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Government Cannot Dictate Private Beliefs

No one is telling the Catholic Church that it cannot hold its views on contraception

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I am Roman Catholic in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland, Ohio. We should not have to, and we will not ever comply with a mandate that violates our religious freedoms and the tenets and beliefs of our Roman Catholic faith.

Benjamin Brackman of OH 11:06AM July 13, 2012

unknmown

michelle bingham of PA 10:52AM March 17, 2012

In response to Laura Schneider's comments:

And what happened to the utopian governments that did away w/ religious beliefs and conscience? You know… Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Communist Russia, Mao's China, North Korea, etc. These governments and atheistic regimes put people in the Gulag, death camps, tortured them for any beliefs against their ideology. The murder tally? Over 100 billion in last century alone, surpassing all wars and conflicts in all history put together. Political parties and governments can make itself the new god all must worship. Suddenly, we're afraid of each other. We label ourselves and others as a Democrat or Republican… liberal or conservative, as if truth must conform to these categories. Democrats fly the banner of tolerance and inclusion, but are intolerant w/ people's religion/beliefs that don't share their sentiments. Or a Republican who claims patriotism, but cheats on taxes for years. I'll put my Confucius and Socrates hat on, the truth is we're all "a**holes". The sad part is many won't admit it. Just look at your own family or look yourself in the mirror. As a mystic wisely said, "You're an a**hole, I'm an a**hole, without God's grace, we're all a**holes". Bet you won't hear that in schools w/ your prestigious diplomas. Difference between a saint and everyone else is that they know they're an a**hole without divine intervention. A Buddhist might politely call this a "Villian". Religion doesn't necessarily poison people, people poison religion. As Benjamin Franklin says "If man can be so wicked w/ religion, how much more is he without it?". American democracy is founded on the religious principle that a whole nation shouldn't put its trust solely on one person in case he becomes a villian like Hitler or Stalin. It balances and spreads the power in branches of government, and gives religious a voice to remind our conscience and sensibilities. Beware of a government trampling on people's conscience, it's tried many times before. As Martin Luther King Jr. says "Never forget that everything Hitler did was legal". His chrisitan conviction and voice overturned "racist" laws dressed up as equality. And did I mention Ghandi's (another religious) influence on non-violence that spared thousands if not millions of bloodshed because of corrupt governments. Let's stick to the Constitution of protecting religious liberty.

Sarah Benton of NJ 11:32AM February 23, 2012

That's exactly what is happening with this mandate. The scenario is more like this: It's that owner (synagogue, mosque, schools, etc.) running the Halal or Kosher store that is forced to sell or offer pork to it's customers. The issue here isn't so much about pork or meat, but having the religious liberty to exercise it. In the HHS mandate, Catholics and certain religious organizations (this includes Orthodox Jews) are forced against their conscience to prescribe / endorse contraception (which many do not realize includes abortificients and sterilization drugs).

The Catholic position does not prohibit using birth control for medicinal purpose such as hormonal imbalance. The Church's perspective looks at it in a broader scheme of things. It is against anything that undermines family and human relationships (which in the long haul is detrimental to society; yes, even economy). Interestingly, Ghandi and Freud himself saw the dangers of a society hooked on contraception. Great ideas/revelation adhering to unpopular truths start out as blasphemy. Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest for example, shocked disapproving scientists (including Einstein) in 1920s with the "Big Bang" theory/revelation that the universe began w/ a sandsize grain. But what about the "moral" data contributed by our acceptance of scientific progress? Regardless of religious beliefs, I think any earnest truth seeker should at least question it's forebearing reality and consequence like a good scientist or gemologist scrutinizing a gem. "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind" as Einstein said later in life. I think contraception is an issue w/ great consequence few really understand and perhaps misled by it's appeal. Here are some excerpts or perhaps blasphemies?

http://www.mkgandhi.org/momgandhi/chap59.htm

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11635262

http://www.businessinsider.com/time-to-admit-it-the-church-has-always-been-right-on-birth-control-2012-2

Emily of CO 5:10PM February 21, 2012

Ihe government has always worked within the framework of the Constitution, which supports Separation of Church and State. The Obama administration was doing exactly what it was supposed to do

It is not religious bigotry to want to rpeserve the Separation of Church and State. Just because any religion or set of religions don't get everything they want does not mean that they are being persecuted. This is a country that practices freedom of religion, which means the country is governed by a secular government that preserves freedom of religion for everyone and freedom from religions for citizens who do not choose to practice any specific religion -- which is accomplished by keeping Church and State separated. You cannot have freedom of religion if one religion, denomination or sect is dictating to the rest of us what we can and cannot do or believe or say or think. The government protects us from religions that over-reach and try to establish their religion using the government.

The Catholic church and many other fundamentalist Christian churches and other fundamentalist religions have a distorted view of what churches should and should not be able to do. Churches are not exempt from the law. And the for-profit businesses they run that employ private citizens (not clergy) are and should be subject to the same laws that govern all other businesses.

Historically, most religions that have over-reached and established themselves within the government have created a toxic environment where intolerance is the rule of the day. Whether it was torture of heretics and burning witches throughout centuries by the Catholic church, or persecution of the Druids in medieval England, or the "convert or die" ultimatum dictated by Muhammad to Muslims, or beheading anyone who teaches girls or runs a school for girls in Afghanistan, or killing rape victims because they had caused their rapists to lose control, or wife-burnings in India and Pakistan, or honor-killings that go on all over the world (including Euopre) -- it's all the same. It's a situation where an established religion penetrates the government and creates a toxic intolerant environment through tyranny and terror with a bullied government backing them up out of fear of retribution by their "faithful."

Most social conservatives see establishing a virtual theocracy as their mission, and that is exactly what the First Amendment was attempting to prevent. Blinded by the “righteousness” of their cause, they would see their utopia quickly descend into madness, where religion would not be voluntary or freely embraced by believers, but a forced religion using government coercion to impose its will.

And that is why those who are making this into "religion under persecution" are SO WRONG about their assumption that Freedom of Religion applies to churches; it does not; it applies to human beings, to American citizens.

Laura Schneider of AL 11:35PM February 18, 2012