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Loss of religious freedom, erosion of morals will continue unless we stand up for our faith

Father Tad Pacholczyk’s “Making Sense of Bioethics” column and the editorial in the Oct. 11 edition of The Criterion share a common theme during this Respect Life Month: We need to be vigilant in protecting what we, as a Church, believe and fight against secular government influences.

Father Pacholczyk points out that we often don’t know where our charitable dollars are spent. He describes how the Susan G. Komen Foundation for breast cancer grants money to Planned Parenthood, the largest single abortion provider in the country.

The editorial discusses the Church’s fight against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) mandate for providing contraception, abortifacients and sterilization through the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare), a practice that undermines religious freedom.

Behind the scenes of both of these issues was Planned Parenthood’s intimate involvement with the Obama administration. The Komen Foundation had originally withdrawn its grant support for Planned Parenthood, but reversed that decision under withering pressure from the administration and the complicit media which supports him.

Also, the CEO of Planned Parenthood was on the advisory council that pressured President Barack Obama to keep the contraception mandate in the health care law, a provision that benefits them financially and tramples religious freedom. Obama had told Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan that the religious institutions would be exempt. He was not truthful.

Respect Life Month is more than petitions at Mass and life-affirming symbols of solidarity. These are good, but not enough.

It is a time when we need to decide what we, as a Church, will do to stand up to those who promote the anti-life, abortion-on-demand culture, and those who wish to impose statist principles which trod upon religious liberties.

Our leaders, the bishops and priests, need to proclaim loudly in the media and from the pulpit that we will no longer tolerate a society that considers human life expendable, nor a government that intrudes in our practice of religion.

We, the people who are the Church, need to wake up to the fact that unless we become more proactive in whom we vote for and what we donate to, we will find more and more of our religious freedoms taken away and continue to witness the erosion of morals in our society.

- Dr. Stephen O’Neil | Indianapolis