Tag Archives: Catholic

News

Fascism: Canadian Supreme Court overturns right to religious liberty

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Map of Canadian Provinces
Map of Canadian Provinces

UPDATE: Please vote “no” in this poll if you think tthat the Supreme Court is wrong.

Life Site News announces the death of religious liberty in Canada.

Excerpt:

In what’s sure to come down as a devastating blow to parental freedom, the Supreme Court of Canada unanimously rejected this morning the pleas of a Christian family to have their child exempted from the Quebec government’s mandatory ethics and religious culture course.

“Exposing children to a comprehensive presentation of various religions without forcing the children to join them does not constitute an indoctrination of students that would infringe the freedom of religion of L and J,” the justices wrote in the majority decision.

The high court’s ruling, released at 9:45 Friday morning, comes in the case of S.L. et al. v. Commission scolare des Chênes et al., which involved a Catholic family who took their school board to court after it refused to grant their child an exemption from the province’s controversial ethics and religious culture course (ERC).

The course, which seeks to present the spectrum of world religions and lifestyle choices from a “neutral” stance, was introduced by the province in 2008 and has been widely criticized by the religious and a-religious alike. Moral conservatives and people of faith have criticized its relativistic approach to moral issues, teaching even at the earliest grades, for instance, that homosexuality is a normal choice for family life.

Despite provincial legislation allowing for exemptions from school curriculum, the Ministry of Education has turned down over 1,700 requests, and had even moved to impose the course on private schools and homeschoolers.

Critics warned that a ruling against the family would have frightening consequences for parental authority and risked emboldening provincial governments across the country as they move to impose their own versions of “diversity” education.

To me, what this means is that in Canada, the state decides what children will believe, not the parents. The state will tax parents in order to pay for government workers and government programs. And the state will use these government entities to make the children believe in the state’s values.

What is ironic to me is that Canadians likely voted to grow government. There are a lot of people in Canada who think that it is a good thing for government to help the poor. Many, many economically illiterate Christians also voted to grow the size of government over the last few decades. They voted to empty their own pockets by raising tax rates. They voted to entrust secular leftist bureaucrats with more and more power. They voted to let the state educate their children with public schools and government-run day care. They voted to let government provide health care instead of letting individuals earn and save to pay for it themselves. They voted for taxes that are so high that women cannot afford to stay at home and homeschool their children – they have to work and hand their children off to strangers.

It is very important for Christians to understand that if they believe that it is government’s job to redistribute wealth from rich to poor, then they voted for this. If you believe in “social justice” then you are opposed to religious liberty – and the free practice of Christianity itself. Many, many Christians who don’t study economics and don’t get their economic views from the Bible think that it is a good thing to vote for bigger and bigger government funded by higher and higher taxes. Christians in Canada seem to be proud of their self-inflicted secularism. They think that taxpayer-funded abortions and taxpayer-funded sex changes are a great idea – because “health care is a right”.  They think that taxpayer-funded abortion and taxpayer-funded sex changes are authentic Christianity, supported by the Bible.

I have had Christians in Ontario tell me on Facebook that they are pro-life, pro-marriage and pro-family but that they favor allowing a secular government to force all taxpayers to pay for abortions and sex changes. That is what Canadian Christianity amounts to, in many cases – because they don’t understand economics, and what economic policies promote and secure rights – including the right to religious liberty. The right to religious liberty is only guaranteed when government is limited and the free enterprise system is strong. We need to stop deciding our views of politics and economics based on feelings and peer pressure and the desire to appear “compassionate”. We need to ask what the Bible says, and study economics in order to find out what guarantees the liberty we need to live out authentic Christian lives.

I think it’s time for Christians in Canada to get serious about applying the Bible to all of life – including economics.

News

Democrat Barbara Boxer: right to be insured trumps religious liberty

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From the Washington Examiner.

Excerpt:

Senator Boxer warned yesterday that if the HHS contraception mandate was repealed it would set a dangerous precedence of religious rights trumping the right to be insured.

On MSNBC’s Politics Nation with Al Sharpton last night, Boxer affirmed that under the proposed amendment proposed by Sen. Roy Blunt, an employer would not be forced by the government to pay for medical practices against his religion.

“I mean, are they serious? Sharpton exclaimed, “How do you make a law where an employer can decide his own religious beliefs violate your right to be insured?”

“Oh absolutely,” Boxer said, “Let’s use an example, let’s say somebody believes that medicine doesn’t cure anybody of a disease but prayer does and then they decide no medicine.

“No medicine!” she exclaimed, “Under the Blunt amendment, they could do just that.”

Senator Harry Reid announced yesterday that he would allow a vote on the Blunt Amendment. The vote allows Senate Democrats such as Robert Casey of Pennsylvania, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia to register a protest vote against the HHS contraception mandate.

Fascism is the ideology that states that the worldview of the government, especially on questions of religion, morality and meaning, should be pushed down onto individuals by force. The Democrat elites, including Obama, are pro-abortion. And now, they want to force you to be pro-abortion, too – by forcing you to subsidize the abortions of others, even if you have a conscientious objection based on your religion. Your money isn’t your money – it’s Obama’s money. You just earn it. But Obama spends it. And if he spends in subsidizing abortion, and you don’t like it, then tough luck for you. That’s how secular leftist Democrats think.

Podcasts

William Lane Craig discusses recent challenges to religious liberty

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Listening to William Lane Craig talk about current events and its relevance to theological and ethical concerns makes me very happy. I have 3 of his commentaries below, but if you have been following my blog, you know about all three of them already. Still, it’s great to hear a philosopher and theologian way in on practical issues. I like it as much as when Wayne Grudem does it. I never, ever get tired of hearing Christian pastors and scholars talk about practical things.

I think that all of you who are suspicious of my efforts to link Christianity to other issues should listen to these podcasts.

Here’s the MP3 file from the first lecture on religious liberty, dated January 22, 2012. (14 MB | 6:17 min)

Topics:

  • The issue is whether churches should be allowed to be exempt from hiring restrictions
  • The Supreme Court ruling saying that the state cannot intervene in church hiring decisions
  • The Obama administration tried to erase the religious liberty protections for churches
  • The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the Texas sonogram law
  • The importance of an incremental pro-life approach

Here’s the MP3 file from the second lecture, dated January 29th, 2012. Get MP3 (21 MB | 9:10 min)

Topics:

  • The issue is whether Catholic organizations should be forced to cover abortion drugs
  • The state is attempting to mandate what religious organizations must pay for
  • The mandate would force churches to pay for abortion drugs: Ella and Plan “B”
  • The issue is not contraception, which some Christians may support
  • The issue is an issue of religious liberty and government control

Here’s the MP3 file from the third lecture, dated February 10th, 2012. (43 MB | 18:59 min)

Topics:

  • Obama’s “compromise”: making the insurance companies pay for abortion drugs
  • Does the compromise really resolve the religious liberty issue?
  • Many Catholic institutions have Catholic insurance companies
  • Many faith-based organizations self-insure by pooling employee resources
  • The compromise would require these groups to cover abortion drugs
  • Another issue is the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling against Prop 8
  • Did Prop 8 really take rights away from gays and lesbians?
  • No – Prop 8 defined heterosexual marriage as valid or recognized
  • Prop 8 doesn’t even mention gays and lesbians
  • Prop 8 says straights and gays have the same right to marry someone of the opposite sex
  • Prop 8 says nothing about a person’s sexual orientation
  • This attempt to push for same-sex marriage is an attempt to deconstruct marriage
  • It is important to think of issues like this before voting
  • Christians should care about politics and follow politics
  • Christians who don’t know politics are “naive” and “have their head in the sand”
  • The two judges in this decision were appointed by Democrats: Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton

I think this is good because I’m sure that a bunch of you think that Bill only ever talks about apologetics. But actually, he is very good about being practical about his faith. He does try to think through how current events, laws and policies affect the theological and moral positions of the Christian faith. I just recently e-mailed him about Rick Santorum’s comments about how the Catholic church supported Obamacare, and then how it later caused problems for their religious liberty. So there is a case where top-down control of the private sector created a situation where religious liberty was negatively impacted… exactly as predicted by F.A. Hayek in “The Road to Serfdom”.