The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced on January 20 that
almost all employers, including Catholic employers, will be forced to offer their employees
health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraception. Almost
all health insurers will be forced to include those “services” in the health policies they write.
And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.

In so ruling, the Administration has seemingly ignored the First Amendment to the
Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our Nation’s first and most fundamental
freedom, that of religious liberty. As a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics must be
prepared either to violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and
suffer the penalties for doing so). The Administration’s sole concession was to give our
institutions one year to comply.

We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law. People of faith cannot be made
second class citizens because of their religious beliefs. We are already joined by our brothers
and sisters of all faiths and many others of good will in this important effort to regain our
religious freedom. Our parents and grandparents did not come to these shores to help build
America’s cities and towns, its infrastructure and institutions, its enterprise and culture, only to
have their posterity stripped of their God given rights. All that has been built up over so many
years in our Catholic institutions should not be taken away by the stroke of an administrator’s
pen. This order reduces the Church to a private club, destroying her public mission in society.
In generations past, the Church has always been able to count on the faithful to stand up and
protect her sacred rights and duties. I hope and trust she can count on this generation of
Catholics to do the same.

Therefore, I would ask of you two things. First, as a community of faith we must commit
ourselves to prayer and fasting that wisdom and justice may prevail, and religious liberty may be
restored. Without God, we can do nothing; with God, nothing is impossible. Second, I would
also recommend visiting www.usccb.org/conscience to learn more about this severe assault on religious liberty, and how to contact Congress in support of legislation that would reverse the Administration’s decision.

A letter similar to this is being sent to their people by diocesan bishops around the
country. I thank you for your consideration of this unprecedented challenge to religious liberty.

You and your families are in my prayers; please keep me in yours.

Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I.

Archbishop of Chicago

Original Letter

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CAIRO — Egyptian authorities have charged the Egypt country directors of the International Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute in an investigation into the financing of pro-democracy organizations, state media reported Monday.

IRI’s Sam LaHood, the son of U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, was the first of 43 names published Monday afternoon on the Arabic-language Web site by state-owned newspaper al-Ahram. Several other American and Egyptian IRI employees are also being charged.

. . .Fayza Abul Naga, Egypt’s minister for international cooperation, who is widely seen as the mastermind of the probe, said Sunday’s announcement should leave no doubt about the “government’s seriousness about discovering some of these groups’ plans to destabilize Egypt,” the state-owned newspaper al-Ahram reported on its Web site. The minister is among the few Mubarak loyalists who remain in the Egyptian cabinet.

Now it’s 2012, something is happening here again and I think I know what it is: A new energy on the progressive left of American politics that’s outpacing the once potent right-wing drive of the tea partiers in 2010. Republican primary turnout is down.

What’s special? Organized labor—under severe new attack—joined forces with students and other movements on the liberal side in a way we haven’t seen since the 1963 civil rights March on Washington. (Some unions later split on civil rights and Vietnam.)

The first rumblings of renewed energy came a year ago in Wisconsin and continue to pick up strength. When Scott Walker, the new Republican governor, signed draconian, anti-public-union legislation, the state capitol was flooded with protestors from all over the country—led by labor but vigorously supported by others. Then two Republican state senators were recalled—though the voting fell one senator shy of changing the balance of the senate.

That wasn’t the end of it. A few weeks ago activists turned in more than a million signatures on a petition to recall Walker and other legislators. There’s an even chance they will succeed in dethroning a governor for only the third time in American history—despite reported threats of reprisals against people who signed the petition.

Also, last November voters in Ohio turned out in a special referendum to repeal similar antiunion legislation signed by another unpopular new Republican governor, John Kasich. Some 61 percent voted to erase that law—again indicating widespread support, a coalition well beyond union families.

Need I remind you that last fall in New York, labor quickly joined with numerous progressive forces to support the Occupy Wall Street coalition? The movement spread rapidly across the country and dramatically changed the American political dialog from deficits to income inequality and began holding bankers’ feet to the fire. Despite winter weather, police attacks and some self-inflicted miscues, the movement has not gone away—though questions remain about its ultimate direction and potential political goals.

When Indiana last week became the 23rd “right-to-work” state, the labor protestors even included the NFL players union on the eve of the Super Bowl, which coincidentally took place in Indianapolis.

Something is happening here. Look at the immediate uprising that forced the Komen foundation to reverse its plan to defund Planned Parenthood. Another sign of significant rebellion against the right-wing agenda.

In general, these are all positive indicators for Barack Obama’s re-election, but the movement is larger than that. Many in Occupy and other groups may not even vote for him as they reprise the eternal left debate over the “lesser of two evils.”

Pew research finds 43 percent of people under 30 have an equally positive reaction to the word “socialism” as they do “capitalism.”

Add it all up. Connect the dots. The energy is clearly on the left and growing. That’s what’s happening Mr. Jones.

**
Don Rose is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer

Image American Spring circa 1972

They are strong words that he does not use lightly. Here is a list of ways Catholics feel backed into a corner by the Obama administration.

1. Abortion Extremism. Most Americans call themselves pro-life when it comes to abortion. In this regard, the Obama administration is not at all like most Americans. As I documented at the National Catholic Register, Obama’s administration made attacks on the right to life priority No. 1 in its administration.

2. Forced Contraception Coverage. If the administration forced Jewish delicatessens to serve pork that would rightly be denounced as an attack on religious liberty, both by those who “keep kosher,” those who don’t, and those who aren’t Jewish at all. By forcing Catholic institutions to pay for contraception and sterilization, the White House is doing exactly the same thing.

3. Forced Funding of Abortifacients. By forcing Catholics to pay for birth control pills, Obama has inadvertently forced into the light a medical fact that contraception’s supporters would like to forget: Contraceptive pills work in several ways. The Mayo Clinic lists them here.  Among them: “Alter the lining of the uterus so a fertilized egg doesn’t attach to it.” A “fertilized egg,” in layman’s terms, is a newly conceived human being who is already male or female and with all the genetic information that will determine whether or not she is tall, short, good at singing or excellent at softball. And preventing implantation kills that new boy or girl.

4. Breaking Notre Dame Promise. When he spoke at Notre Dame, Obama assured Catholics that his still-new administration would “draft a sensible conscience clause” for Catholics. Forcing Jewish delicatessens to sell pork would not be a “sensible conscience clause.” Forcing Catholics to fund contraceptives is not a “sensible conscience clause.”

5. Anti-War Catholics Disappointed. Some Catholics who supported Obama said they did so because he was anti-war, compared to Bush. But Obama has not deviated from the Bush administration’s Iraq timetable, Afghanistan strategy or Guantanamo Bay policy. After he added a Libyan conflict to his record and spent a third of his 2012 State of the Union promoting his military record, the Nobel Peace Prize committee came under investigation for awarding him its prize.

6. Hushing Army Chaplains. At the same time, under the Obama administration, the Army has silenced chaplains who were instructed by their Archbishop to read a letter about the Obama administration’s forced contraception coverage. Kathryn Jean Lopez reports.

7. Government Regulating Ministers. If the Supreme Court had not stopped him, the Obama administration would have inserted the federal government in the hiring and firing of civilian ministers. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the unanimous January 2012 decision that the court was protecting “the interest of religious groups in choosing who will preach their beliefs, teach their faith and carry out their mission.”

8. Catholics Officially Bigots. Obama campaigned claiming he was for protecting traditional marriage and against same-sex “marriage.” But as Bishop William Lori testified in the U.S. Senate, “The Federal Department of Justice has ratcheted up its attack on the Defense of Marriage Act by mischaracterizing it as an act of bigotry.” He cited several examples, including Catholics being driven out of adoption services because they will not assist homosexual couples in adoptions.

9. Federal “Catholics Need Not Apply” Policies. It was bad enough when local businesses barred Catholics from certain jobs in the early 20th century. Now the White House has put “Catholics Need Not Apply” signs up in two key places:

Last Spring, Health and Human Services issued a rule that bars the Church from helping refugee and human trafficking victims who are kids separated from their parents. The regulation says to work with them you have to be willing to perform abortions on them.

The State Department’s USAID bars groups from feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and caring for the sick overseas unless they promise to give them condoms, too. This makes it impossible for Catholics to participate.

10. Anti-Immigrant Policies. President Obama’s unprecedentedly harsh deportation policy has drawn the ire of Latinos. Catholic bishops as recently as August had hoped for a change that would be more in line withChurch teaching on welcoming immigrants.

Read more at Catholic Vote Action

Contrarian liberal blogger Mickey Kaus sums it up: "The president's decision-making method -- at least as described in this piece -- seems to consist of mainly checking boxes on memos his aides have written for him."
A $60 billion cut in the stimulus package? "OK." Use the reconciliation process to pass the health care bill? A checkmark in the box labeled "yes."
Include medical malpractice reform in the health care bill? The man who as an Illinois legislator often voted "present" writes, "We should explore it."
According to Lizza, Obama prefers getting information and making decisions by staying up late and reading memos rather than meeting with people -- a temperament that's a liability because face time with the president is one of his major sources of political capital.
Lizza's reporting undercuts the stated thesis of his article: that Obama sought to bring bipartisan governance to Washington, but was foiled by Republicans' partisan intransigence.