Incarnation

She was no longer simply Mary, no longer alone in herself. How astonishing is the news the angel has just given her! The God she loves above all else has called her name; called her to come receive the most splendid gift. He chose Mary, and she chose Him. And in an instant the God whom the universe cannot contain was safely tucked inside the darkness of her womb, growing and becoming. Gabriel had left her, and though she could not feel Him yet, she knew He was there. Not just in spirit now, but in her… part of her as He’d never been part of anyone before.

Weeks pass…she looks no different, yet she is the vessel that now protects the Holy One as He grows.

Then one day out of the blue she feels Him! That first gentle movement that feels like bubbles… so slight yet unmistakably baby. How delightful and exhilarating! Mighty God now softly stirs with delicate arms and tiny legs. He formed the vast oceans and filled them with marvelous creatures, and now He floats quietly in the warm, pure sea created only for Him.

Soon He is kicking her, pushing her, and forcefully! He enjoys doing flips, His ears now hear the sound of her voice, and He is quickly taking up more and more space in her body. He has always occupied her heart, and now she looks down at her round belly, places her hand over the spot where He kicks, and she marvels at how He has taken her over. She eagerly awaits the moment when she can kiss His tiny face, count tiny fingers and toes, and hold Him close to her heart…the heart He already owns.

Finally, the blessed hour comes, and He who gives life to every man and creature now waits for His own birth. I AM the LIFE must be given His life by His mother. She must deliver her Redeemer. And suddenly, there He is in her arms. Eternity was cradled in her arms.

Surely words could scarcely describe what it must have been like for her to look down at His little face and realize the mighty and sovereign Lord she bowed down to was now wearing the skin of her own flesh and nursing at her breast! To be twice overcome with fierce and tender love; once as a mother for her child, and again as a servant daughter of her Savior.

What exquisite joy and affection she must have felt to smell the sweetness of His head, feel the softness of His new baby skin (all parents know there’s nothing better than baby skin), hear His baby sighs and snores, and snuggle His warm little body against her own in sleep. Heaven on earth – literally – and every moment was hers to savor. How glorious and sweet! No mother has ever known greater joy, nor ever will.

And how deserving she was of such an unspeakable gift, for she also bore the greatest pain of any mother on earth.  
She gave Him life, so that He could give us Life.

How happy are we all to be her sons and daughters and know her loving affection and her stalwart protection! Thank you, Mother! Most Blessed Mother!

 

Obamacare and $1 Abortions: Latest Rule Requires an ‘Abortion Surcharge’

at Catholic Online

Shhhh…. President Obama’s got a little secret he doesn’t want you to know.

His administration just finalized another “rule” regarding Obamacare and the insurance exchange program: $1 abortions.

Forget all the promises Obama made about not subsidizing abortion; about people not having to pay for abortions if they didn’t want to. Forget all the speeches in which pro-lifers were ridiculed and hollered at for “lying” that Obamacare would fund abortions. Forget everything Nancy Pelosi and Kathleen Sebelius have said. Forget the Executive Order that isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

From LifeNews.com:
“Nestled within the “individual mandate” in the Obamacare act — that portion of the Act requiring every American to purchase government-approved insurance or pay a penalty — is an ‘abortion premium mandate.” This mandate requires all persons enrolled in insurance plans that include elective abortion coverage to pay a separate premium from their own pockets to fund abortion. As a result, many pro-life Americans will have to decide between a plan that violates their consciences by funding abortion, or a plan that may not meet their health needs.”

Senator Ben Nelson helped engineer the accounting gimmick that this mandate will utilize — the compromise that enticed Stupak and others to bail on their commitment to Life and vote for Obamacare. Under this shell game, the government is not technically subsidizing abortions — you and I are by government mandate. This is how Obamacare attempts to get around the Hyde Amendment for now. The goal is to get rid of Hyde permanently, because then elective abortions will be covered by taxpayer funding.

Here’s how it will break down: Insurers will collect a $1 surcharge per month from each payer. If you write checks for your insurance premiums, you’ll have to write two checks; one for the premium cost, and a separate check for $1 for this “surcharge.” If it gets billed to your credit card, you’ll see two separate charges; one for the premium cost and one for $1.

The insurance companies may only disclose to the enrollee at the time of enrollment what the surcharge is for; thereafter, they are not permitted to reveal in any of their policy literature what the $1 is for. In addition, “insurance plans may only advertise the total cost of the premiums without disclosing that enrollees will be charged a $1 per month fee to directly subsidize abortions.

In other words, the government (that means Obama) is saying that your insurance company can only tell you what the $1 surcharge each month is for at the time you enroll, and only if you know enough already to ask them about it (since they can’t disclose the $1 charge) and read the pages of fine print which is the only place in your policy where it’s mentioned. Once you enroll, if you didn’t ask, Obama says they can’t tell you.

Is this your idea of freedom or choice? There’s no “opting out” if your plan covers elective abortions. You can’t refuse to pay the surcharge. Jill Stanek writes, “But if an insurance company participating in the Obamacare exchange program does offer elective abortions, everyone who buys insurance from that company will have to pay a $1 separate surcharge every month to cover the cost of abortions. It doesn’t matter if you are pro-life. It doesn’t matter if you’re a 72-yr-old woman who will never abort. You have to pay the $1 surcharge.”

Insurance companies participating in the exchange program do not have to provide elective abortion coverage, so my next question is, how many plans will be available that don’t offer abortion coverage? How limited will they be in number and in coverage?

It seems to me that, ironically, women will be the ones to swallow the double-edged sword here.  Will there even be such a thing as a plan that offers OB/GYN care but does not cover abortion?  Will women even have the option of choosing a plan that doesn’t cover elective abortion and thus the $1 surcharge?

After all, according to this administration, “women’s health care” now absolutely means contraception, abortifacients, sterilization, and abortion, without exception. That means that insurers will either provide complete “women’s health care” coverage or none at all. Surely they won’t be permitted to cover only some components of “women’s health care” and refuse others, right? It’s really not hard to see this one coming.  The contraceptive mandate was just laying the foundation for this demeaning and manufactured version of “women’s health care” that now regards fertility as a disease.

This President’s modus operandi has been deny, deny, accuse, deny some more. Lie. Mandate. Use accounting schemes to mislead and obfuscate. Violate Constitutional rights.  Cover-up and lie some more.

Will enough people protest? C’mon, it’s only $12 a year, right? And since it goes unnamed every month, it just happens in the background, almost hidden. Practically forgotten. It’s not called what it really is. Much the same way we don’t want to call abortion what it really is.

It ought to send chills down the spine to realize the lengths Obama has gone, and will continue to go, for the purpose of advancing abortion in the U.S.. He serves no master more than he serves abortion.

Some will think that’s too harsh or unjustified a statement to make about the President. What about respect for the Office, some will ask? I can only say that his actions are dishonest, dictatorial, and evil. He has revealed his true priorities, and they are deadly. He has demonstrated that no organization in America is more important to him than Planned Parenthood. Obama is going after states that try to defund Planned Parenthood by withholding their Medicaid funding. This man who claims to champion women’s health will gladly jeopardize real health care for women for the sake of protecting Planned Parenthood.

As a state senator, Obama voted against a bill identical to the federal Born Alive Infant Protection Act — a bill designed to make sure babies who survived the first attempt on their lives were not subjected to a second attempt but were given the medical care they needed. He voted in favor of infanticide, and did so with his customary verbosity so as to try and conceal the fact that he thought babies who survived an abortion didn’t require the care of a doctor who wasn’t just trying to kill them moments before. No amount of eloquent spin can hide that fact.

He is not a respectable leader. He doesn’t want to be the leader of a free republic — he wants to be King. He hands down mandates from on-high. Then he coerces private companies into withholding the truth and helping him deceive the American people.

And astonishingly, he still has the support of a great many Catholics. Still, many Americans think he is a good President who should be given a second term. He arrogantly tramples on fundamental Constitutional rights, and still people defend and applaud him. Those folks must enjoy the slavery of government dictates and control. They must enjoy being deceived and manipulated. It boggles the mind.

If Obamacare is not repealed or found unconstitutional, these rules go into effect in 2014. In just a few months, we have one last chance to stop all this and ensure that Barack Obama is a one-term President. If we reward his duplicity with four more years, then we will deserve every dishonest, dictatorial thing he will do with those years.

 

Women Star in the President’s Political Theater: Who’s Really Getting Played?

at Catholic Online

After Sandra Fluke’s testimony before Congress last week, two things became clear: 1) This controversy is political theater if I ever saw it, and 2) modern, secular “feminism” makes women stupid.

With a pen stroke and a press conference, President Obama used women to initiate a war on Religious freedom and with the media lapdogs panting at his heels, he made sure the Republicans, and especially the Catholic Church, were painted as misogynist zealots.

Ms. Fluke has become the latest player in a drama that President Obama has manufactured and fueled for his own political gain. Fluke, the Georgetown law student who’s actually an activist for Reproductive Justice, joined Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius, Barbara Boxer, Cecile Richards (Planned Parenthood), Nancy Keenan (NARAL), and scores of other Congressional leaders and political activists who are bemoaning the trials of life without free birth control pills. With the President leading this contrived and fraudulent battle over “women’s health”, these so-called feminists have pinned women’s entire well-being to a package of pills and reduced women to just vaginas and uteruses.

Fluke, who was portrayed as a 23 year-old co-ed, is actually 30 years old and by her own admission chose to attend Georgetown precisely so she could battle their insurance policy since it does not cover contraceptives. What a handy witness she turned out to be last week on behalf of Obama’s contraception mandate. So important was she to Obama’s theater show that he personally called her to apologize for things Rush Limbaugh said on his program concerning her testimony.

Fluke testified that she and her classmates have to spend $3,000 during their time at Georgetown on contraception, and it’s simply an unbearable financial burden for them. If they paid top-dollar for birth control pills, that would be about $600 a year; $1,800 for three years. A box of condoms ranges from about $4.00 to $15.00. That’s maybe another $100 a year, but still nowhere close to $3,000.

To put this in perspective, I can sponsor two children through World Vision for less than $100 a month. That money actually helps feed, clothe and educate a child, and improve the lot of her community as well. So you can feed, clothe and shelter a child in a poverty-stricken country, or you can subsidize an Ivy-league college student’s sex life by buying her birth control.

To give you another perspective, consider what’s happening to active-duty military families and veteran retirees. Active-duty families will soon see their prescription costs increase while their access to civilian pharmacies shrinks. Military retirees are going to see their health insurance premiums skyrocket very soon, as Obamacare tries to force them off Tricare and onto one of the government exchange programs instead.

So while active-duty military families are paying more for all their prescriptions — medicines needed for actual illnesses — Ivy-league college co-eds simply MUST be provided with free birth control.

Meanwhile, unionized civilians health care benefits will be untouched. No additional costs for them, no sir. Protect union workers; ask military families to sacrifice even more. From whom much is already asked, even more will be required. Is this the new American way?

What Fluke and her peers need is not a legal education but a common sense, moral education. In about 30 minutes, they could all be taught how to manage their fertility without drugs, and their “birth control” would cost them absolutely nothing but self-control and mature decision-making. It’s called personal responsibility. And you know what? It’s very empowering!

In the real world, when you don’t have the money to pay for something you want, you do without it. Contraception is not food and water. It’s not electricity and shelter. It’s not a need at all. If Fluke wants birth control pills, fine, she can have them. She can also pay for them herself. No one is obligated to provide them for her.

This is the epitome of the entitlement society and mentality that we now live in. To insist that government or our employers must subsidize our sexual habits and behavior makes us officially the most selfish, lazy, immature, and embarrassing society America has ever seen.

Not to mention the most hypocritical. We demand the government stay out of our bedrooms while also demanding the government pay for our contraception. These modern “feminists” like Fluke will shout, “My body, my choice” and “stay out of my uterus” and most of all, “the Church has no right to tell me what to do with my body!” But now she is demanding that same government, that same Church must relieve her of the cost and responsibility for her own personal choices and bear the burden themselves.

Is this really the future of young American women? Do they really not have the brains to figure out that if they don’t have promiscuous, premarital sex, they don’t need to worry about paying for contraceptives? As an added bonus, they also won’t have to worry about STD’s and unwanted pregnancy. Why is that simple concept so hard to grasp?

It’s infuriating to me as a woman that this entire controversy is being played as a “war on women” and that this asinine contraceptive mandate is for the sake of “women’s health.” Artificial hormones bring with them serious risks for women and pose a real danger to women’s health. Pumping a woman’s — worse, a young girl’s still-growing body — full of these artificial hormones should not be anyone’s idea of the right way to take care of a woman’s health.

Fertility is not a disease. How insulting to suggest that women require artificial hormones, contraceptive devices, and abortion in order to be happy, healthy, and prosperous.

The language of this mandate and the rhetoric being used to defend it is insidious. Preventing pregnancy is equated with women’s health. Preventing children is equated with women’s well-being. Pregnancy = unhealthy and expensive. No pregnancy = healthy and cost-saving. Children have become the enemy. Children are now threatening, ominous dollar signs that we must strategically avoid.

This is really a mandate against life. What begins with pills in order to prevent pregnancy and save money will eventually become mandated abortions to eliminate children, especially disabled, “imperfect”, medically expensive ones. America is not immune to this progression. We’re submitting to it right now, and modern, secular “feminists” are leading the way.

The “feminists” swear that this is all about protecting women and their choices, blah blah blah. Baloney. The irony they don’t get is this mandate only further puts the responsibility of pregnancy and children totally on women, leaving men with nothing to do but use women for their sexual gratification and then walk away. Train the guys well to make sure their girlfriend is on the Pill so he can get what he wants, and then when the contraceptives fail, she can walk into Planned Parenthood where they’ve been waiting for her and she can get “her problem” taken care of. Teach those young boys now that girls are just vaginas with a pretty face.

Greater access to contraceptives does not prevent unplanned pregnancy.   Just the opposite. If people think they can have worry-free, consequence-free sex, they have more sex more often with more partners. And since contraception fails, more pregnancies result.

Face it; Cecile Richards doesn’t love this mandate because she wants to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies. She doesn’t want to put herself out of business. She loves this mandate because she knows that it will bring her more business. More promiscuous sexual activity means more STD’s and more pregnancies. And those “unwanted” babies will need to be gotten rid of for the sake of the woman’s future, so Cecile and company will be there holding the doors open to their abortion mills, happily counting their cash.

President Obama has created this contraception brouhaha for the express purpose of getting women in a tizzy before November. He plans to stoke the fire even further at Barnard College in NY, where he just made himself the commencement speaker.

“Word of Mr. Obama’s appearance at Barnard, a 123-year-old women’s college in New York City, comes as the White House and Democrats have seized on Republican attempts to block a requirement for contraception coverage in the new health care law, saying it amounts to a “war on women.”
Democrats believe the issue could be an effective rallying point with women voters in a presidential election year, and the decision to appear at the prestigious women’s school could provide a high-profile forum for the president on that front.”

He called and invited himself, displacing Jill Abramson from the NY Times, who was already scheduled to give the commencement speech.

Whatever else he talks about in his speech, it ought to be alarmingly clear that this President is not interested in freedom.  Barack Obama doesn’t want to be the leader of a free republic. He wants to be King. He wants to be the Sovereign. He doesn’t govern or lead — he simply issues mandates from on-high. So what if our Constitution guarantees the Freedom of Religion? He’s been telling us for years now that it’s really just the “Freedom of worship”, and if it gets in the way of his dictatorial edicts, well, then to hell with it.

C’mon ladies, wake up and stop being used and played for political points. This contraception theater show is insulting and women deserve better.