One of the main news topics this past week involved President Obama’s
mandate that Catholic and other religious institutions were required to
provide free medical coverage for birth control. Then the president
seemed to offer an olive branch, but upon closer examination the branch
turned out to be deadly hemlock and not olive. He said that the
insurance companies would have to provide the free birth control to the
employees of religious institutions, which is virtually the same
disregard for strong religious beliefs and to many Americans an outright
violation of the First Amendment.
In all of the news and discussions, no one paid any attention to the
effects this was having on our military personnel, especially the
chaplains. The Catholic Church had issued a denomination wide letter in
which they informed parishioners that the Church “cannot and will not
comply with this unjust law.”
The Army immediately issued orders
to all chaplains, especially Catholic chaplains that they are not
allowed to read the letter in its entirety and that certain portions of
it are to be blacked out and not read aloud. Former Navy chaplain
Gordon Klingenschmitt said,
“The secretary of the Army said you have to line out some of the
language, or else we’re going to charge the chaplains with sedition and
treason for opposing the Obama administration. Can you believe this?
They are actually threatening chaplains with court-martial if they dare
to preach against sin in their own church.”
First the Pentagon tells all chaplains that they are required to ignore
their religious beliefs and perform same-sex marriages or unions for
military personnel requesting such services. Then they told all
military chaplains that they had to make their facilities available for
same-sex union ceremonies.
Klingenschmitt reports that he was literally forced to resign his
commission as a Navy chaplain after he had prayed publicly in the name
of Jesus while wearing his Navy uniform.
Now the Pentagon is
telling chaplains that they cannot preach against mandated birth control
coverage or the sanctity of life without facing the serious charges of
sedition and treason.
If Obama is re-elected in November, I would
not be surprised to see his administration force all Christian chaplains
to never mention anything about the Bible, Jesus Christ or preach
against any sin. They’ll be turned into nothing more than secular
counselors. But Muslim chaplains will be allowed to speak of Allah and
publicly pray to Allah aloud.
No comments:
Post a Comment