Washington D.C., Feb 23, 2012 / 02:05 am (CNA/EWTN News).- A group of ministers from numerous religious backgrounds sent a message to the White House declaring a “state of emergency” over a health insurance mandate that may force religious employers to violate their consciences.

“Protestants are beginning to close ranks and join our Catholic friends on this issue,” said Lutheran minister Dr. Norman Lund.

Lund told CNA on Feb. 21 that he considers the issue to be part of his Christian identity and “an issue worth fighting and dying for.” He explained that the core problem “is not birth control” but “the freedom of churches to determine their own policies and positions on issues like birth control.”

“In other words,” he said, “this is an issue of religious liberty and freedom of conscience.”

Lund is a member of the National Clergy Council, a group that represents Catholic, Protestant, Evangelical and Orthodox leaders.

After deliberating with pastors and theologians across the country, the council has declared a state of emergency for the Churches in response to the Obama administration’s contraception mandate.

The mandate will require employers to provide health insurance plans that cover contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, even if doing so violates their consciences and religious beliefs.

A declaration outlining a “State of Emergency and Time for Speaking” was delivered to the White House on Ash Wednesday, Feb. 22, in an appeal to President Barack Obama.

The statement affirms the council’s “unwavering position” on the “sanctity” of conscience rights and maintains the “God-given” ability to live out principles of conscience within a religious institution.

Clergy members said they hope the matter can be resolved by a repeal of the mandate, but warned that “we must hold to our convictions and positions and act according to our prerogatives no matter the legal, social, pecuniary, or political consequences.”
 
The council noted that its statement was inspired by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and martyr who worked to resist the Nazis.

It described Bonhoeffer as “an exemplar of what it means to hold to and to exercise one's religious, moral, and ethical convictions, even to the surrender of every other right, including the right to one's life.”

At the Feb. 2 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., President Obama was given a copy of Bonhoeffer’s biography by author Eric Metaxas.

Calling for “all people of conscience” to stand with them, the council members informed Obama that they “must take extraordinary action to respectfully resist your decrees.”

The National Clergy Council joins with a growing number of faith groups that have objected to the contraception mandate on the grounds of religious freedom.

The U.S. bishops have called for the mandate to be repealed, and multiple members of the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities – representing both Catholic and Protestant schools – have urged the administration to substantially change or remove it.

Washington D.C., Feb 23, 2012 / 12:00 am (CNA).- Mandatory insurance coverage of the “morning-after pill,” a key part of the Obama administration's contraception rule, has only 38 percent of likely voters' support according to a new survey.

A Feb. 20-21 telephone poll by Rasmussen Reports found that half of the country's likely voters opposed mandatory insurance coverage of emergency contraceptive drugs like “ella” and “Plan B,” which can cause an early-stage abortion by preventing embryo implantation.

Thirteen percent of the voting public said they were unsure whether the government should force insurers to provide the drugs without a co-pay, as they must do under Health and Human Services' rule finalized Feb. 10.

The president's morning-after pill requirement is even more unpopular with political independents, than it is with the voting public in general.

Among likely voters who did not identify as either Republicans or Democrats, the poll found only 31 percent support, and 54 percent opposition, to mandated coverage of “free” emergency contraception.

Support was also lower among self-identified Catholics, than in the general population. Only 33 percent of Catholic respondents supported the administration's plan to make insurers cover emergency contraception without any charge to the recipient.

Only 24 percent of Evangelicals, and 31 percent of other Protestants, supported the contraception mandate's morning-after pill provision.

Different attitudes toward abortion were also associated with support or opposition of the emergency contraception mandate. Those who identified as “pro-choice” supported the morning-after rule at a rate of 61 percent, while 79 percent opposition was found among those calling themselves “pro-life.”

Likely voters of both sexes had similar attitudes on the question of emergency contraception, which the Obama administration has sought to present as an important part of women's health care.

Men and women supported the emergency-contraception mandate at rates of 36 percent and 39 percent, respectively, while 51 percent of men and 48 percent of women said they opposed the provision.

While the contraception mandate has been touted by supporters as a benefit to the poor, its strongest support – at a rate of 49 percent – came from respondents making over $100,000 per year, the highest income bracket surveyed.

Those earning less than $20,000 annually, who fell into the survey's lowest income bracket, were actually less likely to support the morning-after pill policy than those in the top income range. They approved of the administration's policy at a rate of 44 percent.

Washington D.C., Feb 22, 2012 / 03:16 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Iranian authorities may have issued an execution order for a pastor jailed for refusing to renounce his Christian faith.

“The news out of Iran is not encouraging,” said Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice.

The D.C.-based human rights organization said that it has received information from its contacts in Iran that execution orders for Yousef Nadarkhani may have been issued.

A spokesman for the organization told CNA that Nadarkhani was still alive as of Feb. 21.

However, the situation is “dire,” the group said, and there is a need for prayer and increased efforts to focus international attention and pressure on Iran.

Sekulow said that the Iranian regime might have “decided to move forward by issuing an execution order” while international attention “is focused elsewhere.”

He explained that pressure from around the globe is essential because Iran's top officials still have the power to reject the order.

Nadarkhani has been in jail since 2009, when he was arrested after complaining to local authorities about his son being forced to read the Quran at school.

Despite threats of execution for apostasy, the Christian pastor has refused to renounce his faith.

An appeals court agreed with Nadarkhani’s assertion that he had never been a Muslim during his adult life. However, it also decided that because he had left the faith of his ancestors, he must recant or die.

Amid growing international pressure, Iranian officials then asked the nation’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, for an “opinion” on the case.

The court had promised to issue a decision by December if the Supreme Leader did not reply. However, no ruling has been issued, and Nadarkhani has remained in jail.

A statement by the American Center for Law and Justice said that it is unclear whether Nadarkhani would have a right to appeal the execution order.
 
Although all publicly held executions must be approved by the head of Iran’s Judiciary Chief, Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, most executions in Iran are carried out secretly rather than in public, it explained.

The statement also observed a “disturbing increase” in the number of executions carried out by the Iranian regime in recent weeks. 

Sekulow and his colleagues have been following Nadarkhani’s situation for several months, raising awareness for the pastor’s plight through efforts including a Twitter campaign and online petition, which has received more than 35,000 signatures.

On Feb. 17, Congressman Joe Pitts (R-Pa.) introduced a resolution condemning the Iranian government and calling for the release of Nadarkhani.

Efforts are now intensifying to raise support for that resolution and other awareness initiatives that may save the condemned pastor’s life.

Rome, Italy, Feb 22, 2012 / 01:31 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Like millions of Catholics around the world, Pope Benedict XVI received ashes on Ash Wednesday. He said that they become a “sacred symbol” of austerity which reflects both the “curse” of sin and the promise of the resurrection in a fallen world.

The Ash Wednesday words from Scripture -- “dust you are and unto dust you shall return” – are “an invitation to penance, humility and an awareness of our mortal state,” the Pope said.
 
“We are not to despair, but to welcome in this mortal state of ours the unthinkable nearness of God who opens the way to Resurrection, to paradise regained, beyond death … The same spirit that resurrected Jesus from the dead can transform our hearts from hearts of stone to hearts of flesh,” he said in his homily at the fifth-century Basilica of Santa Sabina, where he too received ashes.

Lent is thus a journey towards the “Easter of Resurrection.”
 
The Pope spoke after leading the Ash Wednesday evening procession on Rome’s Aventine Hill, a tradition revived by Pope John Paul II in 1979.

The papal homily included a short reflection on the meaning of ashes in Scripture and in Christian thought.

While the ashes are not a sacramental sign, they are linked with “prayer and the sanctification of the Christian people,” he said.

In Genesis, God created man out of dust from the soil and breathed a “breath of life” into him. The Ash Wednesday ashes therefore recall the creation of mankind.

Being human means uniting matter with the “Divine breath.” However, the symbol of dust takes on a negative connotation because of sin.

“Before the fall the soil is totally good,” the Pope said. But after the fall dust produces “only thorns and brambles.” Rather than recalling the “creative hand of God” that is open to life, dust becomes “a sign of death.”

Pope Benedict said that this change shows that the Earth itself participates in man’s destiny. The cursing of the soil helps man recognize his limitations and his own human nature.

This curse comes from sin, not from God, he explained. Even within this punishment, there is “a good intention that comes from God.”

When God says in Genesis “dust you are and unto dust you shall return,” he intends not only a just punishment, but also an announcement of the path to salvation, the Pope preached.

This salvation “will pass through the Earth, through that same dust, that same flesh which will be assumed by the Word Incarnate.”

Vatican City, Feb 22, 2012 / 12:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- As he observed Ash Wednesday, Pope Benedict XVI urged Christians to live the 40 days of Lent with faith and patience, aware that God will bring light, truth and joy into the darkness.

“In these 40 days that will lead us to Easter may we find new courage to accept with patience and with faith situations of difficulty, of affliction and trial, knowing that from the darkness the Lord will make a new day dawn,” the Pope said Feb. 22, the first day of Lent.

“And if we are faithful to Jesus and follow him on the way of the Cross, the bright world of God, the world of light, truth and joy will be gifted to us once more.”

The Pope delivered his comments at his weekly general audience, which was held in the Vatican’s Pop Paul VI Hall and was attended by over 7,500 pilgrims.

He explained that in the early Church it was only those preparing to be baptized who would observe the 40 days of Lenten preparation. Subsequently, however, all Christians were invited “to experience this journey of spiritual renewal, to conform themselves and their lives to that of Christ,” including those who had fallen away from the Church.

The Pope said that the “participation of the whole community” emphasizes that “redemption is not available to only a few, but to all, through the death and resurrection of Christ.”

“The time leading up to Easter is a time of ‘metanoia,’ a time of change and penance, a time which identifies our human lives and our entire history as a process of conversion, which begins to move now in order to meet the Lord at the end of time,” he said.

Pope Benedict noted that the Church calls the 40 days leading up to Easter “Quadragesima.” And it does so with a “clear reference to Sacred Scripture,” where the number 40 often symbolically used to express “a time of expectation, purification, and return to the Lord,” he taught.

The Pope said that the “Christian liturgy of Lent” is meant to spur a “journey of spiritual renewal” and time more focused on learning how to imitate Jesus, who showed Christians “how to overcome temptation with the Word of God.”

The Pope asked those at today’s audience to note how God sustained his people, even in the wilderness. After their exodus from Egypt, for example, God preceded the Jewish people “in a cloud or a pillar of fire, ensured their daily nourishment showering manna upon them, and bringing forth water from rock.” It was in many ways a “time of the special election of God” or, added the Pope, “the time of first love,” of a people for their God.

But time spent in the desert can also be “the time of the greatest temptations and dangers,” Pope Benedict observed, pointing out that this happened to Jesus but “without any compromise with sin.” Jesus always sought “moments of solitude to pray to his Father” but it is in those moments he was most assailed by “temptation and the seduction of devil.” It was there, for example, that he was offered “another messianic way, far from God’s plan.”

Just as this dynamic is found in the Old and New Testaments, the Pope said, it can also be found in the “condition of the pilgrim Church” as it makes its way through “the “wilderness’ of the world and history.”

This wilderness is made up of “the aridity and poverty of words, life and values, of secularism” and the “culture of materialism which encloses people within a worldly horizon and detaches them from any reference to the transcendent,” he said.

It is in such an atmosphere that “the sky above us is dark, because it is veiled with clouds of selfishness, misunderstanding and deceit.”

At the same time, “the wilderness can become a period of grace” for the Church, because “we have the certainty that even from the hardest rock God can cause the living water to gush forth, water which quenches thirst and restores strength.”

Pope Benedict finished by saying that this hope in God’s power should sustain the Church and each Christian during the following 40 days.