Governor Rauner goes back on his word to provide tax dollars for abortion

Against the wishes of some 60% of their constituents, the Illinois House representatives passed HB 40 to provide public funding for abortions on 25 April 2017 and the Illinois Senate approved the legislation on 11 May 2017.

At the time, Governor Bruce Rauner promised to veto the legislation, though yesterday he showed himself to have lied when he signed HB 40 bill into law. Frankly, I'm not surprised.

Following the Governor's going back on his word to Illinoisans, the Catholic Conference of Illinois issued the following statement:

We are deeply disturbed that Governor Rauner has broken his word and firm public promise to veto HB 40. In effect, he is the first governor to enact a law for state funding of abortion. 

Governor Rauner, together with the legislators who voted for this misguided legislation, will now force Illinois taxpayers to pay for the taking of human life, in this case that of a defenseless child in the womb. 

We remain dedicated to advocating for the dignity and sanctity of human life from conception to natural death and will work to convince the public and our elected officials about the grave moral error this legislation represents.

I will soon write to the Governor to express my great disappointment at having been lied to, and hope you will do the same.

A reminder for Illinoisans

I hope those of you in Illinois marked your calendars last month when I passed on news of the Defend Marriage Lobby Day, which will take place at the capitol on October 23rd.

If you didn't mark your calendar, you can still make plans to attend.

Life Advocacy Days in Springfield to be held April 8-12

The Bishops of the Dioceses of Illinois are inviting the faithful to participate in Life Advocacy Days, the purpose of which, writes the Most Reverend Thomas John Paprocki, Bishop of Springfield in Illinois, in a February 1st letter, "will be to make our voices heard regarding legislation in conflict with Catholic teaching and belief."

Sponsored by the Catholic Conference of Illinois, the Life Advocacy Days will begin on the Feast of the Annunciation, April 8th, and run through April 12, 2013.  A special lobby day at the Capitol will be held on April 10th, beginning at 10:00 a.m.

To help mark the Life Advocacy Days, Bishop Paprocki has called for special prayers on the Feast of the Annunciation: "perhaps a Holy Hour, Mass for Blessing Unborn Children, a parish rosary, etc."

Father Stephen A. Thompson has written a written a prayer for the Life Advocacy Days, which His Excellency has asked be printed in parish bulletins during the months of March and April:

Gracious and merciful God, we ask that you send your Spirit among us to guide us and direct us in order to inspire all of our political leaders to advance the culture of life in their duty to uphold the common good for all the people they serve. 

You sent your Son Jesus to teach us how to pray, how to serve you in obedience and how to be the people you are calling us to be. 

You inspire us each and every day to appreciate the gifts you bestow upon us and to use them to change the hearts and minds of all people. 

The most precious gift you have given to us is the gift of life and you call us to be good stewards of all your creation. 

Help us to cultivate a spirit of prayer and of reconciliation for the  lack of due diligence in protecting the most vulnerable among us; the children who are forgotten, abandoned and thought of as an inconvenience to the welfare  of societies. 

Inspire all those in public office to protect the dignity of the unborn and those who are living who are deemed unfit to receive our care. 

Help us to receive your wisdom so that we may know how best to serve you and your people. 

We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Bishop Paprocki stresses that "it is critical that all our voices be heard."

Please, join in this important effort and keep an eye on your parish bulletin for more information as the Life Advocacy Days draw closer.

Governor Quinn to meet with Illinois Bishops

The Chicago Tribune reports today that His Eminence Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., Archbishop of Chicago, has written to Governor Pat Quinn (D), a Catholic, requesting to discuss with him several issues of concern.  The first of which is, as Cardinal George wrote, "your personal approval of laws permitting the killing of unborn children."  The Governor's support of civil unions is also a topic the Bishops would like to discuss with him.

Illinois Bishops establish Defense of Marriage Department

From the Catholic Times, with my emphases:

In light of ever-increasing threats to marriage, the bishops of Illinois have recently created a Defense of Marriage Department within the Catholic Conference of Illinois (CCI).



Zach Wichmann, CCI's director of government, heads the new department, with each diocese appointing advocates who seek to promote the church's love and solicitude toward marriage, families and children, and defend against public policy encroachments.



In the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois Carlos Tejeda, associate director of the Office for Marriage and Family Life, has been appointed the diocesan representative to the Defense of Marriage Department. He has begun attending quarterly meetings with Deacon Richard Hudzik from the Chicago archdiocese, Laurie Edwards from the Belleville diocese, Michael Brummond from the Joliet diocese, Tim Roder from the Peoria diocese, and Mary O'Grady from the Rockford diocese.



"The formation of the new department comes on the heels of Illinois' new civil unions law and same-sex marriage proposals in other states," said Mary Massingale, director of communications for CCI. "Additionally, the refusal of the Obama administration to defend the Defense of Marriage Act creates a sense of urgency in preserving the status of traditional marriage as outlined in USCCB President Archbishop Timothy Dolan's letter to (President Barack) Obama."



Massingale refers to Archbishop Dolan's 800-plus word letter, dated Sept. 20, that urged the president to keep the Defense of Marriage Act strongly in place.



"This past spring the Justice Department announced it would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court, a decision strongly opposed by the Catholic Bishops of the United States and many others," Archbishop Dolan wrote in his initial paragraph. "Now the Justice Department has shifted from not defending DOMA — which is problem enough given the duty of the executive branch to enforce even laws it disfavors — to actively attacking DOMA's constitutionality.



"My predecessor, Cardinal Francis George, OMI, and I have expressed to you in the past our strong disappointment about the direction your administration has been moving regarding DOMA," he wrote. "Unfortunately, the only response to date has been the intensification of efforts to undermine DOMA and the institution of marriage. ...



"The Catholic Bishops stand ready to affirm every positive measure taken by you and your administration to strengthen marriage and the family," he continued. "We cannot be silent, however, when federal steps harmful to marriage, the laws defending it, and religious freedom continue apace." Archbishop Dolan also attached an analysis prepared by his staff that detailed the various executive "activities of late" that have warranted the bishops' "increasing apprehension."



Wichmann said both the letter and the development of the new department reflect the bishops' intention to keep the church in the public square and in line with the Catholic faith's mission. In Illinois, the Defense of Marriage Department will advocate marriage as the proper home for human sexuality, as it serves as an expression of love and cooperation in God's creative design.



"The purpose of the quarterly meetings is to develop suggestions and action points for the bishops to consider ... how to generate organic grassroots efforts for the preservation of marriage," Tejeda said. "We have a very great need to catechize the faithful as well as explain conjunctly to those outside the faith why we believe what we do and why that's, in fact, good for society."



Wichmann acknowledged that the new department will be fighting an uphill battle against current social trends. "The teachings of the church are not overwhelmingly popular everywhere, nor are they always easily explained," he said. "But our message will be proclaimed for the sake of stronger families, secure children and enriched spiritual life."



He noted that the new civil unions law is really just the tip of the iceberg as the historically cooperative relationship between the church and the state of Illinois has begun to dissolve. The recent decision by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services to cancel contracts with Catholic Charities because of the organizations' refusal to place children with cohabitating couples — including those in civil unions — reflects a growing tension between the church and state.



"The government is not obliged to embrace church teaching," Wichmann said. "But the insistence that Catholic organizations discard that teaching undermines our mission and severely narrows opportunities for public ministry."



However, the Defense of Marriage Department is not meant to deal solely with the civil unions law, Tejeda said. "In 2009, the bishops came out with the pastoral letter Marriage, Love and Life in the Divine Plan. The whole USSCB approved this pastoral letter in 2009. One of the threats to marriage specifically outlined in this document — it is the second one — is same-sex unions."






The other threats against marriage, according to the bishops, are contraception, divorce and living together without marriage. "So certainly any time we speak about threats to marriage we need not just to send this one issue of same-sex unions. We need to preach with charity about the threats that contraception, divorce and cohabitation are to marriage," Tejeda said.



"Once we realize that we can understand that we don't have an agenda against those who experience same-sex attraction. What we have is a desire to journey with everybody who is tempted in difficult ways," he said. "So when an engaged couple desires to live together to save money before marriage we have the same very strong things to say — why that is not good for them and why that is not good for society."



Tejeda says in today's "sound-byte culture," it is important that the general public understand the true meaning of the Catholic Church's thoughts about marriage. In other words, what lay people see on television or read in secular papers doesn't provide the entire explanation of what Catholics really believe.



"Inevitably, if all people hear us talk about is fighting same-sex union legislation then it is very reasonable for them to make that conclusion (that the church is solely concerned about same-sex unions). So, on our part, we need to do just what the bishop's did and say, 'Look, in contemporary America there are four very constant threats to marriage, one of which is same-sex unions.'"



Tejeda said he hopes good things will come with the creation of the Defense of Marriage Department. "This is new territory for everybody. Hopefully the faithful of the diocese will see more resources being brought to their attention about why we understand marriage to be a sacrament between a man and a woman open to new life," he said.



"And once they are exposed to more of those resources about our understanding about the sacrament of matrimony that they can in turn vote a certain way and have informed conversations with their family and friends. That's really our hope and desire. We have to help our own faithful understand the sacrament more so that in turn society can have leaven and salt in the midst of it."



Editor's note: The entire content of Archbishop Timothy Dolan's letter to President Barack Obama can be found at: www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/marriage-and-family/marriage/promotion-and-defense-of-marriage/upload/dolan-to-obama-doma-letter-sept-20-2011.pdf.

CCI: HHS exemption threatens religious freedom

In a Letter to the Editor in the State Journal-Register, Zach Wichmann, Director of Government Relations of the Illinois Catholic Conference, addresses forthcoming changes in health care regulations, about which I posted earlier.

His letter follows, with my emphases and comments:

Headlines declared “free birth control for all” when the federal government recently issued an interim rule mandating health-care plans to cover sterilization and prescription contraceptives, including the abortifacient drug Ella. But an under-reported provision of the same rule proposed an incredibly narrow definition of religious employer for exemption from the mandate.

The Catholic Church’s teaching on the immorality of contraception and sterilization as a rejection of God’s life-giving design may lack popular support. However, our nation’s commitment to protecting the free-exercise of religion has led to long-standing conscience exemptions from mandates concerning abortion, contraception and sterilization in both federal and state law for health-care professionals, insurers and purchasers. President Barack Obama’s health-care plan, the Illinois Health Care Right of Conscience Act and the exemption of “church plans” in various federal laws are just a few examples.

But the newly defined exemption for religious belief is stricter than anything found in current federal law. Exemptions may now be unavailable to individuals or insurers and apply only to religious employers that meet the extremely narrow criteria of 1.) having the purpose of teaching religious values, 2.) primarily hiring persons who share the organizations’ religious tenets, 3.) primarily serving people who share those tenets and 4.) being a nonprofit as described in the Internal Revenue Code.

Under this proposal, an organization would not be “religious enough” if it served people of different faiths, failed to hire based on religion or did not restrict its mission to the teaching of religious values. As organizations striving to serve all people in need, Catholic hospitals, Catholic universities and Catholic social service agencies would be denied the exemption.

Astonishingly, Jesus Christ and the early Church could not qualify for the exemption. His ministry was not confined to members of the Church, nor did it consist only of preaching.

By ignoring individual conscience and attempting to determine which ministries of the Church are not “religious enough,” the federal government abrogates existing law and undermines the free-exercise protections of the First Amendment. Left unchanged, the final implementation of this provision will present an impossible dilemma: forcing the Catholic Church to either withdraw from public ministry or violate deeply held religious belief through the compelled provision of health insurance coverage for contraceptives and sterilization [which is precisely the goal of the newly defined criteria].

Illinois residents surely cannot accept this threat to religious freedom.

It's about time

This morning I noticed the Catholic Conference of Illinois finally has a new web site. Do take a look.