GorT and family attended the Saturday 5:30 Mass yesterday since today is jam packed with various kids events.  At the end of the Mass (GorT only remembered two of the four “et cum spiritu tuo” responses), the priest asked the congregation to be seated for two short announcements.  The first was a quick blurb for the annual Archdiocese of Washington Cardinal’s Appeal made by one of the parish finance council members.  The second was made by the priest and it entailed reading excerpts from a letter from our Cardinal (Cardinal Wuerl) to the parish priests concerning the HHS mandate for contraception and sterilization coverage.  The excerpts pointed out (and they were outlined in an insert to the weekly bulletin) the flaws of the mandate, which Dr. J has covered well in the past week or so here.  There is one point that I’d like to highlight:  The Institute of Medicine committee that compiled the “preventive services for women” list for HHS said in its report that unintended pregnancy is “a condition for which safe and effective prevention and treatment” need to be more widely available.  The Conference of Catholic Bishops point out that women who suffer from infertility which really could be considered a condition to be treated were ignored by this mandate.

A common argument for the HHS mandate is that this is part of the Obama Administration’s effort to have access to health care more broadly available.  However, the net result will be that people will not be able to keep their coverages with respect to their convictions.  Organizations will have to meet the narrow criteria or cease to provide health benefits for their employees.  And resources currently being applied in health coverages towards basic health care to the uninsured will now facilitate birth control, “morning after” pills and the like for those who already had ample coverage.

Most impressive was that the Cardinal and our priest closed by stating the following with no equivocation: religious freedom in this country is under attack and in jeopardy if we sit idly by watching.  This is after the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the Obama Administration’s EEOC who tried to interfere with the administrative practices of religious organizations.  The Court’s decision called the EEOC’s view of the ministerial exception “untenable,” “extreme,” and “remarkable,” according to religious organizations no greater rights than those enjoyed by “a labor union, or a social club.”  The 9-0 ruling amounted to a “very emphatic rejection of this administration’s very narrow view of religious liberty,” Mark Rienzi, an attorney at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said.

I’m glad that the Catholic Church (and others as illustrated by the Supreme Court case participants) are standing up to the Obama Administration.  This isn’t getting a lot of press but it should.  This is a basic tenant of this country’s foundations and I’ll let our readers decide: either the administration are idiots and don’t know what ramifications their policies and mandates have or they are actively working to interfere with the religious freedom in this country.  Incompetent or evil?  or ad GorT would summarize: evily incompetent.

GorT

GorT is an eight-foot-tall robot from the 51ˢᵗ Century who routinely time-travels to steal expensive technology from the future and return it to the past for retroinvention. The profits from this pay all the Gormogons’ bills, including subsidizing this website. Some of the products he has introduced from the future include oven mitts, the Guinness widget, Oxy-Clean, and Dr. Pepper. Due to his immense cybernetic brain, GorT is able to produce a post in 0.023 seconds and research it in even less time. Only ’Puter spends less time on research. GorT speaks entirely in zeros and ones, but occasionally throws in a ڭ to annoy the Volgi. He is a massive proponent of science, technology, and energy development, and enjoys nothing more than taking the Czar’s more interesting scientific theories, going into the past, publishing them as his own, and then returning to take credit for them. He is the only Gormogon who is capable of doing math. Possessed of incredible strength, he understands the awesome responsibility that follows and only uses it to hurt people.