CSVF Blog

Late last week, the US Bishops sent the following letter to each member of the US Senate.  In it, the bishops outline their concerns regarding the health care reform bill currently progressing through the upper chamber.

November 20, 2009
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator:

On behalf of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), we strongly urge the Senate to incorporate essential changes to the Senate’s health care reform bill to ensure that needed health care reform legislation truly protects the life, dignity, consciences and health of all. We especially urge the Senate to act as the House has in the following respects:

• keep in place current federal law on abortion funding and conscience protections on abortion;
• protect the access to health care that immigrants currently have and remove current barriers to access;
• and include strong provisions for adequate affordability and coverage standards.

The Catholic Bishops of the United States have long supported adequate and affordable health care for all. As pastors and teachers, we believe genuine health care reform must protect human life and dignity, not threaten them, especially for the most voiceless and vulnerable. We believe health care legislation must respect the consciences of providers, taxpayers, and others, not violate them. We believe universal coverage should be truly universal, not deny health care to those in need because of their condition, age, where they come from or when they arrive here. Providing affordable and accessible health care that clearly reflects these fundamental principles is a public good, moral imperative and urgent national priority.

Sadly, the legislative proposal recently unveiled in the Senate does not meet these moral criteria. Specifically, it violates the longstanding federal policy against the use of federal funds for elective abortions and health plans that include such abortions – a policy upheld in all health programs covered by the Hyde Amendment, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program – and now in the House-passed “Affordable Health Care for America Act.” We believe legislation that violates this moral principle is not true health care reform and must be amended to reflect it. If that fails, the current legislation should be opposed.

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Give her the reward of her deeds;
they will proclaim her as she enters the gates.

From the Dominican Ordo:

Blessed Margaret, a member of the noble family of the Dukes of Savoy, was born probably in 1382 and married the Marquis of Monferrat, a widower with two children.  They lived a model Christian life, sharing their wealth with the poor, educating the ignorant, and caring for victims of the plague.  Upon the death of her husband she vowed herself to widowhood and with the encouragement of Saint Vincent Ferrer took the habit of the Sisters of Penance and founded the monastery of Saint Mary Magdalen at Alba.  In a vision our Lord offered her three arrows: “sickness,” “slander,” and “persecution.”  She endured all of these and offered her sufferings for the peace of the universal Church, for the Western Schism had begun a short time before.  She died on November 23, 1464.

For more on the life and virtue of Blessed Margaret, click here and here.

God of holiness,
you taught Blessed Margaret
to leave the royal court
and to follow you in humility.
Following her example
may we learn to cherish what is divine
and to overcome all adversities
through love of your cross.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, forever and ever. Amen.

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On November 20, Archbishop Timothy Dolan joined dozens of religious and cultural leaders from around the country in signing the Manhattan Declaration.  As drafted and agreed upon by the original signers, the Declaration reaffirms their commitment as Christians to work for the protection and promotion of the common good in American society.

From the Manhattan Declaration’s website:

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

In just under a week, over 110,000 others have attached their names to the Declaration.

To read the Declaration, click here.  To sign it, click here.

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Now this wise virgin has gone to Christ.
Among the choirs of virgins she is radiant as the sun in the heavens.

Today the Church remembers the early fourth-century virgin and martyr Catherine of Alexandria, whose feast was recently restored to the Roman Calendar after its removal during the liturgical reforms following the Second Vatican Council.

Dominicans have been particularly happy with the return of today’s feast, for since the Order’s inception it has honored St. Catherine as a patroness and protectress.

From the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Of noble birth and learned in the sciences, when only eighteen years old, Catherine presented herself to the Emperor Maximinus who was violently persecuting the Christians, upbraided him for his cruelty and endeavoured to prove how iniquitous was the worship of false gods. Astounded at the young girl’s audacity, but incompetent to vie with her in point of learning the tyrant detained her in his palace and summoned numerous scholars whom he commanded to use all their skill in specious reasoning that thereby Catherine might be led to apostatize. But she emerged from the debate victorious. Several of her adversaries, conquered by her eloquence, declared themselves Christians and were at once put to death. Furious at being baffled, Maximinus had Catherine scourged and then imprisoned. Meanwhile the empress, eager to see so extraordinary a young woman, went with Porphyry, the head of the troops, to visit her in her dungeon, when they in turn yielded to Catherine’s exhortations, believed, were baptized, and immediately won the martyr’s crown. Soon afterwards the saint, who far from forsaking her Faith, effected so many conversions, was condemned to die on the wheel, but, at her touch, this instrument of torture was miraculously destroyed. The emperor, enraged beyond control, then had her beheaded and angels carried her body to Mount Sinai where later a church and monastery were built in her honour.

Devotion to St. Catherine reached its zenith in the Middle Ages, when she was counted among the Fourteen Holy Helpers.  It is then that St. Dominic himself developed his devotion to her.  Dominic’s legend claims that St. Catherine appeared to him in a vision.

For more on St. Catherine of Alexandria, click here, here, and here.

Lord,
you have told us that you live for ever
in the hearts of the chaste.
By the prayers of the virgin Catherine,
help us to live by your grace
and remain a temple of your Spirit.

We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, forever and ever. Amen.

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