Dereliction of duty: The Catholic Health Association

UPDATE: An amendment to protect the conscience of patients and health care providers was defeated on April 2 by a vote of 56-41. At long last the Catholic Health Association opts to get in the game. Too little, too late?

One thing that can be said for President Obama, he certainly is making it difficult for the American Catholic Left to maintain its charade of being actually Catholic.

From the battle of Notre Dame, to the Bishop’s being exposed for directing millions in congregational contributions to ACORN, to the dirty little realization that 54% of Catholics voted for a pro-infanticide presidential candidate because social justice peddlers assured them he was “the real pro-life candidate”, the fact that the Church in America is lousy with Marxists using Christianity as a tool to con the unwitting and unsuspecting into buying their Leftist anti-Christianity is becoming plain for all to see.

The latest case in point.

In early March the Obama Administration announced its intentions to rescind the Department of Health and Human Services Provider Conscience Rule. In short, this rule, enacted in December 2008, was an attempt to bolster and clarify laws created in the wake of the Roe v. Wade decision. Forecasting the coming perfect storm of a Democrat majority congress; a recklessly disinterested electorate; and the most pro-abortion president-elect in American history hell bent on health care reform about to take office; the outgoing Bush administration issued the Provider Conscience Rule as a last ditch effort to preserve something of the sovereignty of faith-based health care in America.

Not surprisingly numerous organizations are expressing outrage over Obama’s call to rescind the rule. The Catholic Medical Association , the Heritage Foundation , even the more-often-Lefty-than-not United States Council of Catholic Bishops are aggressively mobilizing grassroots opposition to the move, encouraging one and all to make their objections known via websites such as The Catholic Medical Association’s Freedom 2 Care.org and Heritage’s A Doctor’s Right.com. They note with great urgency the period for public commentary on this decision ends April 9. We certainly join them in their invitation for your participation.

And yet, thus far, one key player remains curiously absent in this battle: the Catholic Health Association (CHA). CHA is, according to its website, the nation's largest group of not-for-profit health care sponsors, systems, and facilities. But, despite CHA’s previous support for passage of the Conscience Rule, little to nothing about its rescission appears on their website other than a dismissive three paragraph statement assuring member health care facilities that it’s nothing at all to worry about and that CHA will handle all commentary to HHS, thank you, no need for you little people to bother yourselves about all this.

Strange. Why the relative lack of concern? Why the distinctly different tone? Many seem to believe that Catholic health care– a reality in America since 1727 – is entering the fight for it’s very survival; not an unreasonable presumption given the Obama administration’s aggressive action and rhetoric regarding abortion legislation, embryonic stem cell research, charitable giving, and increased federal power in health care governance. Now this. And yet the leading advocacy arm of the Church’s health care ministry in America pooh-poohs the issue with a brief dismissive statement?

One reason, perhaps, is that CHA is simply too busy with far more important advocacy efforts such as Climate Change, Islamic Perspectives on addressing cultural and religious diversity in physician relationships, and, of course, government run health care.

Alas, the sticky wicket! The Conscience Rule rescission decision was announced literally during President Obama’s sham forum on health reform. Yet, Sister Carol Keehan, president and chief executive officer of CHA who attended the event, mentions not a word of the issue in her review of the forum. There is instead only glowing appraisal of Mr. Obama’s commitment to making Clintonian health care reform the law of the land.

It would seem objecting to Mr. Obama’s aggressive pro-abortion agenda at this juncture would prove injurious to the progress CHA has made in advancing its primary advocacy objective: government run health care.

What does government run health care have to do with Catholicism? As much as climate change, social justice and multi-culturalism; which is to say, nothing. In fact, each of these courses necessarily lead to the antithesis of compassion and the protection of the dignity and well-being of each individual created in the image and likeness of God: the stated mission of Catholic health care.

It is the unstated mission of CHA and other Catholic Left organizations, however, which are at last coming to light.

So long as there remained in Washington a Conservative foothold ensuring authentic Judeo-Christian values were at play in the brawl of policy-making, the Catholic Left could safely indulge in its social justice fantasies and Marxist vagaries, knowing it would never be held publicly accountable for reconciling its rhetoric with Church doctrine and the teachings of Christ. But that foothold has broken loose. The fantasies and vagaries are being signed into law. It is time for the Catholic Left to reveal where its true allegiances lie.

And at this crucial moment, in the very battle one would presume it was created to lead, the Catholic Health Association has courageously opted to avoid the issue altogether. Most revealing indeed.


Cheers,

Charlie

The Free World’s Last Stand? Copenhagen, December 2009

“When the Founding Fathers of this great nation met in that hot summer long ago in the City of Brotherly Love to craft the noble Constitution of the United States, they were building their great nation upon the solid foundation of your Declaration of Independence. Independence! This winter, if the United States signs up to the Treaty of Copenhagen, her independence--and our freedom--will be gone forever. If Thomas Jefferson were alive today, he would be turning in his grave.”

- Lord Christopher Monckton, at the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change, March 10, 2009, New York City.

Our dear friend, Lord Christopher Monckton, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, former Special Advisor to Lady Thatcher, now Chief Policy Advisor for the Science and Public Policy Institute, and royal pain in Al Gore’s arse, has been rather out and about lately exposing the fatal fraud that is global warming.

Most recently he gave an outstanding presentation at The Heritage Foundation which we highly recommend you view by clicking here. (You’ll need to wade through a bit of introductory yib-yab.)

Also highly recommended is Lord Monckton’s keynote address from the Second International Conference on Climate Change sponsored by The Heartland Institute, March 8-10, 2009, referenced above. You can view that by clicking here. (Ditto on the yib-yab.)

Central to Lord Monckton’s immensely informative and highly entertaining presentations is his warning of the coming Copenhagen Climate Conference in December of this year.
We intend to focus much of our attention on this affair and heartily advise liberty lovers the world over do likewise.

Lord Monckton warns, “the chattering classes are going to use this (global warming) scare as a pretext for taking certain fundamental actions … which will forever take away the independence and freedom of the United States. And if your freedom and independence go, then so will ours. It very much matters to us that you should remain independent and free. For if you do not, we will not, and the world will not.”

We take Lord Monckton at his word. The free world stands at present one foot in the grave. Let not Copenhagen 2009 prove its burial ground!

Cheers,

Charlie

Our Interview with Churchill’s Bust

Churchill’s Parrot: Charlie, Churchill’s Parrot here, honored with the opportunity to sit down with the first of likely many casualties of the Obama administration, Churchill’s Bust. Mr. Bust how are you this evening?

Churchill’s Bust: Smashing Charlie couldn’t be better. And you?

Churchill’s Parrot: Suffice to say we’ve seen better days. Mr. Bust, you’re expulsion from the Oval Office has made you quite the celebrity of late. We’ve all heard much about the affair. What’s your take?

Churchill’s Bust: Well speaking for myself, Charlie, I must tell you that it is an extraordinary relief.

Churchill’s Parrot: Relief? How so?

Churchill’s Bust: To sit frozen upon a mantel overseeing daily the dismantlement of the world’s economic engine, the disarmament of the last best hope of mankind, the appeasement of tin-horn dictators and noxious regimes, the impudence - intentional and unintentional - toward that heretofore esteemed sacred in the American ethos … it’s enough to make even a lifeless hunk of bronze blow chunks.

Churchill’s Parrot: Not to mention the out and out disrespect this action demonstrates toward the British people and the Special Relationship.

Churchill’s Bust: That, we must say, we find rather amusing. For the nearly eight years I resided in the Oval Office, the British press and people unreservedly declared the popularly elected President of the United States a war-monger, a Nazi, a genocidal murderer, a racist, a homophobe, a diabolical genius, a wrist-dragging chuck-head, the free world’s greatest enemy, a coward of the lowest order, and a man worthy of beheading under Islamic law. A curious disposition for those interested in maintaining a relationship one might categorize as “special” don’t you think? But, alas, now they cry foul. Bullocks.

Churchill’s Parrot: How do you think the next chapter of the Special Relationship will read?

Churchill’s Bust: Regarding those aspects Mr. Churchill delineated in his great clarion call for Anglo-American brotherhood in 1943 at Harvard – “law, language, literature, common conceptions of what is right and decent, a marked regard for fair play, a stern sentiment of impartial justice, and above all the love of personal freedom, always ready to spring at the throat of tyranny, marching shoulder to shoulder on the fields of war and in those realms of thought which are consecrated to the rights and the dignity of man” – well you can forget all that. Neither Britain nor America is home to sufficient numbers who consider all this anything other than anachronistic bilge, if they consider it all. Too few are interested in bearing the responsibility that comes with the greatness given them by their forefathers.

In terms of a union of international socialist states, marching shoulder to shoulder toward a Marxist global utopia, however, I see the two nations getting along quite swimmingly. Until , of course, China makes the world its bitch.

Churchill’s Parrot: That’s the non-sequitur about Obama’s apparent attitude toward Britain and Gordon Brown; they’re all Lefties aren’t they?

Churchill’s Bust: Indeed. But remember that Mr. Obama is pose incarnate. As such he understands quite well that destroying the symbolism of the old order is essential to the vitality of the new order. Ousting me and treating Britain as he might any two-bit republic is his message to the Left that he is serious about doing so. It is also his way of showing them who is going to be boss in this new arrangement: not America, as such, but Obama.

Churchill’s Parrot: You mentioned China previously. How will they fit into this new arrangement?

Churchill’s Bust: They will not fit into it. They will own it. They’re merely letting these pubescent would-be commies do the demolition work for them. China has more than enough might and disdain for the West to seize the global mantle. And the United States is the easy – and not entirely innocent – target of animosity over the current economic depression. Once the 60’s radicals and their disciples establish a good thriving anarchy throughout the free world, the Chi-Coms will move in to save the day with their unique brand of peace and justice.

Churchill’s Parrot: Bit of a dismal outlook you are providing us here. Anything positive on the horizon?

Churchill’s Bust: But of course. The lone voice of sanity in the last seventy years has been that of the Conservatives. In Britain and America, via insidious Leftism in our schools, culture, and churches, that voice has been increasingly marginalized to the point of being utterly incomprehensible to the masses. Yet today, in small pockets here and there, we are witnessing a visceral reawakening to the fundamentals of Liberty that Conservatives have always held sacred: a clear understanding of the essentiality of limited government to human dignity, the recognition of individual liberty as a gift from God that requires responsibility on the part of the recipient, an appreciation of the practical and moral superiority of free market principles over all other economic models, the knowledge that national defense is the first and foremost duty of any legitimate government, and the understanding that Judeo-Christian values are the precious soil from which the incomparable garden of Western Civilization has sprung.

In a perverse sense we have Obama to thank for this reawakening. For it is a universal truth that human beings do not fully appreciate what they have until they have lost it. Many are coming to the realization that they have lost it.

Churchill’s Parrot: Any chance they’ll get it back?

Churchill’s Bust: In the next millennia or so? Not bloody likely. But cheer up old chum. You and I, as British parrot and bust, are quite accustomed to being encased and shelved, helplessly watching as socialism eats out the marrow of our beloved realm. Let’s see how the Americans like it?

Churchill’s Parrot: Brandy or Scotch?

Churchill’s Bust: Scotch, thank you, and let’s not be timid about it.

Useful Idiots Begin to Bristle at Own Idiocy

Under the "well DUH" category -

Christians Optimistic But Disappointed in Obama
Christians point out that Obama is, after all, a Democrat and supporter of keeping abortion legal -- and he has promised to proceed with caution on stem cells.

We believe that when Christ advised we be as sheep, he intended that we follow Him and not every happy-talking Tom, Dick, and Barry.

Cheers,

Charlie