underground. At first I laughed at that! I thought there is no way that will ever happen in this country! However, due to recent laws and practices I am beginning to think that Cardinal George may not be so crazy.This month the federal government issued a mandate that every employer is required to offer in their health plan to employees certain contraceptive, sterilization, and abortion drugs. This mandate goes into effect August of 2012 or as soon as the insurance is renewed (normally January 1). For religious institutions the government has been “generous” enough to allow us a suspension until August 2013. Thanks be to God that individual Churches and whole Diocese are exempt from this mandate but hospitals and universities are not. Besides the fact that this mandate is a HORRIBLE idea it is even worse that religious institutions are being forced to cooperate with it even though it goes completely against our moral conscience. This does not only effect Catholic institutions but a number of other religions such as the Jews and other Christian denominations. This is how the government is slowly taking away our religious liberty. First, our tax dollars are funding abortions, now our hospitals and universities have to give out immoral drugs to employees, what’s next? Are we going to be seen as a non-equal opportunity employer because woman can’t be priests and be forced to ordain them? Are we going to have to offer students in our schools and universities contraceptive drugs and condoms? Will the Church be forced to marry same sex couples? I have no idea what our government is going to try next but we are going to be in a lot of trouble when they do.
You may be asking yourself the same question I did a couple months ago: “What will it take to make the Church in the USA go underground?” Well, let’s say any of the above does happen. The Church cannot do any of those things because it goes directly against what the church teaches. Because we are going against the law we will lose our tax-exempt status and our Church leaders, the Bishops, will probably be arrested. After that who knows what could happen. Sunday mass could be seen as an illegal protest of some sort and be shut down, because all the Bishops are in jail and Diocese have lost their “business” status in the country actual Parishes will probably be shut down, and who knows what else could happen. It really is scary to think about. My brothers and I are particularly scared because we will have to be the ones with solutions to these problems. We will have to stand up for Mother Church and protect her against the wickedness of the men running our government.
So, how can we prevent this? I wish I had a good answer. One way to start is by electing officials that will stand up for religious lib
erties and protect them. We all have rights in this country! Just because we separate Church from State does not mean Church can’t have a voice in State decisions! We are all supposed to be equal in the country! So let’s vote in candidates that will stand up for religious liberties! Write to your senators and congressmen letting them know how important your religious liberties are to you! We also need to spread this news around to all our brothers and sisters! It is my fear that no one will realize these injustices until it is too late. We need to let everyone know what is at stake in this country right now. The last, and most important thing, we can do is pray. Pray that the Lord looks upon our government leaders and that the Holy Spirit may descend upon them to lead this country in a just way keeping in mind that all people have liberties and all are equal and should be treated with respect from conception to natural death! As always, pray for the intercession and protection of our Blessed Mother.
