News came out yesterday that the Obama administration decided to wait until 2015 to enforce the employer mandate of the “2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” Of course it is “just a coincidence” that this would be after the mid-term elections.

The enforcement being delayed at least adds some breathing room for some aspects of ObamaCare. Unfortunately there appears not to be any delay regarding the HHS Mandate and the direct attack on religious freedom.

The HHS mandate that compels religious groups to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions is moving ahead, as revised on Friday. Not only is it moving forward, but the revisions the Obama administration handed out do nothing to quell the pro-life concerns. (source)

If this is an accurate assessment, then the HHS Mandate starts to be enforced on August 1st.

Although this article from Steven Ertelt at LifeNews.com provides no collaborating information for this assertion. The article also makes the mistake of saying it was the individual mandate that was delayed, when it was the employer mandate. Individuals are still required to buy insurance or pay a government fine (January 1, 2014). Still I do think it looks like the HHS Mandate so far is not part of the delay. Forcing Catholics and others to pay for contraception and sterilization has been an important priority for this administration.

One a related note it is rather bizarre to see this delay by the Obama administration being announced in a blog post on the U.S. Treasury site. The tile of the post I think deserves an award for most self-serving post title of the year “Continuing to Implement the ACA in a Careful, Thoughtful Manner.” Yes when you are told something is going to be done in a “careful, thoughtful manner” get prepared for the tire tracks on your back.

With the constant attack on the reality of marriage one of the responses is the idea to separate “civil marriage” and being “married in the church”. That churches should get out of the marriage business.

Recently Msgr. Charles Pope from the Archdiocese of Washington D.C. has again proposed this. I greatly admire Msgr. Charles Pope and his postings, but I can’t fully agree with him here. In the first part of his post he proposes that we set aside the word “Marriage” and use “Holy Matrimony” exclusively. That the word marriage has become so corrupted and what the Church means by marriage and what the state means by marriage are quite different things.

I am all for using the term “Holy Matrimony” more and to return to a understanding of the Conventional aspects. Using words and phrases that better project the reality of something is certainly something we should do. I am though tired of having words taken from us and having to deduct them from our vocabulary. While I like the use of “Holy Matrimony” I will use marriage as a shortcut term in this post. Also for purposes of this post “two people” is used to mean “one man and one women.” I wonder what we will have to start using as caveats in years to come?

A secondary but related proposal is that we begin to consider getting out of the business of having our clergy act as civil magistrates in weddings. Right now we clergy in most of America sign the civil license and act, as such, as partners with the State. But with increasing States interpreting marriage so differently, can we really say we are partners? Should we even give the impression of credibility to the State’s increasingly meaningless piece of paper? It may remain the case that the Catholic faithful, for legal and tax reasons may need to get a civil license, but why should clergy have anything to do with it?

Frankly, I am uncomfortable signing DC Marriage licenses, and do so only because my Ordinary has indicated we should continue doing this. I am happy to obey him in this and defer to his judgment in the matter. There is a reason his is the Ordinary and I am not. That said, I have told him what I think. But for now, it seems clear we must stay the course and still sign them until the Bishop says, no more.

I think this idea only ends up reinforcing the secularization of the reality of marriage. Despite the governments misunderstanding of marriage this does not change the ontological aspects of marriage. Two people married under a “Justice of Peace” can incur a “Natural” marriage and for example two baptized Protestants can contract a “Sacramental” marriage in the same circumstance. Note: I specifically left out an example regarding Catholics in this example as Catholics are obliged to the canonical form of marriage (excepting the circumstances where an indult has been granted by he local ordinary).

This two tier idea of secular marriage and religious marriage would only deconstruct marriage even more.

Ed Peters’ replies to Monsignor Pope’s post and puts it much better than I can:

… Marriage (and I’m talking about marriage, not Matrimony yet) is part of the natural law and, I think, one just does not walk away from the natural law. Marriage was not abolished by Jesus, it was (under certain circumstances the Church has worked out over the centuries) raised by Him to the level of a sacrament we call Matrimony. But before anything else, Matrimony is marriage, and it never ceases to be marriage, and if whatever we’re talking about is not marriage then it CANNOT be Matrimony.

This is serious stuff: the Church proclaims some infallible doctrines regarding marriage (like, e.g., that marriage consists of the union of one man and one woman) and she proclaims some infallible doctrines about Matrimony (like, e.g., once Matrimony is consummated, it cannot be dissolved by any power on earth, something not true of marriage). Both institutions, natural marriage and its Christian perfection, are objects of doctrinal solicitude, which tells me, there’s something pretty important about both.

The vast majority of the world enters marriage (not Matrimony), and if the Church stops defending and promoting marriage, she abandons most of the human race to whatever havoc the Evil One feels like waging in its regard. But there’s still more wrong here with dumping marriage.

Many Catholics enter, with the Church’s approval, not Matrimony (as in the sacrament), but marriage only (as in the natural union). To suggest that we deal from now on only with Matrimony leaves Catholics in marriages (not Matrimony) with no recognition or support. Every way you look, this is a bad idea.

Look, I wish everybody were Catholic, that all marriages were sacramental, and that we could spend our time helping Catholic married couples better live out their vocation. But as long as marriage is ABSOLUTELY essential to the Church’s teaching on Matrimony, as long as most human beings enter marriage and not Matrimony, and as long as some Catholics live in marriage and not Matrimony, the Church has to stay in the marriage business and defend marriage itself.

Earlier this year I was reading C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity” where he espoused a two-tier understanding of marriage that just ignores the natural law. The argument he put forth was rather embarrassing. Recently I found an article which quotes what Lewis wrote about this along with a letter where J.R.R. Tolkien replies to his friend’s argument.

On a side note I do love Christianity Today posting an article titled “Why C.S. Lewis Was Wrong on Marriage (and J.R.R. Tolkien Was Right)”

Sometimes you can find a truth spelled out in a novel quite accidentally.

Case in point I am reading this SF thriller trilogy where one of the plot points involves alien nanotechnology. When injected into humans these swarms of nanobots repair any damage and brings the person to perfect health.

There is a side-effect mentioned in the novel as a negative. When these nanobots are introduced into a population the “problem” is that chemical contraception stops working. Vasectomies are healed as would other forms of surgical sterilization. Abortion also becomes much harder as the child heals faster than they can kill it. This is remarked rather off-handily in the novel and is really not part of the plot.

This is also probably an unintended insight into the nature of contraception, sterilization, and abortion. The fact that none of this is related to a required medical procedure and instead of bringing a body to health mutilates it or uses hormonal tricks to break a functioning system. Medicine has been corrupted not to mean a remedy or a cure, but to include disrupting or removing a functioning system for reasons other than health.

This distinction seems to be lost more an more. This is obvious by the fact that you so often hear that if medical insurance pays for Viagra then it must also pay for birth control pills. That one restores function and the other removes function is lost in the haze of false equality.

No distinction is made between health and what are bodily hacks. We will probably seem more and more forms of bodily hacks falsely grouped under the category of healthcare. They will also more than likely be ironically named. For example reproductive healthcare is mostly aimed and making sure you don’t reproduce.

Some mistakes keep coming back to bite you. For example my first vote in a Presidential election – Jimmy Carter.

From an interview with *TIME *magazine:

I think there’s a slow, very slow, move around the world to give women equal rights in the eyes of God. What has been the case for many centuries is that the great religions, the major religions, have discriminated against women in a very abusive fashion and set an example for the rest of society to treat women as secondary citizens. In a marriage or in the workplace or wherever, they are discriminated against. And I think the great religions have set the example for that, by ordaining, in effect, that women are not equal to men in the eyes of God.

This has been done and still is done by the Catholic Church ever since the third century, when the Catholic Church ordained that a woman cannot be a priest for instance but a man can. A woman can be a nurse or a teacher but she can’t be a priest. This is wrong, I think…

This though is the typical arrogance of those outside the Church who would proclaim on theology regarding the Catholic Church. Done without of course actually looking at why the Church teaches as she does. There is never any actual engagement regarding this just a nebulous call to equality as if no further thought is required. Although almost exactly the same problem exists regarding member of the Church.

Notice how the Catholic Church is singled out. Funny how he doesn’t call out Islam for not having women inmans or lack of Buddhist women monks. I guess he just throws in the “great religions” to provide cover, while going after the Catholic Church. In fact in this article he brings up Catholics over and over again never referencing at all the actual mistreatment of women in Muslim countries.

Now Jimmy Carter also calls himself pro-life yet once again is remains totally silent regarding this and thinks the great problem that has to be addressed is women clergy.

Further on he goes on attack again:

To repeat myself in a way, I think that what the major religious leaders say is used by others who discriminate against women as justification for their human rights abuse. For instance if an employer, who might be otherwise enlightened, if he is a religious person and he sees that, he might be a Catholic, and a Catholic does not let women be priests, then why should he pay his women employees an equal pay [as men]?

What? This is totally incoherent. Once again he can’t be troubled to find what Catholics actually believe regarding this.

From the Letter of Pope John Paul II to Women

As far as personal rights are concerned, there is an urgent need to achieve real equality in every area: equal pay for equal work, protection for working mothers, fairness in career advancements, equality of spouses with regard to family rights and the recognition of everything that is part of the rights and duties of citizens in a democratic State.

Again theologian and scripture scholar Jimmy Carter opines:

But there are a lot of them, for instance if you look at some of the verses I think in Romans, I can’t remember exactly, maybe Acts, or Romans in the 16th chapter, Paul delineates a lot of top leaders in the church and about a third of them are women. So I think in the original status of the Christian church, women played a very important role, even in the leadership role. And then after about the third century when men took over control of the Catholic Church, then they began to ordain that women had to play an inferior position, not be a priest.

Amazing he didn’t bring up Constantine since this is just about as intelligent as the Da Vinci Code. The magical third century where everything that happened before gets replaced without people at that time noticing it. Whatever you don’t like about the Catholic Church then just say that whatever you dislike didn’t happen until the 3rd century. He also makes a very common mistake of equating the priesthood with leadership as if priests could only be leaders. This again sees the priesthood only in terms of power, another common mistake.

This is the 15th volume of The Weekly Francis ebook which is a compilation of the Holy Father’s writings, speeches, etc which I post at Jimmy Akin’s The Weekly Francis. The post at Jimmy Akin’s site contains a link to each document on the Vatican’s site and does not require an e-reader to use.

This volume covers material released during the last week from 12 June 2013 – 23 June 2013.

This version of The Weekly Francis ebook starts the inclusion of a summary of the Holy Father’s daily homilies, technically called fervorinos, which are provided from Vatican Radio. The full text of these homilies are not provided.

The ebook contains a table of contents and the material is arranged in sections such as Angelus, Speeches, etc in date order. The full index is listed on Jimmy’s site.

• The Weekly Francis – Volume 15 – ePub (supports most readers)
• The Weekly Francis – Volume 15 – Kindle

There is an archive for all of The Weekly Francis eBook volumes.  This page is available via the header of this blog or from here.

Omnibus Edition: In addition to The Weekly Francis I am also maintaining an Omnibus edition that contains all of Pope Francis writings, speeches, etc. At the end of the year an annual edition will be released along with maintaining the full omnibus.

• Omnibus epub
• Omnibus Kindle