ALL: BISHOPS MUST CHOOSE BETWEEN CHRIST-CENTERED CARE AND OBAMACARE

Washington, DC (09 September 2009) –  As Obama prepares to address the nation Wednesday on his health care plan, American Life League challenged the nation's Catholic bishops to be prepared to shut down Catholic health care and make it clear that they prefer this action to compromising with the intrinsic evils currently contained in various Obama care proposals. 

"Obama speaks tonight. Christ speaks always. When it comes to health care reform which road will our Catholic bishops take?" the group asked in a Washington Times ad.

The ad highlighted six principled positions Catholic-supported health care must include: opposition to abortion, contraception, sterilization, human embryonic stem cell therapy, euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Judie Brown, president of American Life League, the country's largest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization, said the ad addressed a critical question from the nation's lay Catholic faithful: Why are the bishops largely remaining silent in opposition to the deadly provisions contained in Obamacare proposals?

"The president has laid before us a government mandate to subsidize a culture of death and impose it on Catholic health care," Brown said. "We desperately need our bishops to lead the fight against this plan so diametrically opposed to the Faith - yet their silence speaks their approval."

The ad quotes Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) who in 1997 said:

“The words of the Bible and of the Church fathers rang in my ears, those sharp condemnations of shepherds who are like mute dogs; in order to avoid conflicts, they let the poison spread. Peace is not the first civic duty, and a bishop whose only concern is not to have any problems and to gloss over as many conflicts as possible is an image I find repulsive.”

"For the American bishops, the choice is simple," Brown said. "Embrace Obamacare and sell the soul of the Church to government bureaucrats and politicians or embrace the Faith and be prepared to shut down Catholic health care rather than participate in intrinsic evil. We ask the bishops to unite behind Christ and His teachings now while there is still time to have a positive effect on the road ahead."