22 February 2012
.
.
Presbyterians Week Headlines
.
[2] Geneva College Sues Obama Administration over “Contraceptive Mandate”
[4] Major Mainstream Religious Leaders Voice Support for Obamacare “Contraceptive Mandate”
[5] An Editorial on the “Contraceptive Mandate” from Christian News
.
—
.
A 20 February 2012 Godfather Politics article by Da Tagliare titled “Obama Gestapo Arrests Group for Praying in Front of White House” reports that Reformed Presbyterian minister the Rev. Pat Mahoney and five other clergymen were quickly arrested by U.S. (National) Park Police officers when they began to kneel and pray in front of the White House in protest of the Obamacare “contraceptive mandate” that compels health insurance providers to provide no-cost abortifacient and contraceptive coverage whether or not the religious denomination, employer, or other entity providing health insurance has a moral objection to abortifacients and contraceptives.
The author prefaced the article by writing:
Occupy Washington protesters have been camping on US [National] Park Service property for the past four months. They littered and trashed the park. They urinated and defecated all over it. They even defaced public property and nearby buildings.
But few arrests were ever made.
.
+ Hanover Presbytery, Reformed Presbyterian Church, hanoverpresbyter@yahoo.com
.
.
[2] Geneva College Sues Obama Administration over “Contraceptive Mandate”
Geneva College of Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, on 21 February 2012 filed suit against the Obama administration, saying regulations that require employers to offer birth control coverage that includes drugs that abort fertilized embryos [abortifacients] are “directly at odds” with its religious values, including the Bible’s Sixth Commandment [Thou Shalt Not Kill].
The college is represented by the Alliance Defense Fund.
.
+ Geneva College, 3200 College Avenue, Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania 15010, 724-846-5100, Fax: 724.847.6696, pr@geneva.edu
+ Alliance Defense Fund, 15100 North 90th Street, Scottsdale, Arizona 85260, 800-835-5233, Fax: 480-444-0025
+ Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America (RPCNA), 7408 Penn Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15208, 412-731-1177, Fax: 412-731-8861
.
.
Dordt College President Dr. Carl Zylstra has signed a 10 February 2012 letter on University of Notre Dame School of Law letterhead titled “Unacceptable” responding to U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama’s “accommodation” to the Obamacare “contraceptive mandate.”
The letter states, in part:
This so-called “accommodation” changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy. It is certainly no compromise. The reason for the original bipartisan uproar was the administration’s insistence that religious employers, be they institutions or individuals, provide insurance that covered services they regard as gravely immoral and unjust. Under the new rule, the government still coerces religious institutions and individuals to purchase insurance policies that include the very same services.
.
+ The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, 3000 K Street Northwest, Suite 220, Washington DC 20007, 202-955-0095, Fax: 202-955-0090, ehardman@becketfund.org
+ Dordt College, 498 4th Avenue Northeast, Sioux Center, Iowa 51250, 712-722-6000, public-relations@dordt.edu
+ Notre Dame Law School, Post Office Box 780, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, 574-631-6627, Fax: 574-631-3980, ndlaw@nd.edu
+ Christian Reformed Church in North America, 2850 Kalamazoo Avenue Southeast, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49560, 616-241-1691, Fax: 616-224-0803 crcna@crcna.org
+ The Vatican, Città del Vaticano, Rome, Italy, 39-6-69-88-35-11, Fax: 39-6-69-88-54-47, Contact Page
.
.
[4] Major Mainstream Religious Leaders Voice Support for Obamacare “Contraceptive Mandate”
An 8 February 2012 statement supporting the Obamacare “contraceptive mandate” was signed by Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York President the Rev. Dr. Serene Jones and United Church of Christ General Minister and President the Rev. Geoffrey Black, joining other signatories including Muslims for Progressive Values President Ani Zonneveld, Society for Humanistic Judaism Executive Director M. Bonnie Cousens, and Planned Parenthood Clergy Advisory Board Chair the Rev. Jane Emma Newall.
The statement reads:
We stand with [U.S.] President Obama and [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] Secretary Sebelius in their decision to reaffirm the importance of contraceptive services as essential preventive care for women under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and to assure access under the law to American women, regardless of religious affiliation. We respect individuals’ moral agency to make decisions about their sexuality and reproductive health without governmental interference or legal restrictions. We do not believe that specific religious doctrine belongs in health care reform – as we value our nation’s commitment to church-state separation. We believe that women and men have the right to decide whether or not to apply the principles of their faith to family planning decisions, and to do so they must have access to services. The Administration was correct in requiring institutions that do not have purely sectarian goals to offer comprehensive preventive health care. Our leaders have the responsibility to safeguard individual religious liberty and to help improve the health of women, their children, and families. Hospitals and universities across the religious spectrum have an obligation to assure that individuals’ conscience and decisions are respected and that their students and employees have access to this basic health care service. We invite other religious leaders to speak out with us for universal coverage of contraception.
.
+ Religion News Service, 1930 18th Street Northwest, Suite B2, Washington DC 20009, 202-463-8777, Fax: 202-463-0033, info@religionnews.com
+ Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, 3041 Broadway at 121st Street, New York, New York 10027, 212-662-7100, online@uts.columbia.edu
+ United Church of Christ, 700 Prospect Avenue, Cleveland, Ohio 44115, 216-736-2100, ogm@ucc.org
.
.
[5] An Editorial on the “Contraceptive Mandate” from Christian News
[Editor’s Note: Christian News is an independent publication within the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod]
Abortion and Birth Control have been much in the news. Until the 1930s the major Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church recognized that the Bible opposes both abortion and birth control.
“Obama threatens religious liberty”, a column by Jeffrey T. Kuhner in the January 26, 2012 Washington Times says:
Like many leftists, President Obama has deep contempt for Christianity and democracy. This is why his administration has declared war on the Catholic Church and “religious liberty.
“The president sandbags the archbishop,” a January 30, 2012 column by Patrick Buchanan says:
Not only should the bishops file suit in federal court against the president and Sebelius for the violation of Separation of Church and State, they should inform the White House that no bishop will give an invocation at the Democratic Convention.”
“Totalitarian Obama…Tries to Pull the Plug on Medical Morality”, a column by Dexter Duggan in the February 9, 2012 Wanderer begins:
This is totalitarianism.
The domineering state orders the Church to buckle under, bow down, and worship death. Heavy penalties await those who dare say no.
Sounds like orders coming from Communist Moscow or National Socialist Berlin in the 1930s.
But these orders come from Washington, D. C., in 2012.
Barack Obama’s self- enchanted thugs lay it on the line.
Neither Catholics nor others have a choice. They must fund abortion- causing drugs, sterilization, and artificial contraception through the nationalized government medical program.
Catholics must live in constant mortal sin to be good, obedient Americans.
This is an election year. Obama truly has lost his mind.
“You might as well be forcing a Southern Baptist minister to run a bordello on church grounds,” said a January 24, 2012 editorial by the conservative Investor’s Business Daily. It was headlined, “Is Obama trying to replace the Pope?”
A government that already thinks itself all-powerful simply hands down the order, no matter how unconstitutional, weird, or unjustifiable.
.
+ Christian News, 684 Luther Lane, New Haven, Missouri 63068, 573-237-3110, Contact Page
+ Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, 1333 South Kirkwood Road, St. Louis, Missouri 63122, 888-843-5267, infocenter@lcms.org
.
Comments are closed for this Article !