POINTING THE FINGER AT GOVERNMENT HEALTH PLANNERS

The fever pitch of healthcare moral indignation rises once again on the national scene.  [Seems to occur most often when there is a national election power struggle.]  This time pharmacy plan regulations are the culprit.  They would require some measure of employer support for free contraceptive coverage availability for their employees, even if the employer morally objects to contraceptives.  Freedom of religion under attack?  There is some truth to the claim—employers forced to maintain coverage for medical care they disagree with.  Yet fundamentally even those of us opposed to the anti-life aspects of our health care are part of this problem. 

Almost all of us have had employer based health insurance, most of it from private insurance companies, sometime in our lives.  All of these national private companies offer abortion and contraceptives as part of their health business services.  They all offer this coverage in some of their packages.  You may not have abortion in your plan, but you are part of a system of your pooled health company funds that pays for abortion, and contraceptives. This is true for those with religious employers as well as secular ones.

ome states now ban private companies from covering abortion [8 states for all private companies, another 9 for any who’ll participate in the new state health exchanges--Michigan has neither of these bans in place].  But it is the federal government that has banned [Hyde Amendment] regular abortion coverage from all their health plans--Medicaid, Medicare, and public employees.  States can countermand this by offering their own abortion payment for Medicaid recipients.  Michigan does not do this.  

What I’m saying here is that subtleties of health coverage cloud the fact that a great many of us participate in medical practices we believe are wrong.  We invest our healthcare dollars through our employers in private insurance companies that violate our principles.  The insurers have a business model to follow.  When I called the Michigan Catholic Conference a few years ago, they couldn’t recommend any private health insurance company that they were certain did not include abortions {much less contraceptives which are widely available} in their coverage.  They are in the forefront in campaigns to respect life.  Their employees have BCBS of Michigan health insurance, as I’ve had with 2 previous employers.  BCBS of MI, as all the other private insurers, pays for abortion & contraceptives within its scope of available client services.   Authorities and political activists point their fingers at the federal government, but it is mostly private health insurers, and some state governments, that provide the abortion coverage.  Contraceptives are widely available in private & government plans, and subsidized by local health departments across the nation.

It is almost impossible not to compromise one’s principles in our society.  One can live without medical insurance, as I’ve done this past 3 years, depending on our own Health Services Account set up at a local bank.  Medicare, which doesn’t pay for abortion, will start for me this year.  But for most of my working life my private medical insurance companies have contributed materially, substantively, to the evil of a violent anti-life act I oppose.  {The justified violence of war, and the federal income tax that pays for it through my employers, has put me in the same position.}

Health-Care-Debate-Congress---by Jennifer Kohnke

With this in mind, the current dispute over how directly or indirectly a government payment for contraceptives may involve a religious employer is superficial.   Nuanced controversy that points fingers does not help.  We are most all of us compromised in our tolerance of anti-life violence.  Yet our churches’ moral positions are converted into a political football—red vs. blue.  What needs to be done is the creation of a national private health insurance, faith based, that addresses and meets our moral standards.  None now exists.

regnancy Care Centers have arisen to promote the responsible biblical sexuality which truly can reverse society’s dependence on contraceptives and abortion.  The evangelical staff I’ve met in volunteering at a center are full of prayer, concern and compassion for the people that come in with unplanned pregnancies.  They offer help, and not judgment, for those they serve.  We need more of this.

We live in a society that accepts violent death as a way of life.  We try to keep the executioners remote, at inconspicuous abortion clinics, and on foreign battlefields.  But the killing is accepted as unavoidable and necessary to maintain our way of life in the worldly kingdom where the opportunity for wealth and convenience must remain unthreatened and unencumbered.

In the United States our private insurance company and state government health care dollars do pay for abortions.  Our income taxes do pay for innocent death in foreign lands.  We need to remedy both lethal maladies.  God’s healing power can give us the courage to vanquish this culture of death.  We must replace murder with mercy on all fronts.

“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.”  Jn 8:7

All of us, especially middle-aged men, politicians, and clergymen, should pay heed to this remonstrance from Our Lord and Savior.  There is abundant need for God’s mercy for all who buy into a society that promotes lust, greed, bombs and bullets.

The Annunciation by Fra Angelico--Today is the feastday--an unwed mother is the Mother of God.

Illuminations by Kathy Brahney

TODAY = UNJUST WAR REMEMBRANCE DAY—A MODEST PROPOSAL & PRAYER—FOR CONVERSION

            From War to Peace, from Death to Life.  One must first admit grave error, as in the Iraq War, before one can correct it, and cooperate in the redemption of our war wearied world.   To help us receive this grace here is a prayer Fr. E. C. McCarthy has offered for this season.

LENTEN PRAYER OF PETITION

FOR THE RETURN OF ALL CHURCHES TO

THE TRUTH OF THE NONVIOLENT JESUS

AND HIS WAY OF NONVIOLENT LOVE

bba, in the name of Jesus

we ask you to send the Holy Spirit

to gather the Churches together,

so that with one mind, one heart and one voice,

they may proclaim as God’s Way

Jesus’ Way of Nonviolent Love of all people—friends and enemies—

and thereby teach that

            violence and enmity are not God’s Way

violence and enmity  are not the Christian Way,

violence and enmity are not the Holy Way,

violence and enmity are not the Catholic Way,

violence and enmity  are not the Apostolic Way,

violence and enmity are inot the Way of Jesus,

and thus set Christians free forever

from  bondage to the

unholy, uncatholic, unapostolic, unChrist-like

ways of the counterfeit gods and philosophies justifying

war, capital punishment and abortion.

.

We plead this grace so that

the Nonviolent Lamb

may be our Lord in deed,

as well as in word and sacrament.

We request this gift

so that the Christian Community

may be for afflicted humanity

a faithful witness

to Jesus’ Way of conquering evil.

We implore this healing

so that the Church may be

an authentic extension in time and space

of the Way of the Lamb of God,

of the Way of the Nonviolent Jesus

which is the Way

to renew the face of the earth. Amen.

UR LAMB HAS CONQUERED; LET US FOLLOW.

By Fr. Emanuel Charles McCarthy

****************************************************

AGAIN - Please consider copying and sending the proposed resolution below to your state & national legislators, and request that they submit it to become law. Also bring it to your church local & national assemblies for enactment as a faith declaration.  Be patient and persistent, hoping for some action on this in time for next March 19^th.  Thank you.

Resolution for "Unjust War Remembrance Day" March 19^th

· Whereas the United States entered into a war with Iraq on Mar 19, 2003 with no credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction, or imminent threat to our nation.
· Whereas the leaders of our nation and the national media rushed to war without due consideration and for reasons that remain to be clearly stated or investigated.
· Whereas the citizens of our nation, even those opposed to this war, by and large acquiesced to this war’s prosecution.
· Whereas hundreds of thousands of Iraq civilians, thousands of our soldiers, and a probable tens of thousands of Iraqi insurgents died in this war. Many more than all these dead were the severely wounded casualties of this war.
· Whereas Iraqi infrastructure and economy has been decimated, and our own economy has been definitively damaged by this unnecessary war.
· Whereas this Iraq war did not meet the moral standards required of the just war theory.
· Whereas many prominent religious leaders call us to reject just war theory as impossible in modern warfare, and urge a much deeper faith respecting all human life.

Be it resolved to declare March 19 a national holiday of reflection, Unjust War Remembrance Day, in which everyone should work and pray to develop projects and strategies on local, national, and international levels that resolve conflicts between nations and peoples effectively without resorting to the organized overwhelming violence of war.

Be it resolved also that this resolution, in some form particular to each nation, should be adopted by the United Nations, as every nation has some time in the history of their peoples participated in unjust war.

**********************************************

St. Joseph the Worker, turn our hands from weapons of war to creative endeavor.

Violence does not build up the kingdom of God, the kingdom of humanity. On the contrary it is the favorite instrument of the Antichrist, however idealistic its religious motivation may be.   p. 15

The Cross is and remains the sign of “the Son of Man”: ultimately, in the battle against lies and violence, truth and love have no other weapons than the witness of suffering. p.49                                   f                                                                                                                                                                                                   
From “Jesus of Nazareth” by Pope Benedict XVI


Illuminations by Kathy Brahney

FOURTH ANNUAL APPEAL--FOR DECLARATION OF "UNJUST WAR REMEMBRANCE DAY"

"Shock & Awe" Baghdad --  March 19, 2003

March 19^th “Unjust War Remembrance Day.”  When we invaded Iraq, March 19, 2003, with the slimmest possibility of finding even one nuclear weapon [when Israeli neighbors have hundreds, and we thousands], we tried to change our national moral justification of war, from defensive move of last resort, to preemptive war—a war of convenience, for perceived benefits.   The people of the United States and the people of Iraq will be paying for this for years to come.  It will be redeeming to our true national interest, if we as the world’s single superpower & most prolific arms dealer, declare that the Iraq War was our wrongdoing, and that all war is anti-life, disastrously futile---counter to Christian and many other faiths.

"Father forgive them they know not what they do."  Lk 23:34

 On right: Father forgive us we know not what we do--Torture at Abu-Ghraib U.S. detention center, during Iraq War

Members of Congress and our county’s churches should start petitioning for this Day, as a national, even international, holiday.   A Day of Atonement.  Almost all powerful countries have been morally, physically, and economically compromised by unjust war.

Please send the proposed resolution below to your state & national legislators, and request that they submit it to become law.   Also bring it to your church local & national assemblies for enactment as a faith declaration.

Resolution for "Unjust War Remembrance Day" March 19th

·         Whereas the United States entered into a war with Iraq on Mar 19, 2003 with no credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction, or imminent threat to our nation.
·         Whereas the leaders of our nation and the national media rushed to war without due consideration and for reasons that remain to be clearly stated or investigated.
·         Whereas the citizens of our nation, even those opposed to this war, by and large acquiesced to this war’s prosecution.
·         Whereas hundreds of thousands of Iraq civilians, thousands of our soldiers, and tens of thousands of Iraqi insurgents died in this war.  Many more than all these dead were the severely wounded casualties of this war.
·         Whereas Iraqi infrastructure and economy has been decimated, and our own economy has been definitively damaged by this unnecessary war.
·         Whereas this Iraq war did not meet the moral standards required of the just war theory.
·         Whereas many prominent religious leaders call us to reject just war theory as impossible in modern warfare, and urge a much deeper faith respecting all human life.

Be it resolved to declare March 19 a national holiday of reflection, Unjust War Remembrance Day, in which everyone should work and pray to develop projects and strategies on local, national, and international levels that resolve conflicts between nations and peoples effectively without resorting to the organized overwhelming violence of war.

Be it resolved also that this resolution, in some form particular to each nation, should be adopted by the United Nations, as every nation has some time in the history of their peoples participated in unjust war.

**********************************************

Who would Jesus Bomb?---by Mark Bryan

“War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today."  --JFK 

Let’s take the first steps into that distance, with commitments to fund peacemaking that rival the billions spent on the military industrial complex.  God bless us with the good fortune of conversion -- from war to peace.

May we all put away our swords, and the Irish our cudgels.  Good things can grow from this peace dividend.

Illumination by Kathy Brahney

LEAD US NOT INTO THE TEMPTATION OF CONTINUED NUCLEAR BOMB TESTING

From website of International Human Rights Observer

Indonesia, an Islamist nation, was the most recent country to ratify on Dec 6, 2011, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.  Almost all the world’s governments have agreed to take this first solid step towards eliminating the terrible threat of nuclear weapons.  If you don’t test them it’s much more difficult to develop, build, and rely upon them.  The CTBT was passed over 15 years ago by the United Nations, and based upon a Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, and the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of 1968.  The CTBT has been ratified by almost every country.  As the U.S. threatens to go to war to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, you’d think we be one of the founding members of the CTBT club, and certainly Israel along with us.  Not so.

A crew loaded a 'bunker buster' at the White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico in 2007-Photo from Defense Threat Reduction Agency-AP

“The 30,000-pound "bunker-buster" bomb, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, was specifically designed to take out the hardened fortifications built by Iran and North Korea to cloak their nuclear programs.”  From 1-28-12 WSJ article Pentagon Seeks Mightier Bomb vs. Iran

he United States is the godfather in a gang of eight nuclear bomb test ban holdouts—together holding the rest of the world hostage to the desire to wield the ultimate version of destructive power.  Who are our atomic bomb lover bedfellows?  Israel, Iran, China, Egypt, Pakistan, India, and North Korea.  Strange bedfellows.  All 8 spoiler countries must ratify before the treaty can be enforced; 157 already have. 

There is always an intricate reasoned political calculus, as to why a nation wants to maintain dominion with its Weapon of Mass Destruction.  In the end, reliance on the power to destroy and threaten insures that none of us on the planet can come to trust each other, nor convert and re-invest in more creative ways to resolve conflict.  At a most fundamental level, trust in massively destructive weapons replaces trust in God.  WMD has become this century’s idol.   Idolatry of a war god.  An Anti-Christ of anti-life.  Every one of these nuclear bombs we possess and perfect can abort thousands of babies in the womb, and thousands more men, women and children in the fireball of the lust for supremacy.  And we maintain we need them, and retain the right to test and care for them.

“I am become megadeath, the destroyer of worlds.” From Hindu Bhagavad Gita

                               Spoken by J. Robert Oppenheimer  - on viewing test of world's first atomic bomb, he’d help create.

 

"All this I will give you," he said, "if you will bow down and worship me." Mt 4:9

The United States, as the world’s undisputed nuclear weapons superpower, has to lead by example on the path to faith and democracy.  It’s do as we do, not merely do as we say.  .  In 1981 I taught a course in the particulars of nuclear disarmament at Prestonsburg [KY] Community College.  We’ve only taken a few small steps towards the goal of putting away the nuclear swords since.  Saber rattling at Iran and North Korea’s fledgling efforts, while ignoring the huge nuclear weapons stockpile in our own eye, will not convince anyone.

Please work and pray to make this treaty a reality.

"We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.  The world has achieved brilliance without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner."

Armistice Day speech (11 November 1948), -- General Omar Bradley's Collected Writings, Volume 1 (1967)

Button artwork by Ande McCarthy

A good source for focused efforts on passing & implementing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in the U.S. is the Friends Committee on National Legislation.  This Quaker group has expertise on the political elements of disarmament, and is well organized towards creating the national and international building blocks for true verifiable nuclear disarmament.  Please see their current info at FCNL nuclear weapons issues.       And download and distribute their CTBT factsheet.

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Illumination by Kathy Brahney