It’s not just the Catholics that have opposed HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for her new contraceptive mandate on religiously affiliated schools and hospitals through Obamacare. The Jewish news site JTA.org reported that two Orthodox Jewish groups have protested the decision.
Nathan Diament, executive director of public policy for the Orthodox Union, was even a member of President Obama’s advisory council on faith-based and neighborhood partnerships. He tweeted “Does HHS ann. re #religious inst.s & contraceptn insurance match up w/ #Obama at Notre Dame '09 ?” He linked to the video, in which Obama insisted “we must find a way to reconcile our ever-shrinking world with its ever-growing diversity -- diversity of thought, diversity of culture, and diversity of belief.”
And: “Let’s honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women."
And: “Father Hesburgh has long spoken of this institution as both a lighthouse and a crossroads. A lighthouse that stands apart, shining with the wisdom of the Catholic tradition, while the crossroads is where ‘differences of culture and religion and conviction can co-exist with friendship, civility, hospitality, and especially love.’”
Someone in the Obama administration placed the lighthouse in the middle of perilous crossroads.
In a statement Diament said the “most troubling” aspect of the decision was the Obama administration’s “underlying rationale for its decision, which appears to be a view that if a religious entity is not insular, but engaged with broader society, it loses its 'religious' character and liberties.”
Rabbi Abba Cohen, Agudath Israel’s vice president for federal government affairs and Washington director, said that the decision “only muddied the waters and took a step backwards by imposing religiously objectionable mandates on religious entities and by devising an astoundingly counterproductive limitation on what 'religious groups' are and what their public mission in society should be.”
