Obama's War On Christ

Once was not enough.  Secularists are a stubborn breed, and they won't stop trying to rid the nation of Christ until every last one of his followers is padlocked in a closet and his Truth is crucified once and for all.  

All of this is for the sake of liberty, you understand.

These observations are occasioned by a pair of recent actions undertaken by the Obama Administration, and a pair of articles about them in today's press.

The first article is by Penn Law Professor David Skeel.  He comments upon the Supreme Court's decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Department of Health and Human Services recent diktat that forces religious employers to cover all of the costs of contraception in their health plans.

In Hosanna-Tabor, President Obama's Solicitor General argued that despite explicit language in the First Amendment protecting religious liberty, religious organizations nevertheless needed to yield to federal employment law in ministerial employment matters.  Specifically, President Obama's government argued for the power to contradict a church's determination of who could act as its ministers.

Shame!  Think about the implications of that power grab, and of the unscrupulousness of any man who would attempt it.  

Such a person might be many things, but American and Christian are not among them.  Even a Supreme Court stacked with Lefties, two of his own choosing, rebuffed the President, 9-0.

In the HHS matter, the President's Secretary Kathleen Sibelius has determined that Catholic hospitals and religious ministries that object to contraception on moral grounds nevertheless have no option other than to pay for it notwithstanding their objections, or pay a steep fine under ObamaCare for not offering employees an insurance plan.  

Individual consciences must yield to government fiat, religious liberty to sexual liberty, Church to State, traditional morals to the zeitgeist.  So much for the Constitution, which becomes collateral damage along the strident march of toleration.

Consider the ironies: An administration that swept into office in 2008 promising to bring together people of all kinds seems to have less interest in accommodating diverse views than either the Supreme Court or many state legislatures, several of which have carved out robust religious exemptions for recent gay-marriage legislation.  

The Obama administration's reluctance to accommodate is also at odds with many years of progressive efforts to enhance protection for those whose religious views are out of the mainstream.

The Obama Administration is undoubtedly intent on bringing people together, but only on its terms.  As Richard John Neuhaus used to paraphrase the Left: "Let's compromise.  We'll do it my way."

C.S Lewis distinguishes in the Introduction to "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" between God's manner of achieving unity, and satan's.  God invites believers freely to join their wills to his in an act of communal love.

The devil thrives on the suffusion of violated individual wills, absorbing them into, and subordinating them to, his own.  Thus, Lewis wrote of a banquet in which the devils would drink wine distilled from the conquered wills of the dammed.

The present Administration resembles Screwtape.  Despite pearly words of cooperation and unity, its actions betray its devotion to the cult of coercive power.

With respect to protecting religious views outside of the cultural mainstream, progressives were only interested in that when the culture was Christian.  Now that culture has been shaped to their liking through media indoctrination, it's time to take off the mask.

Jeff Kuhner of the Washington Times doesn't mince words.

Like many leftists, President Obama has deep contempt for Christianity and democracy. This is why his administration has declared war on theCatholic Church and religious liberty. 

The church teaches that the primary purpose of sexual activity within the sacred bonds of marriage is procreation - to perpetuate humanity from one generation to the next. For nearly 1,500 years, such thinking underpinned the Christian West. That was then; this is now. Since the 1960s, modern society is obsessed with contraception, abortion and sexual hedonism. The results have been declining birth rates and shrinking native populations. Literally, the West is dying.

As the late Pope John Paul II put it, we are in the grips of “a culture of death.” Birth control is a key pillar. It is a seminal aspect of the socialist drive to establish a secular utopia - smash the traditional family by relentlessly advancing the sexual revolution. The pill and the condom are the hammer and sickle of cultural Marxism. Decades ago, the Vatican warned that birth control eventually would lead to the West’s demise. A civilization unable - and unwilling - to reproduce itself is doomed.

The pill and condom as hammer and sickle: that's a very succinct way of linking the social and the fiscal issues.  Sexual anomie is akin to Statist political economy, and the Obama Administration is the living, fire-breathing, menacing proof.

Many people disagree with the Church on sexual matters.  The shocking aspect of people's disagreement is that in a country whose first amendment protects religious liberty, free speech, the right to assemble and the like, they would use government to harass and cripple, if possible, an institution merely for upholding traditions that antedate the chemical formulation of the pill.

That this is done in the name of others' liberty only makes citizens cynical, and breeds a disrespect for words.

James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution, said, “Conscience is the most sacred of all property.” The Obama administration is telling Catholics that their conscience rights can be trampled with impunity. The state has the power to coerce people to support and pay for practices they find morally repugnant and contravene their fundamental religious beliefs. This is tyranny.

Leftists are quite explicit in their tyrannical intentions.  Either the Church will acquiesce and conform--like Aldous Huxley's Arch-Songster of Canterbury--or the crucifixions will continue.

Meanwhile, the body of Christ stumbles through this vale of tears, suffering the taunts and lashes of those who recognize no truth but their own.  Hopefully, for the sake of true liberty, the Supreme Court will rebuff the President's HHS hubris.

Enough is enough!  Perhaps the people, Christians and non-Chrisitans alike, will get around to rebuffing the President and his infernal Party altogether in November for reasons including that they are sick and tired of seeing Christ crucified.