Three Links Wednesday (vol. VI)

"Oh confound all this. I'm not a scholar, I don't know whether the marriage was lawful or not but dammit, Thomas, look at these names! Why can't you do as I did and come with us, for fellowship!"
"And when we die, and you are sent to heaven for doing your conscience, and I am sent to hell for not doing mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?"

This could almost be the exchange between the Catholic Health Association and others who embraced the President's "compromise," on the one hand, and the response of the Bishops and those of good faith who stand with them, on the other.

--I--

First, Mr Ross Douthat has a post concerning the so-called "compromise" on the HHS mandate:

So far as I can tell, the White House’s proposed “compromise” in the contraception-sterilization-plan B-ella controversy asks the parties involved to compromise their reasoning faculties and play a game of “let’s pretend” instead. The revised regulation allows religious institutions to pretend that they aren’t actually purchasing an insurance plan that covers services they find morally objectionable, because their insurance companies will be required to pretend that they’re supplying these services free of charge. But fond illusions about “free” services aside, it’s hard to see how a system in which Catholic hospitals and colleges are required to purchase health insurance for their employees from insurers that are required to cover birth control, sterilizations and the morning- and days-after pills is meaningfully different from the original Health and Human Services mandate. As Yuval Levin writes, ”the choice for religious employers is still between paying an insurer to provide their workers with access to a product that violates their convictions or paying a fine to the government.” The rule has been changed, but the reality remains the same.

Meanwhile, Mr Mark Shea gets in a good quick jab at the mandate--one which it well deserves--and reminds us to RESIST THE TYRANT. On a related note, I had been contemplating voting third party this time around, since Mitt Romney doesn't sit well with me; this HHS mandate means that such contemplation is over and done with.

--II--

My colleague Mrs Kayla Peterson begins to take on the lie that contraception is somehow good for women. It's not. At best, it make s a bad situation worse by making a woman think that she is living risk-free when she is not: which is why the majority of abortions are committed against the children (and, for that matter, the mothers) who were conceived while the mother (or father) was using some form of contraception.

--III--

My friend Mr Nathan Kennedy on the Komen-Planned Parenthood fiasco:

 "And immediately before [the tyrannical HHS mandate], there was the public fiasco about that one organization who started having doubts about their long-term steady relationship with that other organization because that other organization was not the kind of organization that that she was hoping he would be, and how after great heartache they ultimately decided it would be best to keep the relationship going for the good of the screaming activist children…"

--Bonus--

CatholicVote's Jennifer Roche has a short story about what life may be like in 50 years if we continue along the path on which the President has placed us. I do not think it will be quite like that, though the future I envision won't be much better. I suspect that we will eventually arrive at something like what China has with the National/Patriotic Catholic Church which is effectively ruled by the government, and then a smaller "underground" Church which is actually faithful to the Magisterium and to the Vicar of Christ. The latter will be somewhat persecuted, but it will ultimately survive; the former will probably not. But whatever may be the result in the future, our task no is clear: RESIST THE TYRANT, in prayer, in action, or in simply continuing our lives "deaf and disobedient to his arrogations."