When you refer to these gals, the Little Sisters of the Poor, whose mission is to serve the elderly poor in impoverished neighborhoods, as "threatening."
As in:
“The administration must now deal with this latest threat to the nation’s health care law: these ladies, the Little Sister of the Poor.”Joanne McPortland, (a sensible Liberal & recently-returned-Catholic) rightly calls this kind of thing the "noveau Know-Nothingism." Here (as noted yesterday in my Twitter feed), she smacks down a frankly bigoted piece from US News denouncing Sonia Sotomayor, who is turning out not to be such a wise Latina in the Left's mind after all. And that because she simply wanted to give a fair hearing to the Ladies in the picture before forcing them to pay for abortions and sterilizations.
Actually the Anchoress does the best smackdown and the piece, but I highlight McPortland's because she does us all the favor of uncovering a highly relevant letter of Thomas Jefferson to Ursuline nuns at the time of the Louisiana Purchase. The nuns had fled the French Revolution and, knowing Jefferson to be a fan of it, were worried what might happen to their apostolates. He hand-wrote them the following letter (McPortland's post has a link to the .pdf so you can see his handwriting!):
And that, my friends, is how a genuinely liberal Democrat -- as opposed to a Progressive tyrant-- treats a nun.I have received, holy sisters, the letter you have written me wherein you express anxiety for the property vested in your institution by the former governments of Louisiana.
The principles of the constitution and government of the United States are a sure guarantee to you that it will be preserved to you, sacred and inviolate, and that your institution will be permitted to govern itself according to its own voluntary rules, without interference from the civil authority.
Whatever the diversity of shade may appear in the religious opinions of our fellow citizens, the charitable objects of your institution cannot be indifferent to any; and its furtherance of the wholesome purposes of society, by training up its younger members in the way they should go, cannot fail to ensure it the patronage of the government it is under.
Be assured it will meet all the protection which my office can give it.
I salute you, holy sisters, with friendship and respect.
I also like McPortland's post for its spunky close for the benefit of US News and its genuinely bigoted author:
please don’t dismiss this as Catholics crying persecution. We’re not stupid. We know the difference between persecution and ignorant, rabble-rousing bigotry. We will pray for those around the world experiencing the former, but by damn we will not stand for the latter.
