Obama Dictating the Consciences of the Monks

Ken Blackwell brings us news today of a small Catholic college here in North Carolina being attacked by the Orwellianly named Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The story, on today's Townhall.com is entitled Got Monks? Get the Monks! A quote to set the stage:

But Obama’s EEOC obviously reads that ad as an invitation to “get the monks.” The EEOC’s district office in Charlotte, N.C., is demanding that Belmont Abbey cease and desist violating Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. If you thought that act was about ending racial and sex discrimination, you would be right. If you thought that unelected bureaucrats could not use that law as a sledgehammer to threaten religious schools, you would be naïve.

What the EEOC is complaining of is Belmont Abbey’s practice of not providing abortion-inducing contraceptives to their employees in their health insurance plan.

Belmont College is a small Roman Catholic school run by Benedictine monks. Apparently they cleave to Catholic orthodoxy, which says, among other things, that aborting babies is murder. On that basis, William Thierfeld removed abortion and sterilization coverage from the College's health insurance coverage in 2007. Frankly, I admire the monks for standing by Catholic teachings on this point. I could wish that the church to which my congregation belongs, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America would follow Jesus teachings similarly. Oh, Jesus never said anything about abortion, but what he did say about sin in general, and murder in particular leaves one to believe that if the topic had come up, he would have been outspokenly against it.

Liberals and leftists, who want to be able have abortions with a clear conscience, point out that, well gosh, Jesus was a radical you know. He was all about upsetting the apple cart. True enough, but he was radical for his time and place. Look at what the establishment did, and believed at that time. Women were treated like, and in reality were, possessions. They could be discarded for burning the husband's dinner one night. Children in many cases were treated worse than cattle. People who did not have wealth or means also had little ability to acquire any short of selling themselves into indentured servitude. Only the wealthy could afford to fully participate in the religious experiences of the time. Into this milieu came Jesus to say that helping ones neighbor in a time of need is helping God himself. To the publicly pious establishment at the time, Jesus said you may be worshiping some god, but it is not the God I know. So what do you think he would say about a mother who has her own child sucked out of her womb? Sure, Jesus was radical, and if he walked among us today he would still be so. But it wasn't, and isn't still of the "if it feels good do it" kind of radical. Jesus challenges us daily to be better that we can humanly be.

Leftists also like to point out that people should be free to chose. Well, no one would today (thanks to Jesus, by the way) dispute that. However, looking just a little deeper into the matter, nobody was forced to work for Bellmont. Nobody was forced to have sex outside of marriage. These are choices which people are free to make. But once made, they must live with the consequences. Don't like the Catholic Church's stand on abortion? Don't work for a Catholic Institution. It really is that simple.

What we have here, with the EEOC trying to tell a Catholic Institution how they must act in spite of their beliefs, is another case of the Left trying to impose its own twisted sense of morality on the Church. They are using the "law" to try to dictate what we should believe. Another quote from Blackwell:

Not since King Henry VIII seized church lands in England has there been such a radical threat to religious freedom. I hope President Thierfeld never has to carry out his firm resolution of closing this wonderful old school rather than submit. I pray that all Americans who cherish religious liberty will awaken to this new militancy being unleashed against them.

I do too. In a land of nearly uniform politically correct thought, someone has to present diverse ideas to students who otherwise might not discover them on their own. In a land where we are rapidly losing the right to chose, unless it is the "correct" choice, someone has to present the truly radical Jesus, who lives and reigns today, yesterday, and tomorrow.