Exclusive: Cardinal George urges every US bishop to take decisive action on Catholic health care concerns - and meet with their politicians

Francis Cardinal George - President of the USCCB, together with Justin Cardinal Rigali (Chairman of USCCB pro-life activities), Bishop Murphy (Chairman of domestic justice and human development) and Bishop Wester (Chairman on Migration) have sent a letter to every Cardinal, Archbishop and Bishop in the United States asking for their "active and personal leadership" and to "redouble [their] efforts" that health care reform is done right. 

Right now, health care reform is wrong. 

I want to focus on what the bishops are urged to undertake personally.

In part the letter to them reads:

"The outcome [of this debate] will depend not primarily on advocacy done [by us] in Washington, but on what we do in our own dioceses and states to make the case clearly and persuasively to influence how our Senators and Representatives vote."

The letter includes many action items for the bishops, including:

• "Personally contact your Senators and Representatives who serve your diocese. In addition to letters and email, we ask you to speak personally to your members of Congress, in meetings and/or by phone."

The letter goes on to say, to both Senators and Representatives (im paraphrasing here):

• Please support an amendment to support conscience clauses and rule-out tax-payer funded abortions. If these amendments are not added to the bill, you must oppose the final bill when it comes to a vote.

The ramifications of this activity of the US bishops are extremely significant. 

To take one important example, Archbishop George Niederauer of San Francisco ought to call Nancy Pelosi, and ask that she follow the advice presented above. This then means that when she ignores his advice (as she undoubtedly will) and pushes through this pro-abortion health care reform bill, she will be intentionally and explicitly defying the personal request of her Archbishop.

It should now be impossible, in fact, for any elected Catholic official to claim that they voted for the final pro-abortion health care bill without knowing clearly, in advance, where their local bishop stood on this particular issue. 

I'll let us all ponder these implications for a moment. 

Updates to follow....

[This most recent activity from the USCCB goes even beyond their efforts to place a pro-life bulletin insert into every parish in America. I blogged on that story earlier today here. Make no mistake - this is going to be big.]

Catholic Medical Association comes out strongly against ObamaCare

While I was in Orlando I was privledged to meet several members of the Catholic Medical Association.

I am thrilled to see they have come out vocally against Obamacare because of its deep, particular flaws, and have also cautioned against any proposal which involves a government takeover of the private medical profession.

They have released a 3-page open letter to "Catholics and Catholic organizations", and - because I realize people tend to be daunted by larger documents - I'm excerpting the conclusion here:

"We must ensure that well-intentioned efforts to bring about “change” are not exploited to create a federally controlled system that promises health care for all, but creates an oppressive bureaucracy hostile to human life and to the integrity of the patient physician relationship. It would be better to forgo long-needed changes in health-care financing and delivery in the short-term if these would lead to a long-term, systemic policy regime that is inimical to respect for life, religious freedom, and the goods served by the principle of subsidiarity. Rather than accept such an outcome, we should take the time required to implement reform measures that are sound in both principled and practical terms."

The entire letter can be read here (PDF) through the CMA website. They have created a new section of their website dedicated to health care reform which I would urge you to visit.

This is a brave move by the Catholic Medical Association. Having met several of their members, I believe they are sincere Catholics who genuinely want to practice their profession according to their Catholic principles.

Urgent: Support the Foundation for Sacred Arts!

My good friend Erik Bootsma, graduate of the Notre Dame School of Architecture (and the artist behind the design for American Papist Apparel), sent me this impassioned plea for financial assistance.

I know many members of this organization and would love to see AmP readers get behind their important mission and work. Please read, contribute, and spread the word:

"The Foundation for Sacred Arts is dedicated to a new renaissance in Catholic arts: Painting, Sculpture, Music, Architecture, etc.

The Foundation sponsors speakers, academic forums, arts competitions and exhibitions of contemporary artists who best exemplify artistic excellence with an emphasis on the continuity of artistic tradition. We already have a number of speakers and programs coming up next year and beyond.

The Foundation is, however, desperately in need of financial support to keep its office open and to continue its work of building a solid groundwork for new programs needed to help foster a truly Catholic and beautiful culture of art in the Church today.

Right now the Foundation is actively searching for seed money to jump-start this new programming, while also requiring financial support to maintain current operations.

Every penny is precious right now so small donations are just as welcome as large ones. We hope to eventually raise $100,000 through a combination of individual donations and larger grants."

I think the main challenge facing the Foundation at this point is that they are unknown. Living as Catholics in 21st century America, I think we are all keenly aware of the urgent need to support young Catholic artists who are inspired to create beautiful art in the Catholic tradition.

Beautiful works of art, after all, inspire us to see the beauty of God's creation and the dignity of his creation Man. Good art is fitting praise for the all-good God. And we shouldn't have to look for good Catholic art only in museums and art history books.

Erik recently wrote an excellent article for the Catholic News Agency entitled "Novelty vs. Beauty":

When I tell Catholics I meet that I’m an architect, invariably they ask me, “Why doesn’t the church I attend look like a church? Why don’t they build nice churches like the old ones we love?” Sometimes I come up with a complicated answer or theory, but most of the time I answer, “architects.”

In the United States, we have a fairly good tradition of building beautiful churches in which one can feel a true sense of reverence. One would be hard pressed to find a church built before World War II that wasn’t beautiful and beloved by its parishioners. It would be an even more difficult task to find such a church built after the World War that comes close to the beauty found in an average 1920s church and a Herculean task to find one built since the 1960s.

How is it that even within the Catholic Church, where we affirm and believe in the importance of tradition, that a deep and profound architectural heritage came to be abandoned? Again the answer is that architects, like so many other artists, have become obsessed with the idea of novelty. Most artists have been trained to believe by their mentors in 20th century art culture that only novel or “revolutionary” creations are worthy of being called art.

[Read the full article here.]

Another important factor in the sad situation that Erik describes is, well, money. Catholics must actively help good artists do their work. We've probably all complained at some point about bad Catholic art. Well, I've moved past grumbling and now I want to fix it. And the Foundation for Sacred Arts is well-equipped to do just that, with your assistance and mine.

If you cannot contribute to the Foundation directly, please help spread the word by emailing your friends, blogging about this, and telling your friends about them on Facebook and Twitter. All donations are tax-deductible, so that's an incentive, too.

If you want to contact Erik directly for interviews or publicity, you can do so at "erikbootsma [at] gmail.com."

So the next time you walk into a beautiful or ugly Catholic church, think for a moment about who was responsible for building it. Then, if you want to see more beautiful Churches, or less ugly ones, drop a few dollars in the Foundation's basket. I will.

Augustine wrote that he who sings, prays twice. Well, he who helps those who helps others pray ... well, it works out pretty good for them, too! I know I can count on you papists.

Pro-Environmentalist and Pro-Contraception forces finally join hands

For some time I've been waiting for this to happen. Here's why: the radical environmentalist movement is fundamentally an anti-humanist movement, because it blames human activity for environmental problems facing the world, and sees the good of the "earth" as trumping the good of human existence and flourishing.

So what's their solution to human-caused problems, especially when they are unavoidable? 

Simple: reduce the number of humans.

Once you understand that conclusion, headlines and articles like this UK Telegraph one make perfect (perverted) sense:

'Contraception cheapest way to combat climate change'

Contraception is almost five times cheaper as a means of preventing climate change than conventional green technologies, according to research by the London School of Economics.

Every £4 spent on family planning over the next four decades would reduce global CO2 emissions by more than a ton, whereas a minimum of £19 would have to be spent on low-carbon technologies to achieve the same result, the research says.

The report, Fewer Emitter, Lower Emissions, Less Cost, concludes that family planning should be seen as one of the primary methods of emissions reduction. The UN estimates that 40 per cent of all pregnancies worldwide are unintended.

... UN data suggests that meeting unmet need for family planning would reduce unintended births by 72 per cent, reducing projected world population in 2050 by half a billion to 8.64 [b]illion.

Did you catch that? 500,000,000 less people. And some individuals think this is a good thing! Even though it's well proven that there are plenty of resources to feed such a population.

This is the brave new world envisioned by these radical pro-environmentalist figures: a depopulated world in the future, and a lifestyle of illogical limitation for those already living.

This is an ideology we Christians, as a people of hope and trust in God, must defeat.

In new plan, White House faces choice between Catholics or abortion groups

Dan Gilgoff, with his dependable, informative coverage of things religious/political, notes that as the White House prepares to debut its abortion plan, "packing" is becoming a "major issue":

As the White House readies its plan for finding "common ground" on reproductive health issues and reducing the need for abortion, a major debate has emerged over how to package the plan's two major components: preventing unwanted pregnancies and reducing the need for abortion.

Many abortion rights advocates and some Democrats who want to dial down the culture wars want the White House to package the two parts of the plan together, as a single piece of legislation. The plan would seek to reduce unwanted pregnancies by funding comprehensive sex education and contraception and to reduce the need for abortion by bolstering federal support for pregnant women. Supporters of the approach say it would force senators and members of Congress on both sides of the abortion battle to compromise their traditional positions, creating true common ground that mirrors what President Obama has called for.

But more conservative religious groups working with the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships say they would be forced to oppose such a plan—even though they support the abortion reduction part—because they oppose federal dollars for contraception and comprehensive sex education. This camp, which includes such formidable organizations as the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops and the Southern Baptist Convention, is pressuring the White House to decouple the two parts of the plan into separate bills. One bill would focus entirely on preventing unwanted pregnancy, while the other would focus on supporting pregnant women.

The White House declined a request for comment. Advocates for both plans say the administration has offered no hint about how it will come down on the matter. But with the White House expected to announce its plan on abortion and related issues this summer, advocates on both sides are strenuously lobbying for the plan, arguing that it offers the only true hope for common ground on very thorny issues. (Read full article here.)

The Obama team is silent about what it plans to do.

Bottom line:

For the White House, the decision about which tack to take is largely a question of whom it feels more comfortable alienating: religious groups like the Catholic bishops, which it has been trying hard to win over, or abortion rights groups, a key part of the Democratic base that it doesn't want to lose.

As I said in my extended look at Reproductive Health Reality Check's "common ground forum", the new pro-abortion tactic is "[not to] reduce abortion, [but] to reduce the "need" for abortion, often through recourse to contraception." And they will never rule out abortion. In fact, the RHRC's twitter feed yesterday promoted "ensuring universal access to family planning" (a euphemism for contraception and abortion) as common ground!

So what does this "new way" boil down to for us? Catholics giving in on contraception. The radical abortion agenda will not back down one step, so their "common ground" is a mask for us to compromise our principles.

Just look at the thoughts expressed in the ultra-liberal Daily Kos, which specifically targets Catholics:

On the subject of Reproductive Freedom, there can be no common ground between the militant anti-abortion religious right, including the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) and those of us who believe that people have the right to use any method of birth control they choice, up to and including safe, legal abortion.

While most of Catholics in this country and much of the rest of the world believe as I do, that girls, women and their sexual partners should have this right, the Roman Catholic hierarchy would rather women die of AIDS, and they and their children die of hunger, rather than a sexual partner use condoms or themselves use artificial methods of birth control or be able to attain a safe, legal abortion.

This sort of thinking is the same type that is held by the owners of Planned Parenthood, and the powerful pro-abortion interests in this country.

Secondly, it's a liberal orthodoxy that universal access to contraception (and honestly, pushing contraceptives on sexually active people, starting young) will reduce the need for abortions.

However, I've heard it argued that the actual data reveals that countries with expanded access to contraception actually have more need for abortions. I would tend to agree with this analysis, because who of us thinks that American youth *don't* have enough access to contraception?! Frankly, the people who don't use contraception for religious reasons are the same people who are far, far less likely to seek an abortion.

But it would help if I had the research at my finger tips. So if you know where it is online, please send me the link and I'll post it on AmP.

There is currently a lobbying battle waging between pro-abortion groups and the USCCB over which plan the Obama team chooses, as Gilgoff reports. We need to be active in supporting the USCCB and combating the tactics of the pro-abortion groups, who only offer a common ground that hurts Americans, born and unborn.