing the Congress with, regardless their campaign promises, no guarantees once a new bunch hits that money pot.
So what's next? Because as it stands now, the line keeping religious zealots, not unlike the Taliban, out of our laws and our lives is becoming increasingly thin and fragile.
