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The Watcher’s Council

The Council has spoken, the votes have been cast and the results are in for this week’s Watcher’s Council match up, carved eternally in the akhasic records of cyberspace.

There was a great deal of attention this week from the Council on the Obama Administration’s attack on the First Amendment via Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius’ fatwa requiring religious institutions like those run by the Catholic Church to provide birth control, sterilization and abortion services to their employees as part of the health insurance requirements of ObamaCare. This week’s winner, Rhymes With Right‘s Should The Catholic Church Go Medieval Over ObamaCare Regulations? proposes that the Church fight back with some ancient strategies. Here’s a slice:

On January 20, 2012, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius issued a regulation which required religiously affiliated employers to provide their employees with free sterilization and contraceptives(including abortifacients) even if doing so violated the religious tenets of the organization. While there was a small carve-out that would allow actual houses of worship to refrain from offering such coverage, the regulation would require Catholic schools, hospitals, and charities to pay for such insurance coverage if they employed or served a significant number of non-Catholic employees. While the regulation is not aimed directly at the Catholic Church – it applies equally to other faith groups with teachings against sterilization, birth control, and abortion – it is clear that the biggest impact will be upon Catholic groups.

The uproar was immediate and loud. On February 10, President Obama himself seemed to offer a compromise option, but reality is that the changed wording and presentation did not constitute a substantive change of law or policy. What’s more, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid blocked efforts to introduce and vote on legislation that would have blocked any regulation of this sort, ensuring that President Obama’s allies would ensure that there was no chance to undo the “compromise” – which the President has indicated will be implemented this August. This means that the American people will not have the ability to install new leaders before religious organizations are forced to surrender their principles, pay crippling fines, or shut down.

As I’ve examined the current situation, it strikes me that this attack on religion is unprecedented in American history and that it flies in the face of the guarantees found in the Bill of Rights. But attacks upon the faith are not unprecedented in the history of the Catholic Church. From Apostolic times through the Middle Ages and Reformation and up to the present, there have been political leaders whose lust for power and personal glorification have led them to seek to undercut the teachings of the Church and its spiritual prerogatives. The faithful died in the arenas of the Roman Empire rather than burn incense at the altars of the emperors, popes engaged in political and military conflict with enemies through the ages, and courageous bishops and priests spread the great encyclical letter Mit Brennender Sorge in the face of the Nazi regime in 1938. And if Pope John Paul II had the ability to undermine Communism in Poland and the other nations behind the Iron Curtain, what might his friend, co-worker, and successor Pope Benedict XVI be able to do regarding this effort by Barack Obama to force the Catholic Church to act contrary to its teachings?

Some might ask Josef Stalin’s question – how many divisions does the pope have? But one need only remember that the Church has survived conflicts with greater men than the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and that Christ himself promised Simon Peter that the gates of Hell will not prevail against him and his successors – a promise kept for some two millennia. All that is necessary is for Benedict to deploy the full force of the spiritual weapons in his arsenal. It would not be unreasonable for him to follow some of the historical precedents for their use in this case. Indeed, I’d argue that the Pope might consider taking a course that has both modern precedent and roots in the medieval period.

To this end, I believe that an encyclical letter, with its definitive version written in English, ought to be issued. In doing this, Pope Benedict would be following the precedent of Pope Pius XI in issuing Mit Brennender Sorge in 1938. The young Joseph Ratzinger would have heard as this denunciation of Nazism was read from the pulpit of his church on Palm Sunday, 1938, as it was in virtually every German church. Benedict should act in kind now, speaking as pastor to his flock and as head of state challenging the misdeeds of the American government — and require that the encyclical be read in every Catholic church on the same Sunday.

What should be included in this encyclical? I would suggest several elements. The first part would be a restatement of the teachings of Vatican II on the proper relationship of church and state, and an analysis as to how the Obama Regime mandate is incompatible with that relationship. It should be made clear that this is not a claim of special privilege, but a function of natural law that applies to all who claim the title of Christian and to non-Christians as well. No government, whether democracy, monarchy, or dictatorship, has within the scope of its authority to direct a faith community to commit actions that are at odds with its fundamental teachings.

The second part of the encyclical should lay out the consequences of the promulgation of this new regulation and its successor. This should begin with an announcement that Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius is immediately excommunicated, as are any other Catholics within the senior staff of the department. In addition, immediate excommunication should also fall upon any Catholic member of Congress who voted for ObamaCare. Lest there be any confusion on the matter, the individuals excommunicated should be listed by name. In addition, latae sententia will be incurred by any Catholic who directly enforces or causes to be enforced the requirements of the new regulations. Similar sanctions should be directed at state officials in the 28 state with similar provisions in state law. At least as regards the public officials, the lifting of the excommunication ought to be reserved to the Holy Father himself. The second consequence contained within the encyclical ought to include the imposition of interdict upon the United States if the regulation is not rescinded by a certain date, with the interdict to be lifted only upon the lifting of the regulation and the return of any and all property seized as a consequence of failure to comply with the regulation.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Victor Davis Hanson for Iran 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 submitted by Joshuapundit.

Here are this week’s full results. New Zeal was unable to vote this week and was affected by the 2/3 vote penalty:

Council Winners

• *First place with 2 1/3 votes! – Rhymes With Right – Should The Catholic Church Go Medieval Over ObamaCare Regulations?
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – Joshuapundit – President Obama Demands All Bow To His New Religion
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – New Zeal – Econonomic Sabotage? A Case for the FBI? Occupy Wall Street and the Cuban Connection
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – The Noisy Room – The Day the Music Died
• Second place *t* with 1 2/3 votes – The Right Planet – In Memory of Kevin Eve: The Last Breathing Hole
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – The Colossus of Rhodey – “Good to know these folks are on our high court”
• Third place *t* with 1 vote – The Razor – Does Romney 2012 = McCain 2008?
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – Simply Jews – It’s still a free world, is it?
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Mellow Jihadi –German Sailors Support Occupy Wall Street?
• Fourth place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Independent Sentinel – Obama And The Global Push To Ban Small Arms In The United States.
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Bookworm Room – White House takes down petition asking it to stop pretending that Catholic institutions aren’t being forced to pay for ideologically offensive products
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – VA Right! – Ron Newtorum Wins CPAC 2012 Straw Poll With 62%
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Gay Patriot – Is Obama expecting economic crisis to last until 2018?
• Fifth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Glittering Eye – Is There Such a Thing as Moral Failure?

Non-Council Winners

• *First place with 3 1/3 votes! – Victor Davis Hanson – Iran 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 submitted by Joshuapundit
• Second place with 3 votes – The Daily Caller – Inside Media Matters: Sources, memos reveal erratic behavior, close coordination with White House and news organizations submitted by The Glittering Eye
• Third place with 2 votes – Sultan Knish – A Tale Of two Wars submitted by The Political Commentator
• Fourth place with 1 2/3 votes – Wolf Howling – A historical perspective on religion and Obama’s HHS mandate submitted by Bookworm Room
• Fifth place with 1 1/3 votes – Promethean Antagonist – Snippets… (rants on Leftdom) submitted by The Razor
• Sixth place with 1 vote – Michelle Malkin – ‘To Stop the Multiplication of the Unfit’ submitted by The Right Planet
• Seventh place *t* with 2/3 vote – Christian Aid Watch – Why Did They Go? submitted by Simply Jews
• Seventh place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Compass – Is Terrorism OK If Israel Does It? submitted by GrEaT sAtAn”S gIrLfRiEnD
• Seventh place *t* with 2/3 vote – The Jersey-Texan – The Racism of Daily Kos for GOP Candidate Mia B. Love submitted by Va Right!
• Eighth place *t* with 1/3 vote – Rush Limbaugh – Obama Didn’t Cave on the HHS Mandate; He’s Making an Unprecedented Power Grab submitted by The Noisy Room
• Eighth place *t* with 1/3 vote – The Enterprise Blog –How Romney can start to energize conservatives submitted by Gay Patriot

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