In a recent letter to his brother bishops expressing dismay at the Obama Administration’s healthcare mandate that forces religious organizations to provide services that are contrary to basic tenants of their faith, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops suggested that: “The White House seems to think we bishops simply do not know or understand Catholic teaching and so, taking a cue from its own definition of religious freedom, now has nominated its own handpicked official Catholic teachers.”
Among those Catholic teachers chosen by the Obama Administration are the editors of America, the Jesuit weekly magazine, who recently suggested it is only a mere policy disagreement and therefore the U.S. Bishops should cave-in and accept this violation of religious freedom. Others include the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR) and Sister Carol Keehan, president of the Catholic Health Association, both of whom have suggested President Obama’s so-called compromise on the mandate should suffice in providing enough religious liberty. Of course, there is the Washington Post columnist, E.J. Dionne, a professed Catholic who offered his full glowing support of the Obama “compromise” minutes after it was announced. It appears that Kevin Leahy, president and CEO of the Franciscans Alliance Healthcare System, may be on to something when he suggests that President Obama is seeking to divide and conquer Catholics and many groups have “taken his bait.”
The term “useful idiots” has long been associated with those people who blindly supported the regimes of the Soviet dictators Lenin and Stalin while they were repressing freedoms and oppressing their own people. Sadly it seems this term can now be attributed to many inside the Catholic Church as they willingly do the bidding of the Obama White House in dividing and conquering their own church. Perhaps the enlightened editors at America, Sister Carol Keehan and the CHA, the LCWR and even the political pundit E.J. Dionne would do well in heeding the words of the Baptist minister, Governor Mike Huckabee, who on commenting on his own opposition to the Obama Healthcare Mandate suggested, “In this matter, we’re all Catholics.”
