Obama the tyrant

President Obama has done what the USCCB has not been able to do for decades.  The HHS mandate issued on Jan 20 has united everyone from Michael Sean Winters to Fr. John Zuhlsdorf.  I mean hell, if Chris Matthews has a problem with it, you know it is bad.

The mandate effectively forces Catholic institutions such as hospitals and universities to fund contraception, abortion and sterilization procedures via the healthcare plans offered to their employees.  If they do not, they are fined (I believe to the tune of $4000 per employee).  So the choice left is to either violate the conscience of Catholics and the institutions they run, go out of business due to fines, or violate the law.

This is nothing less than a full frontal assault on the First Amendment and religious liberty.  The whole point of the First Amendment was to protect the religious from government interference and to allow the people to live out their Faith.  This INCLUDES public actions such as serving the poor and needy.

What is absolutely stupefying to me is how people seem to think that it is the Church violating separation of Church and State by resisting this law.  Like Mark Shea says, that is like accusing the pistol-whipped victim during an armed robbery of a lack of charity. Such a view of freedom is not freedom but tyranny.

It is highly unlikely that this will hold up if it goes to the Supreme Court, given the trouncing that Obama received just recently.  But the very fact that the "Constitutional Scholar" even tried to bring either of these up shows at the very least an appalling lack of understanding what the First Amendment actually is.  So any of the lawsuits filed should come back with a victory for common sense and religious liberty.

Obama is a tyrant, pure and simple.  He is ordering us to go against Natural Law and a proper understanding of the human person.  He has, in his zealotry for the Culture of Death, overstepped his authority and is perpetuating the worst persecution of the Church since the Civil War.

As the bishops stated in their template letter, we cannot and we will not comply.  It is only a matter of how we will resist this unjust command.  Do your part to resist this evil measure.  At the very least sign the petition and let your voice be heard.  Even if you are not Catholic you should recognize this as an assault on all religious freedom.  Because if this goes through, religious liberty in this country is dead.