Local News
Letters To The Editor
Published: February 16, 2012
Stand Firm Now On Religious Rights
To the Editor:
As we assess the impact of the recent HHS ruling concerning mandatory reproductive and anti-reproductive services, let us not forget our history with such rulings in the past.
Thirty years ago the government decreed that if a hospital delivered babies, it also had to be prepared to end their lives before they were allowed to be born. All Catholic hospitals were forced to drop obstetrics as a result. Using the same bureaucratic “logic” now, if they provide gynecological services will they not eventually have to provide “gender-reassignment” procedures as well? If they provide services which artificially sustain life, might they not be required to provide services that artificially end life?
Before these demands were based on receiving federal funding. Now they are based on simply being in business.
We didn’t draw the line on obstetrics and gave up providing a service that is precious to us. (And, by the way, no matter which party has held the White House or a majority in Congress has made any real effort to overturn this policy.) Are we prepared to use every means available to us now, including going into the streets if necessary, to defy and eliminate this or any unjust and unwarranted attack on our religious and civil rights? If not now, then when? And, when will it be too late?
Msgr. Terry W. Young
McDonough
Definition Tries To Make Catholic Facilities Secular
To the Editor:
Thank you, Archbishop Gregory for speaking out against the injustice by the Obama administration and Health and Human Services to require that Catholic institutions provide employee health insurance coverage for contraceptives and sterilization.
There has been a state-by-state effort to force Catholic hospitals to provide services contrary to Catholic teaching because legal cases tried in the courts have decided to use the language of the American Civil Liberties Union to define “religious employers” as having each of these characteristics: the inculcation of religious values is the purpose of the entity; the entity primarily employs persons who share the religious values of the entity; and the entity serves primarily persons who share the religious tenets of the entity.
This then excludes Catholic hospitals, dioceses and other Catholic charitable organizations from this exemption because they hire non-Catholics and treat or work with non-Catholics.
Therefore, these legislative mandates treat them as secular institutions, causing them to provide services opposed to Catholic teaching. The next step will be to include abortion and euthanasia and to force Catholic doctors to violate their consciences, also. Our religious liberties are being taken away as a new set of “reproductive rights” is created that, in fact, hurts women, children and marriage.
Kathleen M. Raviele, M.D.
Tucker
Church Needs To Use Spiritual Weapons
To the Editor:
This Sunday, Jan. 29, all parishes in the Archdiocese of Atlanta heard the letter written by our Archbishop, Wilton D. Gregory, in response to last week’s HHS decision regarding health care providers. Our archbishop brought to our immediate attention that the consequences of the HHS decision are immoral by forcing contraceptive and abortive practices upon all U.S. residents, despite moral and religious objections. This is a violation of the U.S. Constitution, as well as a violation of natural law and the laws of God, upon which this country was founded.
I wish to mention three sources giving us spiritual weapons to engage in this spiritual battle. …
The Blessed Virgin Mary has repeatedly appeared from heaven, exhorting her children to pray the rosary and fast, because as Jesus tells us, “some (spirits) are cast out only by prayer and fasting.” Now some of our bishops are calling us to repentance and to fast. … Pope Leo Xlll, at the turn of the 18th century, collapsed when given a vision of the future. He then immediately composed the deliverance prayer, which includes the familiar prayer to St. Michael the Archangel. The St. Michael prayer was part of the “Leonine Prayers,” which were said always at the conclusion of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The other prayers include three Hail Marys, the Hail Holy Queen, and three “O Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us.” …
Instead of trying to take matters into our own hands, we must turn completely to our God, his holy angels, to the Communion of Saints and to our Blessed Lady.
Let us begin with increased knowledge of our Lady and her rosary and comply with requests for the daily prayer of the rosary, the entire rosary, and for the prayer of the family rosary. Let us also offer the prayer to St. Michael, champion over demons, for the protection of our souls. … Let us pray for our bishops and priests, that they may lead us courageously in the fight for life, especially by their joyous conformity as Alter Christus at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass and in the administration of the sacraments of Holy Mother Church.
Diane Guesman
Alliance of the Two Hearts, Southeast Coordinator
