COMMENTARY | Back during the 2008 campaign, then candidate Barack Obama groused about certain people who bitterly clung to “their God and their guns” to a group of well heeled and presumably secular liberal donors in San Francisco.
It looks like Obama is about to take on God, or at least His adherents on Earth, with his ill-considered attempt to force the Catholic Church to provide birth control and sterilization services. This confrontation is not going to end well.
The Catholic hierarchy, even those who had been supportive of the president in the past, has been incandescent in their opposition. According to CBS News, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan advised President Obama to keep out of the internal workings of the Church. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of the Archdiocese of Houston-Galveston expressed similar sentiments, according to the Houston Chronicle.
How far is the Roman Catholic Church prepared to go? It is clear that the Church cannot obey the mandate and still remain the Church. Then the question arises, how far will Obama go to enforce the mandate? Will he order fines to be exacted? Will he send those “meddlesome priests” to jail?
One thing Obama has obviously not counted on has been the common cause the Protestant Evangelical community has made with the Roman Catholic Church over the issue. Protestants are, at best, ambivalent about birth control, but they recognize an assault on religious liberty when they see it. And some are eagerly embracing the prospect of martyrdom.
Pastor Rick Warren, who had offered the invocation at Obama’s inauguration, stated flatly that he was willing to go to jail over the issue. So has Dr. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
One can only imagine the spectacle of a campaign of civil disobedience against the mandate, led by America’s churches, encouraged by the Republican political candidates, and stoked by a combination of religious zeal and righteous indignation. It would cause no little confusion for Obama and his supporters. They consider themselves on the side of righteousness and virtue. They will not understand being cast in the role of fascists trying to roll over religious liberty.
But as the Book of Hosea says, “For they have sowed the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind.”
Source: Cardinal-Designate Dolan: President Obama Needs To Stop ‘Intruding Into Internal Life Of A Church’, CBS News New York, Feb 8, 2012
Catholic groups in Texas resist birth control mandate, Kate Shellnutt, Houston Chronicle, Feb 8, 2012
Southern Baptist leader: If Obama mandate isn’t changed, Christians will go to jail, Stephen Ertel, LifeNews.Com, Feb 9, 2012
Southern Baptist leader: If Obama mandate isn’t changed, Christians will go to jail, Ben Johnson, LifeSiteNews, Feb 8, 2012