The Importance of the 2016 elections and Religious Liberty are the subject of this Big B File.
The 2016 election has become the most important and consequential elections since the founding of this great nation in 1776…. the reasons why I will outline for you now.
The first reason has everything to do with Religious Liberty. What is Religious Liberty? Religious liberty is the exercising your First Amendment right to practice your faith….and not just inside the church walls, but outside the church walls as well….without the government telling you what you can believe and not believe as well as how or where you can put your faith into practice.
Obamacare, which was passed in 2009 on a party-line vote and has more bad parts to it than good parts, ushered in the latest wave of attacks on religious liberty in the United States… Primarily through the issuance of the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate. What the mandate basically said was that ALL organizations, businesses, groups, etc. had to provide contraceptive coverage in their health plans regardless of their religious beliefs on the issue. The Obama administration carved out an exception for religious groups that so narrow that Jesus Christ himself couldn’t possibly qualify at all for the exemption. Not even Catholic religious orders were exempt from the HHS Mandate. Just ask the Little Sisters of the Poor, EWTN, and several Catholic Dioceses such as the Archdioceses of St. Louis MO, Catholic Charities of St. Louis and the Springfield, IL and Joliet, IL dioceses, and Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago who have successfully sued the Obama administration at various levels, with some have successfully sued the Obama administration all the all the way up to the United States Supreme Court.
I have to ask this question…What right does the President of United States have to decide what consists of the Catholic Church and what does not? For example, the president is basically saying that the Little Sisters of the Poor, a religious order within the Catholic Church, is not part of the Catholic Church itself, but an independent organization. I hate to break this to you Mr. President, but the Little Sisters of the Poor are most definitely part of the Catholic Church. Here’s the definition of a religious order:
“Communities of men and women who profess vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience.”
In case you don’t get what these vows are, they are vows every member of the religious community takes When joining a religious community a.k.a. religious order. Let me focus now on one of those vows…. obedience. According to the New Advent website, the vow of obedience means that “By Divine law, religious persons are subject to the hierarchy of the Church; first to the pope, then to the bishops, then to their religious superior, unless exempted by the pope from episcopal jurisdiction. This hierarchy was instituted by Christ in order to direct the faithful not only in the way of salvation, but also in Christian perfection.”
Those who helped bring about these disturbing and sickening attacks on religious liberty on this nation either seem to think these Religious Orders are not part of the Catholic Church or know the truth and are fine lying to the American People about it without a second thought. Besides, if we have a president and his administration who is fine with lying to the face of the President of the USCCB (Cardinal Timothy Dolan at the time, then who else’s rights would they be willing to violate……just saying. This brings me to the second reason why the 2016 election has become the most important and consequential elections since the founding of this great nation in 1776.
The second reason has everything to do with the appointment of justices to the United States Supreme Court as well as the majority of the United States Judiciary. And what does this have anything to do with the Supreme Court and the federal judiciary? As The Daily Signal explains……
“With three of the surviving Supreme Court justices in or near their 80s, successors named by the next president could shift the ideological makeup of the nation’s highest court.
Within hours of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death Saturday at age 79, President Barack Obama and Senate Republicans began to clash over whether he should nominate, and the Senate confirm, a successor during a presidential election year.
Scalia, nominated by President Ronald Reagan, had served on the Supreme Court since September 1986.
Three of the eight remaining justices are age 77 or older.”
- “Next President Could Stack the Deck as Supreme Court Justices Near Retirement”
By Leah Jessen / THE DAILYSIGNAL / (February 17, 2016)
Not only are four potential Supreme Court vacancies possible for the next president, but a sizeable chunk or the Federal Judiciary is up for grabs as well. According to Fox News, there were 103 federal court vacancies, 38 of them classified by the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts as “judicial emergencies” as of 2010 with 99 judicial positions remaining unfilled including the seat that was held by Justice Antonin Scalia, according to the US Courts official website…with 15 new vacancies coming up between now and June 30, 2017.
The U.S. Constitution and our God given rights are at stake. As the title of an op-ed by Fox News contributor Cal Thomas says “What’s at stake in the 2016 elections? Nothing less than the Constitution.” From the article….
This election is about a lot of things, but it is fundamentally about the U.S. Constitution and whether federal judges will adhere to their oath to “… faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me … under the Constitution and laws of the United States,” or dilute, attack and destroy our founding document.
That the Constitution is on the ballot in the persons of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, who hold differing views of it and have pledged to appoint radically different judges to federal benches, is revealed in a recent op-ed for Slate by Richard Posner, a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit and a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.
In his op-ed, as reported by The Washington Times, Judge Posner claims to see “absolutely no value” in studying the Constitution because “18th-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21st century.” I suspect if they had seen modern culture with our fixation on Kim Kardashian, they might have retreated to England.
Even the Bill of Rights, says Posner, “do not speak to today.”
Wow. Freedom of speech, assembly, the press, religion, no warrantless searches and more are outmoded concepts? Who knew?
- “What’s at stake in the 2016 elections? Nothing less than the Constitution”
By Cal Thomas / Fox News / (October 11, 2016)
On the One hand, you have one presidential candidate who has stated that they will appoint judges who will continue what President Obama has done so far by completely trashing and willfully violating the Constitution, infringing on our rights, making decisions based on their own agenda. On the other hand, we have a presidential candidate who has pledged to appoint judges who will interpret the Constitution as it is written and how the founders intended.
One party has in its platform an embracing of the Culture of Life and defending our God given rights and freedoms, while the other party has in its platform an embracing of the Culture of Death and absolute denial of our God given rights and freedoms and trashing the constitution…. especially if it differs from their agenda and/or opinion.
With all of the above said, please join me in praying this Prayer Before An Election (courtesy of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops [USCCB])….
Prayer Before An Election
Lord God, as the election approaches,
we seek to better understand the issues and concerns that confront our city/state/country,
and how the Gospel compels us to respond as faithful citizens in our community.We ask for eyes that are free from blindness
so that we might see each other as brothers and sisters,
one and equal in dignity,
especially those who are victims of abuse and violence, deceit and poverty.
We ask for ears that will hear the cries of children unborn and those abandoned,
Men and women oppressed because of race or creed, religion or gender.
We ask for minds and hearts that are open to hearing the voice of leaders who will bring us closer to your Kingdom.We pray for discernment
so that we may choose leaders who hear your Word,
live your love,
and keep in the ways of your truth
as they follow in the steps of Jesus and his Apostles
and guide us to your Kingdom of justice and peace.We ask this in the name of your Son Jesus Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
The Big B Files believes that, unless we vote for candidates who pledge to protect these values, that this election will ultimately be our great nation’s own undoing…. our own downfall. Just look at what happened to the Roman Empire when elected leaders embraced what some like our current president are pushing for and trying to force on us while violating our constitutional freedoms without a care in the world.
……And that’s the Big B Files. Click on the comments link below and tell me what you think……I’m Bryan V. Hewing.
