Bozell Column: The Secular Media vs. Religious Liberty
The Obama administration is waging war on Christianity. Somehow, the networks haven’t seen this as newsworthy.
On January 20, Obama’s Department of Health and Human Services announced its perverse attempt to force Catholic schools, hospitals, and other charitable agencies to finance sterilization, abortifacients and contraceptives in their insurance plans starting in 2013. Speaking for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Timothy Dolan roared like a lion in a press statement: “In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.” He asserted "To force American citizens to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their healthcare is literally unconscionable.”
In its first online dispatch on January 20, The New York Times loaded up quotes from liberals and only carried a six-word quote from the bishops lamenting the “unprecedented attack on religious liberty.”
The bishops have protested with an outrage louder than this Catholic has ever heard. For weeks now, the Catholic faithful have heard priests and their bishops pronounce from the pulpit that the Obama administration cannot be obeyed on this intrusive mandate. “We cannot – and will not – comply with this unjust law,” protested Virginia bishops Paul Loverde and Francis DiLorenzo in a letter read in churches on February 5. The Catholic Church is under attack, and it’s sounding like it’s ready for civil disobedience.
Why was everyone so late to this protest? Fox News was the first sign of life we saw on TV, when they mentioned the contraceptive controversy in their March for Life story – for just one sentence – on the January 23 “Special Report.”
It took CBS 10 days to air its first brief new story on the controversy on “CBS This Morning” on January 30, after the bishops’ letters were read in church. CNN arrived on the story that day.
On January 31, Fox News correspondent Ed Henry raised the issue with Obama spokesman Jay Carney, who spewed nonsense about how their policy “strikes the appropriate balance between respecting religious beliefs and increasing access to important preventive services.” After the exchange, anchor Megyn Kelly summarized, “This is turning into a big deal.” But the Big Three networks were asleep for 15 days.
Team Obama’s hostility went even further. On February 3, it was revealed the Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains sent an e-mail to senior Army chaplains advising them not to read Archbishop Timothy Broglio’s hard-hitting letter from the pulpit. In the letter, Broglio insisted "It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle."
John McHugh, Obama’s Secretary of the Army, agreed before Sunday masses that it was a mistake to stop the reading of the Archbishop’s letter, but the line “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law” was removed at McHugh’s suggestion.
Network coverage of this outrage? Zero. But at this point, the networks were all leading their newscasts with the non-story that Planned Parenthood might be denied less than a million dollars for breast cancer screenings.
Journalists claim to be zealots for the First Amendment. But when it comes to the state ordering around the Catholic church – from banning the reading of bishops’ letters and then “compromising” by censoring sentences – sounds like they'd be comfortable with some kind of Potemkin Catholic Church akin to the one in communist China – an official church that bows to the state.
The issue finally broke out on the Sunday morning interview programs on February 5, but only because Newt Gingrich forced the issue onto the agenda in his CBS and NBC appearances. ABC, CNN, and Fox asked about it.
The Obama administration’s hostility to religious liberty isn’t limited to Catholics. Last fall, the Department of Justice filed a brief at the Supreme Court against a Lutheran school’s attempt to fire a teacher. Cheryl Perich had sued under the Americans with Disabilities Act, but the Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church said Perich violated church tenets by bringing her grievance to the federal government rather than appealing to the church to win reinstatement.
Ed Whelan of National Review declared DOJ’s position was “even more hostile” to the Lutherans “than the amicus brief filed by Americans United for Separation of Church and State and the ACLU.”
On January 11, the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 in favor of the Lutherans. In a short stand-up report, NBC’s Pete Williams described it as “easily the most important decision on religious freedom in decades.” But wait -- that's all he said? If it was this historic, was it not worth mentioning the extreme position of the Obama forces?
ABC and CBS aired nothing on that high court decision. These networks don’t have sympathy for, or even an interest in, religious Americans – unless, of course, someone’s protesting a mosque at Ground Zero.
- Brent Bozell's blog
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Comments
Yet many in the Church keep
Submitted by rbosque on Tue, 02/07/2012 - 11:50pm.
Yet many in the Church keep voting D. I for one am sick of this. If we Catholics keep voting for abortion devils like this, then it will be no surprise when the Devil attacks the Church. Only a moron would think otherwise.
Stop voting for these abominations! Vote for life!
⇒ But, rbosque!
Submitted by Cool Arrow on Tue, 02/07/2012 - 11:56pm.
They're only in for a penny.
Cool said, "They're only in for a penny"
Submitted by GW on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 12:22pm.
... or thirty pieces of silver
53% of Catholics voted for
Submitted by Edhenry on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 12:39am.
53% of Catholics voted for O..disgraceful, just disgraceful.
As well as a plurality of
Submitted by MightyMouth on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 1:03am.
As well as a plurality of Jewish voters. I have never understood why American Jews consistently vote against the best interst of Israelis. I think liberalism cuts like a cancer into the hearts of people and they feel they have no choice but to submit to oppression.
I've always said many
Submitted by motherbelt on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 7:32am.
I've always said many American Jews are "liberal first Jewish second." That, I can't explain.
But "Liberal first, Catholic second" I think I can.
I think part of it was the Church's fault. For years, emphasis seems to have been on "social justice" issues, rather than personal morality.
Which, when you think about it, is actually how the Church got caught up in this.
The devil tempts in very attractive ways. The social gospel of "health care" for all is what led the RCC to advocate for Obamacare. Now the Church seeing the "price" to itself of that policy.
It's kind of like a "Wait a minute, that's not what we meant!" moment.
JMO.
And thankfully, she is standing firm.
"be careful what you wish for"
Submitted by vrwc13 on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 9:56am.
It's kind of like a "Wait a minute, that's not what we meant!" moment.
Exactly.
Now maybe the Catholic and the Jewish voters have seen the light (or darkness in this case).
So what voter blocks does the Wizard of Ob have left?
v
The burden of life is from ourselves, its lightness from the grace of Christ and the love of God. - William Bernard Ullanthorne
Two things that caused this disgrace
Submitted by Mary Louise Turner on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 10:45am.
First of all, many Catholics swallowed the media garbage about the economy hook, line and sinker. (Remember, people vote with their wallets or pocketbooks). Second, they were too spellbound by the novelty of the first African-American President to bother checking Ears out...
BHO and the elite media are a
Submitted by d1carter on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 12:32am.
BHO and the elite media are a powerful force in this country. They are determined to "fundamentally change" it. Many non Catholics are up in arms about this. You never know who is the next target of this administration. We cannot survive four more years of this kind of government.
it's just another, in a long line of
Submitted by Willis_Leon_Johnson on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 12:43am.
IMPEACHABLE OFFENSES
Note to boehnor:
Impeachment is a REQUIREMENT of your job description. It is NOT an 'option' or something to use as a 'scare tactic'.
YOU, and every other piece of garbage member of the House of Representatives swore to Protect and Defend the Constitution against ALL enemies, both foreign AND DOMESTIC.
To continue to refuse to live up to your Oath of Office is an act of TREASON in your own right.
End 'gun violence in America' - Require training and MANDATORY "Shall Carry" by every Citizen.
If harry reid is the best person to lead the senate, what does that say about the other 99 senators?
"My RIGHTS are not subject to
Submitted by MightyMouth on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 1:50am.
"My RIGHTS are not subject to the whims of politicians, political appointees or judges. Are yours?"
Well apparently they are my friend. They get away with it every day!
Raised a Catholic, yet my father left the Church
Submitted by David Kramer on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 6:03am.
At the time, I did not know what was going on. I did not know his argument about the Church going from the Latin to English. NOW I know.
I will never return to the Church of my childhood until they expel the marxism that has infiltrated it!
The Catholic Church sold their soul when they embraced the social justice doctrine of the marxists. Individual salvation is the only thing that keeps your soul from going to hell. It does not matter how much you donate to the government, it only matters what you donate to God.
The people that the Church allows to speak for them, like Pelosi, is another reason I will never return until they make public pronouncements. Sorry, excommunication is a component, but when supposed Catholics are allowed to denigrate the Church by declaring that abortion is all right, a line has to be drawn. They are NOT just excommunicated by their own actions, they are now desecrating the Church by their pronouncements.
They are heretics that have to be publicly excommunicated until they renounce their sinful ways.
Read Ann Barnhardt, she is much more eloquent and forceful than I.
The signs are there.
Submitted by oldfart on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 6:21am.
I don’t know about the change from Latin but many found comfort in the Latin mass as something that transcends time and was not subject to the latest wind direction.
The American Catholic Bishops, I think, have been sliding downhill into, as you said, the ‘social justice’ lie. Much like what has happened to the Anglican Communion and the Protestant members of the National Council of Churches.
Not that some changes needed to be made but the fact that people of faith were conned into believing that ‘government’ was the best vehicle to accomplish that change.
Change needs to come from the bottom up, not top down.
Change from the bottom is freedom because it is the expression of the individual soul.
Change from the top is tyranny because it denies the very existence, or necessity of the soul.
ALL people of faith need to reflect on the current direction of this government.
Exactly
Submitted by David Kramer on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 8:44am.
They are distorting the covenant with Jesus.
They are attempting to subvert the meaning of the holy scripture.
I may not know all the covenants, but I know the basic, to go against those is an abomination.
We are NOT collectively saved. We are not a collective soul.
One has to give themselves to the scripture. To attempt to make it a collective salvation will turn the entire scripture on it's ear. Individually we have to ask for salvation. Individually we have to ask for forgiveness of sins. To attempt to change that basic tenet of our faith is to turn from the faith and to ask to buy forgiveness through tenets never mentioned in the gospel.
For he is the way, the only way to salvation. To attempt to subvert that basic teaching is heresy.
David Kramer, your
Submitted by motherbelt on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 7:41am.
David Kramer, your denunciations of the Catholic Church as Marxist are tiresome. As is your preaching about what the RCC has to do to "get you back."
To get me back
Submitted by David Kramer on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 8:29am.
Is to hold to the holy trinity and the original teachings!
I am a Christian, born in the Catholic faith, when the Church allows those like Pelosi to desacrate the Church, you are darn right I will call them out!
If you think I am wrong, good for you. All I know is that to promulgate sin is a sin. To stand against evil is righteous. You can believe what you will. The Church is only as good as the scripture they preach. The Church has been wanton!
Kramer, you missed my point.
Submitted by motherbelt on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 8:56am.
Which is that no one cares what the RCC has to do to get you back.
Why would you tell us? Preaching, as I said. Which is getting tiresome, as I said.
If you want to rail against the Catholic Church, do it on your own blog.
Oh I see
Submitted by David Kramer on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 10:14am.
A column about the Catholic Faith I should not bring up the Catholic Faith.
Are you like Obama or something? You going to restrict the discussion to anything but faith?
What next, you going to tell us Christians that we have to pay for your abortions and sterilization?
Go away, before I taunt you again.
Why do you assume I'm not one
Submitted by motherbelt on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 3:44pm.
Why do you assume I'm not one of "us Christians."
It so happens I was raised a Catholic and I am STILL a Catholic, unlike you.
So don't presume to preach to me about the Catholic Church.
Do you think you sound brave when you say "Go away before I taunt you again"?
I'm not going away any time soon. So get used to me calling you out.
With all do respect, are you
Submitted by Soldat44 on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 8:15am.
With all do respect, are you allowing you feelings about these 'marxists' to trump the Most Blessed Sacrament, the Eucharist?
Could you be more specific
Submitted by David Kramer on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 8:33am.
Are these excommunicated allowed the holy sacrament?
Are people like Pelosi allowed to take holy communion? If so, the Church is no longer the Church.
The holy sacrament is to be given to those that are repentant of sin, not to those that continue to sin.
The Church is the Pope and the embodiment of Christ. If subdivisions of the Church go against the Church, why would I go to them? Why would I devolve to become part of a heresy?
DK, see my reply to you
Submitted by motherbelt on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 8:59am.
DK, see my reply to you above.
This is not the place for your rantings against the RCC.
Holy sacrament
Submitted by oldfart on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 9:00am.
Spot on.
But is supposed to be and what is done are two different things.
Do you really think the Church as the lobes to withhold communion from Pelosi?
The sign of the cross should be made on her forehead and told to go and sin no more.
Why do they vote D?
Submitted by oldfart on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 6:26am.
Too many of them got this undeserved reverence for D from their parents and their own experiences from the 70’s and 80's. I have to hand it to D – they have done an excellent job of propagandizing the public.
My better half was appalled the other day by a conversation she overheard at work. D’s in their 20’s through 40s honestly believe that Nixon was the evil R who got us INTO Vietnam – not the person who got us out. LBJ, according to them had nothing to do with Nam. They refused to believe otherwise, even when she explained that she lived it and laid out the time line for them.
DOPE (Department of Public Education) has done an excellent job of teaching the public WHAT to think – not HOW to think. Even when show timelines that can be found on the internet they refuse to believe anything but the poison that D has put in their minds.
I guess to acknowledge that D has outright LIED to them would cause them to question their entire childhood.
As for the recent actions of Obama
Submitted by David Kramer on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 6:09am.
These are impeachable acts.
He has DIRECTLY abrogated the Constitution. He has broken the covenant between us the citizens and the government. If he thinks he solely can rewrite the Constitution, he is sorely mistaken! The Church, FINALLY has stated that we as a religious people cannot and WILL NOT subject ourselves to the secular beliefs abrogating our religious beliefs.
Therefore, any and ALL mandates from the government are forestalled. Let me remind everyone, the Constitution is the basis of all laws, but the Declaration is our battle cry!
~~~When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.~~~
Keep it up
Submitted by DontFeedTheTrolls on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 7:41am.
Well Obama has written off white Christians and now Catholics, who's next?
DFTT, don't forget the military and their families.
Submitted by UpNorth on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 11:15am.
And, those who don't seek a union's permission to seek and hold a job.
Raised Catholic
Submitted by Fenwick on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 7:41am.
I was raised Roman Catholic, went to a Catholic college (where I was quite aware of rather Leftist leanings among many of the religious faculty) and still identify as a Catholic even though I do not attend Church. When Obama spoke at Notre Dame University it absolutely SICKENED me that, given his ultra-pro-abortion agenda, they awarded him an honorary degree! (Always a staunch Fighting Irish football fan, I now root against them...)
This is a watershed time for the Catholic Church, and I hope it opens some eyes and minds in the upper echelons and in higher education to see how far removed they have strayed from their real faith and the real Catholic faithful.
Can you believe
Submitted by David Kramer on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 8:53am.
that the Church allowed that sick individual to cover the holy articles? They covered religious artifacts because Obama wanted them to. And people think that Obama is Christian? What kind of blindness describes that?
My God, if I lived a thousand years, I would never expect the Church to bow to such heresy! They covered the artifacts of the CHURCH!
COME ON! Please people open your eyes. You are supposed to see the truth, you are not supposed to hide from it!
Another great example of Fascism.
Submitted by Newsbubba on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 7:55am.
Someone needs to call the RBFSOB's government what it is - FASCISM!
Come on, Brent. Step up and be the first commentator in what used to be America to call Obama and his regime what it is.
I know that the heat will fly your way, but there are so many examples of his Fascist actions, from this move against the church, to the GM and Chrysler takeover, to the co-opting of GE and the MSM networks, to the aims of Obamacare as a whole that it is an easily defended charge.
I can't call him an Islamo-Fascist yet, but I'm sure that the day will come when that little plan will begin to emerge. Why not stop him now?
Mr. Bozell
Submitted by gwalt on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 8:31am.
Mr. Bozell,
Huge fan of NB!! thanks for all your hard work and kudos to Noel and everyone else for having to watch this garbage and not us.
The "media" have names and faces. Newt raced to the top of the polls when he went after the moderators personally. We can't stand Lauers, Stepphies, Roses, ET al smugness and condescension. Is there a reason why you don't call them out by name in ads with specifics?
Like this" Mr. Georgie Stepphie---- why haven't you reported Fast and Furious? Holder lied, people died".
If we don't go on offense, we lose. If we go after the "media", it's like going after Jerry Jones in a football game with the Cowboys and not Tony Romo.
NBC is not on the "field" ---- Matt Liar and Brian Liar Wiliams are.
We will donate big to see the players, not the owners, held accountable.
"A lot of briefing for a 2 hr. special with Dan Rather. Saw the show & wonder why we bothered". Ronald Reagan
Good idea gwait
Submitted by CT on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 10:25am.
Hold the players accountable for the words that come out of their mouths.
One last comment in regards to the supposed
Submitted by David Kramer on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 9:08am.
beliefs of one Barrack Hussein Obama. The president was born to a jezebel that was supposedly married to a man that was already married to several women. The man was of the Muslim faith. The mother was of the communist faith, she had no religion. Obama went on to live with his new father that was also a Muslim and was raised in the Indonesian Muslim faith and school. When his mother no longer wanted him, he went to live with his marxist grandparents and then to school to the marxists he sought after. He spent 20 years in his social justice church and black theological pastor.
Please tell me, where in that description did Christianity ever come up? Where did this freak ever learn the golden rule? Where did he ever learn the Christian belief of individual redemption? Where did he ever learn the Constitutional belief of individual responsibility? Where did he EVER learn that hard work, self reliance, anything to do with responsibility have any substantive response?
If you look at history, to elect a narcissistic, compulsive liar and fundamental sociopath is a sign of the degradation of that society. Sometimes it turns completely catastrophic, sometime naught. Clinton was another of the same attributes, do you notice that sick individual will NOT go away. Heck, his VP will not go away and keep his big mouth shut! The Bushes on the other hand, keep to themselves. They go back home and remain silent. Yet you have the psycho Carter, Clinton, Gore and others flying around the globe still attempting to push their beliefs!
I think a few of the countries around the world have a point, why don't these narcissists just SHUT THE HELL UP!?
Obama is clearly out of line
Submitted by PaleHorse on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 10:45am.
Obama is clearly out of line and he may have really screwed himself for the upcoming election, but I find it hard to support the Catholic Church regardless of the current circumstances.
Are we really this quick to forgive an institution that institutionally protected pedophiles, fully supported genocide in Yugoslavia during WW2, and actively helped Nazi war criminals (including Eichmann, Barbie, Pavelic, and thousands of others) to escape from the justice they deserved after the war? The Ratlines were a disgrace of the highest order.
I don't have much respect for an institution with this much evil in their recent history. How are people so quick to forget?
I find it very curious that the Catholic Church takes such a hard-line stance on abortion and contraception in order to protect life, but they so readily supported some of the most horrific mass murders of the past century. The dissonance is staggering.
Catholics
Submitted by stan25 on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 11:36am.
The Roman Catholic Church has been despised, persecuted, and banned from practicing its doctrine since the early 1500s in Great Britain and other places that the British held sway (except maybe Australia where most of the people there are mostly of Irish ancestry) . It has only been the last 100 or so years that the Catholic religion has be an acceptable item in British society. The persecution may not be as overt as it has been in the past, but it is still there. That is where most of the anti-Catholic feeling in this country comes from and it continues to this day. With Barry, the persecution of Christianity comes natural, as he is a closet Muslim.
The media is next on the Obamaites list for a take down. The war on Fox News and Rush LImbaugh is just a warm up to what will be a common occurrence if Barry is given a second term. Then we see the a huge howl from the alphabets condemning their livelihood.
"they came for me ..."
Submitted by Newsbubba on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 11:39am.
Sooner, not later, they will get around to each of us regardless of what our beliefs are.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came…
Obama Must Go
Submitted by DaMama on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 12:45pm.
It's obvious that Obama knows nothing of the Bible or true Christianity by his irresponsible remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast with Ministers last week. He also knows nothing of our nation's history and the importance of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. Obama would do well to read up on the words of our first President:
“While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious not to violate the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men, and to him only in this case they are answerable.”
—George Washington, in a letter to Benedict Arnold, Sep. 14, 1775.
Christians everywhere, regardless if you are Catholic or Protestant, must rise up and fight the Obama administration on this travesty of justice and freedom.
religous freedom
Submitted by Steve Cakouros on Wed, 02/08/2012 - 10:14pm.
The first amendment dealing with religious freedom is of all the amendments the most important.
If the government can take control of what I believe about things that cannot be seen or proven it can then assume that it has the right to take control of everything.
The Communists have always known this. The real enemy of Bolshevism is faith. Lenin said, “Our Program is based entirely on the scientific, and moreover the materialist, world-outlook”.
If Obama is not a Leninist he certainly acts like one.