Much depends on Archbishop Dolan

Published in the Cumberland Times-News Thursday, Feb. 16, 2012.

"The modern problem dates to the 1960s’ spawning of Catholic liberation theology, an errant Marxist view of social justice, and Pope Paul VI’s crackdown on the 'follow your conscience' movement (regarding birth control), in his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae."

My 92-year-old mother asked me, “What is the bottom line in the fracas with the church?”

I explained: To comply with the next ObamaCare mandate, all Catholic entities must buy employee health insurance that provides contraceptives, abortifacients and sterilization.  

This is a direct assault on Catholicism, religious freedom and conscience rights. It forces the church to choose -- obey God, or bow to Obama.

The church may either implement the mandate and violate its essence; or refuse to comply, and go bankrupt paying whopping fines; or shutter all its hospitals, universities, schools, agencies – go out of existence; or go underground, as it has had to do in other countries, at other times, under similar circumstances.

The kick is, the mastermind behind the mandate is Catholic Kathleen Sebelius, who, we might say, was empowered to define its parameters with great assistance from Sister Carol Keehan.

President of the Catholic Health Association, Keehan stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Obama and his allies, to shove ObamaCare down the nation’s collective throat. Now, applauding the president’s recent backpedaling -- which simply makes us all complicit, rather than front-line offenders – Keehan again joins forces to put all Catholics in the distasteful position of having ObamaCare thrust up unsavory parts of our collective anatomy.

Jonathan Last writes in the Feb. 7 Weekly Standard: “most Catholics took the president at his word when he met with Archbishop Timothy Dolan last fall and assured him” the policy was no threat.

“That was their mistake,” Last concludes.

Now Dolan pushes back. But against powerful and deceitful progressives, will he have the doggedness to sustain the fight? Furthermore, can he wield sufficient influence among the masses of Catholic women – who regularly choose contraceptives or sterilization over abstinence or natural family planning, and often opt to abort rather than adopt -- and their commiserating men, to sway public sentiment effectively?

Next, segue to Maryland, where Gov. Martin O’Malley, his District Court judge wife Katie O’Malley, and Del. Heather Mizeur – all Catholics – lead the charge to ram same-sex marriage through our legislature.

Mizeur dismisses the bishops, saying they can preach what they want. She decides how to be a “practicing Catholic;” her faith gives her license to “follow her conscience” -- down the aisle with her female lover.

Katie O’Malley calls House delegates who obey God, rather than bow to her husband, “cowards;” and she agrees with Mizeur and the governor that religion has no place in the public square.

Those who believe that government is not at war with religious institutions and, indeed, every individual of faith, kid themselves.

And leading the charge are progressive Catholics who would destroy civil society and the church, and remake them in their own image -- with Obama all too happy to help.

The modern problem dates to the 1960s’ spawning of Catholic liberation theology, an errant Marxist view of social justice, and Pope Paul VI’s crackdown on the “follow your conscience” movement (regarding birth control), in his 1968 encyclical, Humanae Vitae.

Failing to effect change within the church during Vatican II, progressives advanced their agenda socially and politically, and waited for the next viable opportunity to wrest moral authority from the hierarchy.

Michael Collins of The Annapolis Capital (Feb. 7) calls for the Maryland judiciary to discipline Katie O’Malley, for her “partisan politics” that reveal “animus toward religion in the public square.”

I suggest the church disown both O’Malleys – and all their fellow anti-Catholics – until they might repent and reform.

Much depends on Cardinal-designate Dolan. He is a big man with a booming voice and a hearty laugh. We’ll see what kind of bite he has.

Founders deemed God's laws supreme

Submitted to Cumbelrand Times-News Wednesday, April 6, 2011; published April 18.

“By invoking the ‘Laws of Nature and of Nature's God,’ the 56 signers of the Declaration incorporated a legal standard of freedom into the forms of government that would follow…that God's law was supreme.”

-- Kerry Lee Morgan, ,LONANG.org

Windy Cutler (April 4, “Constitution protects rights”), Maryland lawmakers and citizens who support gay marriage ignore the first sentence of the Declaration of Independence.

It cites “the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God” as the forces that create freedom and entitle citizens to certain inalienable rights -- but in the context of eternity, not simply the here-and-now.

Kerry Lee Morgan explains at LONANG.org, “By invoking the ‘Laws of Nature and of Nature's God,’ the 56 signers of the Declaration incorporated a legal standard of freedom into the forms of government that would follow…that God's law was supreme.”

The founders knew, as authentic believers do, true life, liberty and happiness (earthly and eternal) flow in following the laws of nature and of God, not in opposing them -- which results in spiritual death, enslavement to passions, and entanglement in disorder.

Thomas Aquinas, whose writings the founders likely studied, explains in his Summa Theologica, Question 94 that natural law drives man to survive and reproduce, to educate offspring, to know the truth about God, to live harmoniously in society, and to act according to reason.

Faithful Catholics are not the only ones who defeated gay marriage in Maryland. Black delegates from Prince George’s and Baltimore who “refused to vote against their ‘base’” (black faithful) get the most credit in a March 12 Capital News Service article.

More than a dozen black ministers and bands of their faithful lobbied to defeat the bill, “which they say violates God’s law,” reports the March 8 Washington Post. Rev. Joel Peebles, pastor of 19,000-member Jericho City of Praise in Landover says, "We didn't come tonight against anybody. We came for the sanctity of marriage between a man and a woman."

The article quotes Rev. Nathaniel Thomas of Forestville New Redeemer Baptist Church: "What we are focused on is the word 'marriage,' We're not talking about anyone not having rights. But when you use the word 'marriage,' that goes directly to what the church believes is a relationship between a male and a female."

Greg Quinlan, an “ex-gay” and president of Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, testified in a House hearing, quoted in the Feb. 25 Washington Post, “I urge you to stop."

The National Organization for Marriage pledged to spend big money to support Democrats in Maryland who voted against the bill, and to oppose the sole Republican who voted for it (Sen. Allan Kittleman, Howard), the March 11 New York Times reports.

If the bill should pass in the future, enough public outcries probably would bring it to referendum. Its chances for acceptance in Maryland, though, may increase.

A national Pew Research Center survey (March 3) reveals “a continuing rise in support for same-sex marriage since 2009.” Currently, 45 percent favor, 46 percent oppose gay marriage, Pew reports, compared to 37 and 54 percent, respectively, two years ago.

Furthermore, “all the growth in Maryland is coming from groups that consistently vote Democratic – African-Americans, Asians and Hispanics,” Gazette.net reports Feb. 25.

While blacks oppose gay marriage on moral grounds, a 2010 Univision and Associated Press poll indicates Asians and Hispanics may waffle, depending on their level of American enculturation; but “Protestants were much more strongly against homosexual ‘marriage’ than Catholics.”

“The Senate vote was definitely a wake-up call,” the March 11 Washington Post quotes Minority Leader Nancy Jacobs (R-Harford). “I thought it was going to fly through the House. But once delegates started hearing from their constituents, they started thinking twice.”

Marylanders who revere God need to educate themselves about their faith and the freedoms God’s laws ensure, and engage to protect them.

Authentic Catholics do not support gay marriaige

Published in Cumberland Times-News Wednesday, March 30, 2011. (Blogger persists to ignore paragraphs in this posting.)

"...faithful Catholics sent 10,000 emails and thousands of phone calls to legislators to voice their objections to the bill."

Gov. Martin O’Malley, House Speaker Michael Busch and Del. Heather Mizeur, along with other liberal Catholics, are momentously misguided: Authentic Catholics do not support gay marriage. In the Feb. 24 Washington Post, O’Malley contrasts his “vocation” with Catholic bishops, saying his calling “requires…service to others in an arena of compromise.” O’Malley said he would sign the same-sex marriage bill if it made its way to his desk, and Busch (D-Anne Arundel) said he would vote for it. Catholic lawmakers who compromise church teachings, with intent to upend natural law, or who commiserate to establish state authority to stipulate church matters regarding marriage do not serve others: They mislead, and they transgress. In a Feb. 28 interview with MarylandReporter.com, Mizeur (D-Montgomery), one of eight openly gay members in the Assembly -- seven in the House, one in the Senate -- says “the church are the people in the pews.” She dismisses the Maryland Catholic Conference as representing the bishops, and says the Catholic “social justice tradition,” and private convictions of “conscience” lead reasonable Catholics to support gay marriage rights. In a March 4 email, the MCC notes that faithful Catholics sent 10,000 emails and thousands of phone calls to legislators to voice their objections to the bill. The MCC called for 10,000 more emails and thousands more phone calls in the week leading up to the failed vote. The three bishops of Washington, D.C. Maryland and Wilmington, Del. issued a joint call Feb. 28 to Maryland’s 1.2 million Catholics for “continued and urgent action” to defeat the bill; they note that 500 Catholics visited legislators during MCC lobby night Feb. 21. “The word marriage,” the bishops write, “describes the commitment of a man and a woman to come together for life with the possibility of generating and educating children. This is not to say that some people over the ages have not come together in a variety of ways, physical, financial and social. But these various unions have always had other names because they are not marriage.” Proponents worked furiously, too, to pass the bill. Mizeur conducted a door-to-door campaign. Even Katie O’Malley, though, could not effectively twist the last arm. Mrs. O’Malley, a Baltimore District Court judge, lobbied hard in the final hours, the Post reports March 10, to persuade Del. John Olszewski (D-Baltimore County) to vote for the bill. Rather, Olszewski (a Methodist) undertook a last minute amendment maneuver -- rejected by the House, the Post reports March 11 -- “to broaden the (bill’s) religious exceptions.” Olszewski’s pivotal vote apparently depended on deleting restrictive language. He preferred leaving the choice regarding “activities related to ‘the promotion of marriage’” to religious organizations. Catholic adoption agencies do not serve gay couples; and on March 10, the Washington Times reports, Sacred Heart of Jesus in Boulder, Colo., became the latest Catholic school to forgo enrollment for children of a lesbian couple. House leaders withdrew the bill March 11. If it had passed, taxpayers would have paid millions for a referendum. In the Senate, Jamie Raskin (D-Montgomery), a proclaimed atheist (and lead sponsor of bills to legalize medical marijuana in Maryland), led floor debate on same-sex marriage. President Mike Miller (a Catholic) voted against it, but warded off a filibuster, to enable the bill to advance to the House. Last year, gay marriage was a non-starter. This year, the bill sailed through the Senate and advanced dangerously close to passage in the House. Busch says in the March 11 New York Times, “This is a distance run, not a sprint. We’ll come back next year and take a strong look at it.”