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CATHOLIC ADVOCATE SPECIAL REPORT
From Deal W. Hudson, Executive Director of Catholic Advocate:
If you wonder if there is any limit to the anti-Catholicism of pro-abortion "Catholic" politicians, you should try to get your arms around this story.
Yesterday, Martha Coakley, the Democratic candidate for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, was asked in a radio interview whether doctors and nurses working in a hospital emergency room have religious freedom. Coakley replied, " You can have religious freedom, but you probably shouldn't work in the emergency room."
No, I didn't make this up. The radio host, Ken Pittman, was asking her about her perspective as a "Catholic" on issues like birth control. Coakley immediately went with her dissenting, reflex reaction of insisting on a "separation of Church and State." The conversation descended from there into the pit of puerile anti-Catholicism.
If politicians like Coakley are put in charge of "health care reform," the day may come when orthodox Catholics will be excluded from any medical services where they might decide not to provide an abortion, prescribe contraception, or euthanize a suffering patient.
Our country needs to wake up and realize the centrality of attitudes like Coakley to the entire health care debate! Coakley's attitude is representative of dissenting Catholics in Congress from Speaker Pelosi (D-CA) to Senator Mikulski (D-MD) to Rep. DeLauro (D-CT).
It was only a short while ago Pelosi was lecturing us, in good ninth-grade fashion, on how the Church's teaching on abortion was a denial — yes, I said a "denial," of free will.
Please, please realize it's as bad as it appears to be — there are no excuses for this kind of ignorant comments. After all, Martha Coakley is the attorney general — imagine that! — of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Doesn't that position require some modicum of detachment from one's own personal prejudices?
Coakley's willingness to use her political power against orthodox Catholics serving in the medical profession should be a wake-up call.
