Comments on: Catholics: Smile but don’t be fooled!

By: gregz

gregz — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:35:55 +0000

Bribery or Politics?
If the healthcare legislation is so GREAT, why are the Democrats voting on it in the dark of night on a Saturday night? Why are they not presenting the facts of the bill to the American people? Is it because the numbers do not add up? The Democrats say that there is a need to pass this legislation today because thousands of people are dying because of the lack of healthcare. Yet the benefits do not go into effect until 4 years from now, so by their calculations are they going to let thousands more of Americans die? Why do they want to put people in jail for not wanting to buy health insurance? Would that even be constitutional? Why do they have to bribe certain Senators in order to get them to vote for it? Is Eric Holder going to investigate this bribe? Will the news media begin doing their job and expose this fraud? Why is it that politicians say one thing but do another, Joe Liebermann? Will the American people stand up and be heard to stop this monstrosity? These are just some questions that should be answered before proceeding with this legislation.
Greg Zotta

By: gregz

gregz — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:10:43 +0000

Stupak (STUPID) Amendment and (STUPID)Republicans
Democrat Representative Bart Stupak of Michigan won the support of the Republicans and 64 Democrats for his amendment regarding abortion. Stupak’s language prohibits abortion coverage in the public insurance option included in the House bill. It would also prevent private plans from offering coverage for abortion services if they accept people who are receiving government subsidies. It does allow abortions in the case of rape, incest or imperils the health or life of the mother.
Without the Stupak (Stupid) amendment the House healthcare bill would not have won final passage in a 220-215 vote. This healthcare bill should have gone down to defeat; it is wrong for America. Yet, Nancy Pelosi gloated over the passage of the bill. It is all about control and the loss of freedom. It is loaded with tax increases and the so-called benefits to the plan do not go into effect until 2013. The cost of the plan will be in excess of a trillion dollars. Also, what gives them the right to force people to purchase healthcare insurance under the penalty of fine and imprisonment? I believe that would be unconstitutional.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), the Democrats’ chief deputy whip in the House said “I am confident that when it comes back from the conference committee that that language won’t be there.” So they put in an amendment in order to pass this atrocity only to remove the amendment from the final bill.
Republican Leader John Boehner asked Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel (D- NY), and Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller (D-CA), “If the House is to pass the Stupak amendment and this bill is to pass tonight and there is a vote in the conference committee on this issue, would you guarantee me that you will support the House-passed bill?” They all said they won’t guarantee they’ll support keeping Pro-Life language in the Final Health Care bill. SO WHY VOTE FOR IT?
Mr. Boehner, knowing that voting to pass this amendment was just a ruse to get the Healthcare bill passed; why did you and the Republicans vote for it? There were Democrats who said without the Stupak amendment this monstrosity of a healthcare bill would have gone down to defeat. It does not make sense to me when you say you are against this healthcare bill and then vote for an amendment that basically guarantees the bill will pass.
Greg Zotta

By: No Free Lunch

No Free Lunch — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:12:27 +0000

Libs like Michael Moore think voting to move money from one group of people to another will buy them the keys to heaven. Taking money from one person under the threat of levies or imprisonment (i.e tax collection) and giving it to another (wealth redistribution) is not a Christian principle. The libs think this graft, corruption and inefficient wealth redistribution (like Mary Poppins) will be easier to swallow with a spoonful of sugar called hope and change.

Voluntary giving (i.e charitable concern for your fellow man)is a basic Christian principle, but big government proponents find it easier to vote once a year for their favorite lib than to open their hearts and wallets on a regular basis by voluntary giving to their favorite charity.

Make no mistake. The Health Care Bill has nothing to do with helping your fellow man, but rather it’s sole covert goal is to heap unmanageable welfare reform on a caring but unwitting capitalistic republic, for the sole intent of creating economic chaos. Desperate for change, the liberal drones will vote for radical change in the form of an unsustainable socialist democracy and hope it works.

By: PlasticEyes

PlasticEyes — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 14:28:09 +0000

Thanks for your cogent comment. I agree completely.

When I read complicated encyclicals such as Pacem et Terris, I realize even more the great thinking and simple truths embodied in our Declaration of Independence when it proclaims the fundamental human right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are the basic Judeo-Christian values that the Church should champion.

Following the principles of the Declaration, the US Constitution defined a framework that has proven to be the best governmental structure to safeguard these values. The Popes and bishops would do well to consult our country’s founding documents for guidance in how much and how little to expect from a government.

Jesus gave us the wonderful Sermon on the Mount in which he described how we are to behave with regard to our fellow man. Clearly he was telling us to use our God-given gifts of intelligence, free will, and conscience in order to reach our eternal reward. Never did he exhort us to create governments that would coerce others into living the life of the Beatitudes. Above all else, Jesus wants each of us to come to him as an act of free will, just as he freely chose to die for us.

Following Christ’s advice, the Church traditionally encouraged its members to practice virtue through voluntary service organizations such as religious orders, hospitals and hospices, food and clothing centers, orphanages, and so on. But reviewing the actions of American bishops throughout most of my life, it seems as if they have thrown in the towel on these traditions. Instead, they seem to be promoting the coercive socialist agenda of the Democratic Party, which is very much at odds with the teachings of Jesus as well as the Judeo-Christian ethics of our founding fathers.

As a life-long Catholic with a firm belief in Christian principles, I don’t intend to leave the Church. However, I sometimes feel like a life-long Democrat who realizes that he didn’t leave his Party, but his Party left him. I’d like to see the USCCB get back in sync with faithful members who believe that liberty, not coercive socialism, is the way of Jesus.

– PlasticEyes

By: elorden

elorden — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:03:27 +0000

The reason that the USCCB accepts socialized healthcare is that the Church has enumerated healthcare as a “human right” in its Social Teaching. Ever since at least 1963, in the encyclical Pacem et Terris (Peace on Earth), a very wide variety of items are said to be rights, “Beginning our discussion of the rights of the human person, we see that everyone has the right to life, to bodily integrity, and to the means which are suitable for the proper development of life; these are primarily food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, and finally the necessary social services.” (Pacem et Terris, 11)

Yet, I beleive that the Church, in her Social Teaching, has been misguided since then because that same document also states that “[t]he natural rights with which we have been dealing are, however, inseparably connected, in the very person who is there subject, with just as many respective duties; and rights as well a s duties find their source, their sustenance and their inviolability in the natural law which grants or enjoins them.” (Pacem et Terris, 28)

One of the reasons I have heard given for this is a Catholic notion that, since man was not utterly destroyed by the fall of Adam, there is every person a natural yearning to become a social being, and, therefore, a natural altruism to support the Common Good. Therefore, it is good for the Government to do what is altruistic, regardless of the feelings of the individuals.

My problem with this is the tension with the individual conscience. To force an individual, through governmental action, to support a system that person found morally reprehensible in their formed and informed conscience (that is, in that place internally where the individual meets God stripped of all pretense) is an attack on the freedom of the individual and, therefore, is a much greater wrong than any good the system may provide communally.

It comes down, once again, to the meaning of liberty. Is liberty for one to do as one wishes with their own person and fruit of their own labor, or is it to do with another and the fruit of another’s labor? Both definitions have been used for “liberty”, but they are categorically mutually exclusive.