I gotta tell you, some of us Tea Partiers are getting a bit weary from constantly battling the progressive forces of statism, so it’s wonderful to see we’re getting some reinforcements from the Catholic Church. You’re a little tardy – but welcome to the fight!
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First off, more than three years after the fact, I still find it astounding that 54% of Catholics voted for President Obama – a man who actually supported partial-birth abortion. Good grief! And his over-the-top campaign stopped just short of billing him as the Second Coming. Like the rest of us Christians, I presumed that Catholics already has a Messiah, and would see through the Obama-Drama. Very disheartening.
 
So, although it’s taken an extra-constitutional action on the part of the administration, it’s encouraging to see that the Church Militant is finally awakening to the serious threat this regime represents to our God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – and specifically our freedom of religion. The source of this revelation is HHS’s (Health & Human Services) unconscionable regulation that requires all health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that induce abortions.
 

 As CNS News reports:

Because the Catholic Church holds that sterilization, artificial contraception and abortion are morally wrong and Catholic[sic] cannot be involved in them, the regulation in combination with the Obamacare mandate that all Americans buy health insurance will force American Catholics to choose between following the federal regulation or following the teachings of their church.

 
Meanwhile, back at Tyranny Central, spokes-idiot Jay Carney haplessly attempted to act as if this is no big deal; “I don’t believe there are any constitutional rights issues here.”
Right Jay. And you don’t believe in God either. (Which certainly makes it convenient to bear false witness.)
 
To his admirable credit, the Pope saw this coming with much greater clarity than most of his flock – although, with all due respect, it would have been helpful if he’d taken a more forceful stand four years ago. On January 19th, Benedict XVI met with a group of U.S. bishops from the mid-Atlantic region, warning them that some cultural trends in the U.S. are “a threat not just to Christian faith, but also to humanity itself;”

“For her part, the Church in the United States is called, in season and out of season, to proclaim a Gospel which not only proposes unchanging moral truths but proposes them precisely as the key to human happiness and social prospering,” the pope said.
 
“To the extent that some current cultural trends contain elements that would curtail the proclamation of these truths, whether constricting it within the limits of a merely scientific rationality, or suppressing it in the name of political power or majority rule, they represent a threat not just to Christian faith, but also to humanity itself and to the deepest truth about our being and ultimate vocation, our relationship to God,” said the pope.
 
“When a culture attempts to suppress the dimension of ultimate mystery, and to close the doors to transcendent truth,” the pope said, “it inevitably becomes impoverished and falls prey, as the late Pope John Paul II so clearly saw, to reductionist and totalitarian readings of the human person and the nature of society.”
 
In the same address, the pope noted that: “Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion.”

 
Brilliant defense of the faith! And, praise God, most of the Bishops “get it.”
Last week, as CBN News reported; Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, soon to be ordained by Pope Benedict as a cardinal, says the White House has been on the wrong side of the Constitution several times.

“It’s not about contraception. It’s about the right of conscience,” he told reporters right before Obama gave his State of the Union Address.
 
“The government doesn’t have the right to butt into the internal governance and teachings of the church,” Dolan said. “This is not a Catholic issue, it’s an American issue. We’re strong on this issue of conscience, and that’s what’s at stake here.”

 
Cliff Kincaid has a great article at Accuracy in Media discussing his own priest’s courageous stand against this outrageous threat to liberty. In his homily last Sunday, Father Larry Swink (Huntingtown, MD) attacked;

… the Obama Administration as evil, even demonic, and warned of religious persecution ahead. What was also newsworthy about the sermon was that he cited The Washington Post in agreement—not on the subject of the Obama Administration being evil, but on the matter of its abridgment of the constitutional right to freedom of religion.
 
What is happening is extraordinary and unprecedented. The Catholic Church is in open revolt against the Obama Administration, with Fr. Swink noting from the pulpit that priests across the archdiocese were joining the call on Sunday to rally Catholics to resistance against the U.S. Government. He said we are entering a time of religious persecution and that Catholics and others will have to make a final decision about which side they are on…
 
… At a time when the media are full of reports about who is ahead and behind in the polls, and who will win the next Republican presidential primary, this incredible uprising in the Catholic Church is something that could not only overshadow the political campaign season, but also may have a major impact on the ultimate outcome—if Republicans know how to handle it. This matter goes beyond partisan politics to the growing perception of an unconstitutional Obama Administration assault on religious freedom. To hear the Catholic Bishops and Priests describe it, our constitutional republic and our freedoms hang in the balance.

 
In Peoria, IL, Bishop Daniel Jenky asked parishes, schools, hospitals and religious houses to insert the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel into the intercessions at Sunday Mass to pray for Catholics’ freedom ~

“It is God’s invincible Archangel who commands the heavenly host, and it is the enemies of God who will ultimately be defeated,” the bishop said in a Jan. 24 letter to the Catholics of his diocese…
… He said it is his duty to summon the local Church into “spiritual and temporal combat in defense of Catholic Christianity.”
Bishop Jenky stated that the president does not have the authority under the U.S. Constitution to “require our cooperation with what we consider to be intrinsic evil and mortal sin…”
 
…“I am honestly horrified that the nation I have always loved has come to this hateful and radical step in religious intolerance.”
 
The bishop pledged that the Church will never abandon its commitment to the Gospel of Life and called on the faithful to “vigorously” oppose what he called an “unprecedented governmental assault upon the moral convictions of our faith.”
… “Have faith! Have courage! Fight boldly for what you believe!” he said. “I strongly urge you not to be intimidated by extremist politicians or the malice of the cultural secularists arrayed against us.”
 
Invoking the First Letter of John, he said Catholics should always remember that “the One who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world.”

Folks, the reality is – the gloves are off, the Obama administration has declared war on Christendom.
 
The Catholic Church is a little late in joining the fight – but they’re bringing in the big guns. The battle is enjoined.
 

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Related:
Is Obama losing the Catholic vote? Lord, that’s our prayer!
Protestants and Jews declare to White House: We stand with Catholics
Marco Rubio already at work to overturn the administration’s contraception mandate ~ he’s introducing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act Of 2012
Hell, health insurance, and a man’s soul
Decision was a declaration of war on religion ~ by Michael Gerson

Modern liberalism uses the power of the state to impose liberal values on institutions it regards as backward. It is the difference between pluralism and anti-clericalism.
 
The administration’s ultimate motivation is uncertain. Has it adopted a radical secularism out of conviction, or is it cynically appealing to radical secularists? In either case, the war on religion is now formally declared.