WASHINGTON, D.C., March 26, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A prominent U.S. senator has said that President Obama should “explain to the pope why he is telling businesses in America they can’t remain true to their faith and stay in business.”
On Thursday, President Obama will meet with Pope Francis for the first time. According to probable 2016 presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, a topic of top priority should be the abortifacient, sterilization, and contraception insurance coverage requirement under the Affordable Care Act.
Speaking on “Fox & Friends” on Tuesday morning, Paul did not mince words. “The ‘Hobby Lobby’ case is being discussed today,” he said, “and I think it’s important that [President Obama] tell the leader of the Catholic Church why he thinks that businesses owned by Catholics can’t make their own decisions with regard to health care.”
Since entering office in 2011, Paul has been outspoken on a number of disagreements he has with the president. He famously filibustered drone assassinations last year, and is very fiscally conservative. He has also spoken out in favor of pro-life policies, education and prison reforms, and creating family-friendly tax reforms.
Paul is not the only prominent figure criticizing the president's anti-freedom policies. In an interview published exclusively in English by LifeSiteNews, Cardinal Raymond Burke, prefect of the Vatican's Apostolic Signatura, said Obama's policies “have become progressively more hostile toward Christian civilization.”
“[The President of the United States of America] appears to be a totally secularized man who aggressively promotes anti-life and anti-family policies,” said Burke. “Now he wants to restrict the exercise of the freedom of religion to freedom of worship.”
Burke said the president “holds that one is free to act according to his conscience within the confines of his place of worship but that, once the person leaves the place of worship, the government can constrain him to act against his rightly-formed conscience, even in the most serious of moral questions.”
Catholic League President Bill Donahue told LifeSiteNews that Paul “is right to ask President Obama to explain to Pope Francis his policies as they affect religious liberty.” Specifically, says Donahue, “the president should tell the pope why he thinks that Catholic organizations that serve non-Catholics should not receive a religious exemption from ObamaCare.”
“I would love to see the pope’s reaction when he learns that the Little Sisters of the Poor are not a Catholic organization,” Donahue said.