Healthcare Concerns

Senior officials from eurozone finance ministries and the European Central Bank held a conference call this past weekend to go over the final details of the bailout, including a debt sustainability analysis critical to the International Monetary Fund, or IMF.

For the Greek government, led by technocrat Lucas Papademos, financial aid is needed to meet bond repayments of 18.8 billion U.S. dollars due on March 20.

Papademos flew to Brussels for last-minute preparations as thousands of demonstrators massed in the capital Athens’ central Syntagma square.

Riot police shielded the national assembly. Riots have roiled over the past several months as the Greek populace has been subjected to ever growing austerity cuts that have impacted their quality of life. Buildings were torched and looted across the business district of Athens weeks ago after a much larger rally involving tens of thousands.

In addition, there have been demonstrations in many cities across Europe in solidarity with Greek people who have been hit hard in the wake of massive austerity cuts.

Greek parliament last week passed austerity measures worth $4.3 billion in U.S. dollars that included cuts in pension, salaries and tax increases.

Skepticism remains in Germany and other countries that Greece will be able to live up to its commitments. Germany and The Netherlands still need to get the second bailout passed in their respective parliaments.

“At the moment it appears it will go exactly this way,” Austrian finance Minister Maria Fekter said.

The overall objective is to reduce Greece’s debts from 160 percent of GDP to around 120 per cent by 2020. This is the figure and timeframe that the IMF, ECB and the European Commission, together known as the troika, have established as sustainable.

The IMF has said if the ratio cannot be cut to around 120 percent, it may not be able to help finance the Greek program.

Tim Geithner, the US treasury secretary, has urged the IMF to support the program.

“This is a very strong and very difficult package of reforms, deserving of support of the international community and the IMF,” Geithner said.

As per the deal, Greece will also have around 100 billion euros of debt, with private lenders – banks and insurers – taking a 70 percent reduction in the value of their Greek assets.

© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

Days later the President tried to backtrack with a quasi-compromise that did nothing but increase the level of angry responses.

On Tuesday, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty reported that they were among the over 100 college presidents, academics, religious leaders and journalists who signed a letter, entitled “Unacceptable,” which denounces President Obama’s “accommodation” to the contraception mandate for failing to “remove the assault on religious liberty.”

“The simple fact,” the letter states, “is that the Obama administration is compelling religious people and institutions who are employers to purchase a health insurance contract that provides abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization.

“This is a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand. It is an insult to the intelligence of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other people of faith and conscience to imagine that they will accept an assault on their religious liberty if only it is covered up by a cheap accounting trick.”

This issue is not going to go away any time soon. The President has made it clear that no issues of conscience on the part of the Christian citizenry in the United States is going to stop his assault on the life of the pre-born. His claimed concern about “women’s health” is a subterfuge.

While there are some who have tried to be critical of the Catholic bishops during episode, no group of religious leaders has cried out so powerfully, accurately and for a sustained period of time as our bishops.

In a letter to their brother bishops in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, Cardinal-designate Dolan, USCCB president, along with Cardinals DiNardo and Wuerl joined their voices with Bishops Lori and Blair to continue to call for unrelenting action on the part of the American Church.

“We remain fully committed to the defense of our religious liberty,” they wrote, “and we strongly protest the violation of our freedom of religion that has not been addressed. We continue to work for the repeal of the mandate.

“We have grave reservations that the government is intruding in the definition of who is and who is not a religious employer. Upon further study we are very concerned that serious issues still remain and we have found numerous problems which we will raise in this letter.”

To be honest, my greatest concern is not for our bishops but the cadre of Catholics in the pews who may not take seriously this incredible assault on our religious liberty, moral conscience and health.

Like the proverbial frog in the kettle, many of our brethren may have fallen asleep and on their way to experiencing the death of the freedoms. This is a time when we must cry out with a Scripture that is quoted in the breviary readings for Holy Saturday, “Awake, O sleeper and rise from the dead!”

An Issue of Religious Liberty

Make no mistake of what we are facing. The president and his administration are requiring that people of faith deny their deeply held religious and moral convictions – and violate their conscience – to comply with initiatives imposed by the government.

If this sounds familiar, just look back at sixteenth century England when Henry VIII required Catholics to accept his authority on divorce. What they ended up with was a state church.

This can and will affect more than Catholics. If this can happen in healthcare, it can happen in other places as well, where the government can mandate a policy in contradiction to Christian convictions. Leaders from across Christendom have joined in sounding the alarm.

In the “On Faith” section of the Washington Post, Jordan Sekulow, Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice wrote, “The Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) decision to force religious institutions to provide insurance coverage for abortion pills is nothing short of a war on religious liberty. And President Obama did nothing to change this fact with his latest ‘accommodation.’

“This is not just an assault on life, or even Catholics, it is a direct attack at the heart of religious freedom and free exercise – the very essence of the First Amendment.

“Make no mistake; this regulation is not just about contraceptives. The regulation at issue will …

It may also be a means of preventing a much larger conflict.

The great remaining mystery isn’t the why, but the who. Who was responsible for the killing of Roshan? And who was been behind the killings of three other Iranian scientists? The most likely answer is Israel.

The Israeli government has practiced assassination of high-profile targets since 1948. Israel is a small country, but it has a formidable military. Still, it’s military force is largely defensive in nature. Because Israel is surrounded by potential enemies, overt military action carries substantial political risk. However, the Israelis have long balanced the odds with the effective use of their intelligence services.

Israel’s spy agency, the Mossad, is widely regarded to be the best in the world. And they are very good at assassinations.

There is little question that Roshan’s assassination was a complex undertaking that was carefully and skillfully planned. The assassination itself took mere seconds. As Roshan waited for his chauffeur (and bodyguard) to drive him to work, a masked man on a motorcycle sped between the lanes of traffic to his car. Witnesses report that the assassin looked into the window to verify that Roshan was the passenger. He then attached an explosive device to the vehicle and sped away.

Just nine seconds later, the bomb detonated killing Roshan instantly. His bodyguard died shortly thereafter in a hospital. The assassin was never apprehended.

Iran was quick to blame Israel and the United States for the attack, but the US swiftly disavowed any involvement. While the US is firmly set against Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the government has preferred to use strong sanctions and clandestine observation to stop Iran from developing its nuclear technology.

However, Israel has a history of performing assassinations and the very strong motive to stay the course. The Israelis believe that if Iran should develop a nuclear weapon, they will be the primary target of that country’s anger.

While Iran claims its nuclear ambitions are peaceful, and has enjoyed support from both Russia and China, the Western powers have stated publicly that they will not permit Iran to have a nuclear weapon. It is widely believed that their nuclear research facilities, many of which are built in secret underground locations to withstand attack, are not peaceful at all.

The United Nations has attempted to intervene and continues to monitor Iran’s progress, but inspectors have repeatedly complained that the Iranians have been uncooperative, and that they have not been truthful and forthright in answering the inspectors questions. This leads many to believe that Iran is guilty as charged by the West.

So now the question remains, how long before Iran develops a nuclear weapon, and can the Western powers slow or at least prevent its development?

Sanctions are certainly having an effect on the Iranian economy, but it is unclear whether they are significantly slowing down Iran’s nuclear research program. If evidence should surface that Iran is close to completing a nuclear weapon, Israel, and possibly the United States, will almost certainly conduct a military strike against Iran. Such a strike will lead to war.

So the alternative appears to be a program of assassination. Perhaps, it is hoped, that if Mossad targets enough of the nuclear scientists, they can slow and possibly even stop all meaningful progress towards a nuclear weapon. However, given the patriotic and fundamentalist fervor that still resides at the highest levels of that country’s government, abandonment of the program remains highly unlikely — no matter how many scientists die.

© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM. 

The Lou Nuer tribal army, called the White Army, in reference to the ash the fighters rub onto their bodies, the group issued statements publicizing its planned attack on Pibor and vowing to “wipe out the entire Murle tribe on the face of the earth.”

According to the U.N., the violence has affected at least 120,000 people. Families have lost their homes and their cattle, which are the key to their livelihoods.

The U.N. has launched a huge emergency operation to bring food to those people, many of whom have been living in the bush for weeks, surviving off wild fruits. The U.N.’s World Food Program is using helicopters to deliver food to communities that are inaccessible by road in this isolated region.

Lise Grande, the U.N.’s humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan, told reporters last week in Juba that the estimated number of people in need of aid had doubled and may rise even higher. The U.N. has a contingency plan for 180,000 people, she said.

The number of people killed remains a mystery. The county commissioner has estimated 3,000 people dead. The government quickly dismissed that figure. James Chacha, the Pibor county medical officer, told reporters that about 2,000 were killed.

Neither the government nor the U.N. has released figures of bodies counted so far by their investigators.

“We have also been doing recces (reconnaissance flights) over the areas to look at the numbers of tukuls (homes) burnt and so on but there is no credibility in the total figure here that would lead to a number that can give an indication,” Hilde Johnson, the U.N. Secretary General’s representative to South Sudan reported last week. “It is far too early.”

“We are very worried about the medical needs of the people who are still in the bush,” spokesman Karel Janssens says. “We hear from patients and our staff that there are still many wounded in the bush, but as long as we don’t see their direct medical needs it is difficult to answer to that.”

Whatever the final death toll, it will only add to the already 1,100 people the U.N. says were killed over the past year in fighting between the Murle and Lou Nuer.

© 2012, Catholic Online. Distributed by NEWS CONSORTIUM.

GREENVILLE, SC (Catholic Online) – A few weeks ago a young man we’ll call David dropped in to see me. David has been working with me discerning a vocation to the priesthood, so it was with some interest that I heard him announce that he had acquired a girlfriend.

We discussed the possibilities and expectations and I came to realize that his expectation of marriage and family life was very different from my own. As a fairly new convert, and one who has had little experience of large Catholic families, David had a totally different expectation of what family life would consist of.

It has often been observed that Catholics who have used artificial contraception have  helped cause the vocations crisis because there are simply not enough Catholic boys and girls being born to provide the next generation of priests, brothers, nuns and sisters, but my conversation with David made me realize that the contraceptive culture has affected the vocations question in more subtle and powerful ways.

The first of these is in the Catholic boy or girls’ experience of marriage and family life. Before the sexual revolution a young man or woman from a Catholic family was likely to have grown up in a large, local extended family. He or she would have been part of a network of brothers and sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents and parents who all lived within visiting distance. Within that context of a large family the Catholic boy or girl would have seen first hand the joys and sorrows of family life.

If he felt called to the priesthood or religious life a boy would most likely have entered the local diocesan seminary or entered a religious order with houses in his diocese. A girl would most likely have entered a religious house in her locality. They would have lived the celibate life, therefore, within the larger context of that supportive extended family and Catholic culture. In other words, they would be living within community, not just in their religious order or diocesan presbyterate, but within their own natural extended family.

Artificial contraception changed all that. What is called ’Reproductive freedom’ allowed women to enter the workplace. Families enjoyed a double income. Increasing affluence and fewer children meant the smaller families were more manageable and less dependent on the extended family. As a result the nature of the American family changed.

The large extended family with all its joys and opportunities was replaced with the American ‘nuclear family’ in which one man and one woman exist in isolation in a home in the suburbs with 2.5 children, a dog, a cat and a double income. Increased mobility meant that this nuclear family would exist in the same sort of anonymous suburb anywhere in America.

Suddenly being a priest or brother, nun or sister meant you were also isolated, but isolated without the consolation of spouse and small family. Furthermore, the celibate was naturally cut off from all the cozy support systems that proliferate in American suburban life. The old, localized extended family always had room for the spinster aunt, the cousin who was a religious sister or the uncle who was a priest. Who wants a single person at a dinner party, the PTA or the country club–especially a single religious person?

The second thing which has shifted because of artificial contraception is buried more deeply within the observable societal changes. We have experienced a radical shift in the deeper understanding and expectations of marriage. Before the sexual revolution a young Catholic boy or girl would have experienced a family context in which to be a husband or wife, father or mother demanded a natural kind of self sacrifice.

In most families the man would have worked hard to support a wife and many children, and the woman would have given her life in bringing up a large family. Both the man or woman were expected to lay down their lives in a vocation of self sacrifice, and the Catholic young man or woman would have accepted this model of a self sacrificial vocation within marriage to be the norm.

It was within this context of family life that a girls’ vocation to the religious life or a boys vocation to religious life or priesthood would have been formed. The young person therefore did not question the demand for a life of self sacrifice. It was assumed that the good life was a life of self sacrifice. The question was therefore, which way of self sacrifice is best for me? Dying to self through marriage and family or dying to self through a religious vocation?

Now, because of artificial contraception the whole basic assumptions and expectations about marriage have shifted. Marriage is no longer a way to give all, but a way to have it all. Therefore, when a young person today considers a religious vocation they must are not choosing between different paths of self sacrifice.

They are choosing between a life that seems to have it all and a life that seems to have nothing. The must choose between a home in the suburbs, 2.5 nice children and a double income or total self denial. The choice is between an understandable form of hedonism or a bizarre way of heroism.

Could it be that one of the solutions to the vocations crisis, therefore, is better marriage preparation? At every opportunity in marriage preparation, RCIA and all forms of catechesis, the true understanding of the sacrament of marriage must be explained, expounded and extolled.

In the face of a culture which overwhelmingly assumes that marriage as an opportunity for self fulfillment, we must remember that to be a Christian means we must take up our cross and follow Christ. At every opportunity we must be reminded that the way to happiness is through service to others and we must therefore never forget that marriage is for giving not for getting.

Once young people who are searching for their vocation come to realize that they must decide to either die to self through marriage or die to self through a religious vocation they will not only become far more realistic about marriage, but they will also view the religious life in a more attractive light.
 
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Fr Dwight Longenecker is parish priest of Our Lady of the Rosary Parish and Chaplain to St Joseph’s Catholic School in Greenville, South Carolina. Read his blog and connect to his website at www.dwightlongenecker.com