First they came for …

It is rather interesting the reaction, or really for the most part the lack of reaction to the Health and Human Services direct attack on the First Amendment of the United States Constitution.

While many Catholics have been suitable upset about this including some who had even supported President Obama in the past, mostly the amount of outrage to this is quite muted.

Of course we can expect that the media will for the most part ignore this story.  GetReligion noticed the lack of reporting concerning so many bishops speaking out on this.  Thomas Peters has been doing good reporting on this in listing as of now 111 bishops who have spoken up in the United States which is over half of all bishops here.

In many cases letters from the bishops were read out at Mass.  This was done in my diocese and I was also very happy to hear not only the letter read at Mass but to hear some excellent commentary from the priest on the subject about how we need to fight this and that the adults must provide an example to children and grandchildren and that this must not stand.

Outside of Catholic circles though this has received much less coverage even from conservative circles.  That this is mostly a Catholic thing instead of something that everybody should be alarmed about.  It reminds me of  pastor Martin Niemöller  famous statement and could be rephrased “First they came for the Catholic’s conscience protection …”.  Maybe the issue will ramp up in people’s minds as the ramifications sink in.  This really should be something prominent during this campaign season as it really shows the Obama administration for what it is as abortion shrills who will tramp over consciences as they kowtow to the culture of death.

At least there is some good news today.

 U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) today introduced the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2012, a bill to repeal a new ObamaCare mandate that violates the religious liberties and conscience rights of faith-based institutions by forcing them to offer employees insurance coverage for contraceptives.

(4) that narrow exemption, unprecedented Federal law, excludes thousands of religiously-affilated hospitals, schools, charities, and businesses; and

(5) despite receiving thousands of comments  protesting the absurdly narrow exemption, the Department of Health and Human Services nonetheless announced on January 20, 2012, that it would not  broaden the exemption but would instead give religious institutions an additional year to ‘‘adapt’’ their  consciences to the mandate.

“‘adapt’’ their  consciences” indeed.

I also find it interesting how “Obama Catholics” found this to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.  They could scruple a man who voted for infanticide, revoked the Mexico City policy, spent $23 million dollars to back a Kenyan constitution change to support abortion, appointed multiple people from Emily’s List on his staff along with zero pro-life staff.  signed an executive order forcing taxpayer funding of embryonic stem cell research, and on and on and on.  Yet this was the final straw. I guess the camels of “Obama Catholics” have backs of steel if they could pile on so much evil before finally breaking under the weight of the HHS ruling.  I guess instead of being snarky I should welcome them back to reality.