{"id":7066,"date":"2012-02-08T10:35:27","date_gmt":"2012-02-08T10:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.faceofmalawi.com\/?p=7066"},"modified":"2012-02-08T10:35:27","modified_gmt":"2012-02-08T10:35:27","slug":"catholic-church-ready-to-declare-war-on-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/2012\/02\/08\/catholic-church-ready-to-declare-war-on-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Catholic Church ready to declare war on Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>From the campaign trail last month, GOP contender Newt Gingrich said US President Barack Obama had declared a \u201cwar on the Catholic Church.\u201d Some clergy have heard that call and are warning the president: look out, we\u2019re ready to rumble.<\/p>\n

Responding to the Obama-mandated health insurance policies, Catholic leaders throughout America are outraged over what is being perceived by some as a serious assault on their religion. Under Obama\u2019s health care plan, Catholic hospitals and universities will be required to offer free birth control to employees. While the law will not include entities with solely religious purposes, such as churches, it will extend to church-affiliated companies that do not exclusively support a religious-minded agenda.<\/p>\n

Under the provision put forth last month by the president, health plans provided by Roman Catholic institutions that cover non-Catholics must front the cost of \u201call FDA approved contraceptives, including those that induce abortion.\u201dEven if the policy is aimed at only a section of the church, Catholic leaders say Obama\u2019s insurance plan is an attempt to take down the church by infiltrating it with God-less ideals on their religion, and according to some, they won\u2019t go down without a fight.<\/p>\n

Bill Donohue of the Catholic League says the move is a milestone in terms of taking on the Church, and tells CBS News that it is \u201cunprecedented in American history \u2026for the federal government to line up against the Roman Catholic Church.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is going to be fought out with lawsuits, with court decisions and, dare I say it, maybe even in the streets,\u201d adds Donohue.<\/p>\n

Upon announcement of the provision to the health plan last month, former Speaker Newt Gingrich said on NBC that is accentuated \u201ca radical Obama administration imposing secular rules on religion\u201d and signaled \u201ca tremendous infringement of religious liberty\u201d that would spawn \u201cvery substantial\u201d political fallout.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time you turn around secular government is closing in on and shrinking the rights of religious America,\u201d said Gingrich, who converted to Catholicism in 2009. At a separate speaking engagement last month, he specifically called out the president for launching a \u201cwar on the Catholic Church.\u201d<\/p>\n

The White House has defended last month\u2019s decision, however, insisting that providing contraception free of charge will signal a decline in abortions. The Catholic Church still opposes provided contraception and disputes the argument, and some say it doesn\u2019t stop right there.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not about contraception. It\u2019s about the right of conscience,\u201d Archbishop Timothy Dolan tells reporters. \u201cThe government doesn\u2019t have the right to butt into the internal governance and teachings of the church,\u201d he insists.<\/p>\n

\u201cNever before has the federal government forced individuals and organizations to go out into the marketplace and buy a product that violates their conscience,\u201d adds Dolan. \u201cThis shouldn\u2019t happen in a land where free exercise of religion ranks first in the Bill of Rights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other Catholics are coming out to go after Obama, and the impact could be detrimental to his re-election bid. While Obama won the majority of the votes from American Catholics in 2008, his stance on offering contraception has already attracted mini critics from the church. A grassroots campaign waged against the policy started last year by Archbishop Dolan yielded 57,000 complaints over the plan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From the campaign trail last month, GOP contender Newt Gingrich said US President Barack Obama had declared a \u201cwar on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81],"tags":[999,1322,483,443],"class_list":["post-7066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-national-news","tag-barack-obama","tag-catholic","tag-obama","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.faceofmalawi.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}