Cardinal George: 2014 Will Be The End of Catholic Hospitals In America

The funny thing is that Team Obama would view this as an opportunity.

The state would have to come in and take over, right? I mean, they'd have to. Something Must Be Done, and ergo the state gains new powers, somehow. To fix its previous mistakes.

The real genius of socialism is that it is filled with mistakes and poor decisions, and those very mistakes and poor decisions then supply the justification for additional assertions of power, to fix problems their last power-grab created.

What will happen if the HHS regulations are not rescinded? A Catholic institution, so far as I can see right now, will have one of four choices: 1) secularize itself, breaking its connection to the Church, her moral and social teachings and the oversight of its ministry by the local bishop. This is a form of theft. It means the Church will not be permitted to have an institutional voice in public life. 2) Pay exorbitant annual fines to avoid paying for insurance policies that cover abortifacient drugs, artificial contraception and sterilization. This is not economically sustainable. 3) Sell the institution to a non-Catholic group or to a local government. 4) Close down …

The strangest accusation in this manipulated public discussion has the bishops not respecting the separation between church and state. The bishops would love to have the separation between church and state we thought we enjoyed just a few months ago, when we were free to run Catholic institutions in conformity with the demands of the Catholic faith, when the government couldn’t tell us which of our ministries are Catholic and which not, when the law protected rather than crushed conscience. The state is making itself into a church.

There can be no separation of church and state when the state has its fingers in every pie.

There can also be no separation of business and state, economy and state, free speech and state, sex and state, parenting and state, education and state, or health and state. Because there is no separation, fundamentally, of citizen and state.

The state is all. Individuals only matter to the extent they serve the state and the state's agenda.

posted by Ace at 12:41 PM

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