PEACE ON EARTH

GOODWILL TOWARD ALL MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN, BORN AND UNBORN

Saturday, January 28, 2012

It's the Constitution

Stupid.

Our Constitution is what makes us all Free. There are civil liberties and guarantees that prevent arbitrary imposition of one ideology or religion over another. It has created safe sacred space for all religions and this is as a result one of the most openly religious nations in the world.
As a contrast look at what happened in Nazi Germany when Hitler consolidated and co-opted the Lutheran church creating one synod with him as the head. One religion was demonized and laws enacted that openly persecuted them.

One of the basic strongholds of our freedom lies in the First Amendment Non -Establishment principles that make it illegal in this country to favor one religion over another by the state in a number of ways. It is coupled with the Free Exercise of Religion principle so that in doing so it has to delicately balance how not establishing any state religion (such as they had and people fled from in England) does not quash non-state expressions of it.

There are tricky areas of the delicate balancing of this two pronged act.
For example, when you bring in the tax code and make people pay for things that they have conscience objections over, you determine whether not honoring the breadth of those objections somehow runs afoul of one principle over another. Attorneys look at case law and precedent and try to figure out what is constitutional in reach.

We as a country have decided, as most Western civilized nations have, that the health burdens of the country should be shared as a basic principle of taking care of neighbor and there are few things more Christ-like than wanting to heal people. All people regardless of the state of sin that got them there.

It is astoundingly ignorant and insulting to say that people who believe contraception is something that should be in health care as an insurer paid for provision or something health providers cover do so because they have either bad catechesis, bad morals or lack virtue. It might be because they love the country, all of it, and have read the Constitution.

Others might be running to be head of another country without a Constitution- perhaps one called Vatican City.

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