The author who is both a thriller writer and a lawyer takes the reader through What the gospels say about the Virgin Mary not much The Catholic Church s view of the perfect and pure woman as both virgin and mother The amicus curiae friend of the court brief filed by the 67 Roman Catholic theologians and ethicists The legal reasoning of the justices who wrote the majority opinion and the principal dissent in Burwell v Hobby Lobby How much influence did the Catholic Church and its beliefs about The Virgin Mary influence the Court Read today and see for yourself How The Virgin Mary Influenced The United States Supreme Court Catholics.

In addition to the Q. C Davis Mysteries a traditional detective series that includes The Worried Man The Charming Man The Fractured Man The Troubled Man The Hidden Man and the novella No Good Plays Lisa M Lilly also is the author of the four book Awakening supernatural thriller series Like her character Quille C Davis Lilly lives and works in Chicago Illinois Under L. Lilly also writes horror including When Darkness Falls a gothic horror novel set in Chicago s South Loop and the short story collection The Tower Formerly Known as Sears and Two Other Tales of Urban Horror the title story of which was made into the In addition to the Q. C Davis Mysteries a traditional detective series that includes The Worried Man The Charming Man The Fractured Man The Troubled Man The Hidden Man and the novella No Good Plays Lisa M Lilly also is the author of the four book Awakening supernatural thriller series Like her character Quille C Davis Lilly lives and works in Chicago Illinois Under L. Lilly also writes horror including When Darkness Falls a gothic horror novel set in Chicago s South Loop and the short story collection The Tower Formerly Known as Sears and Two Other Tales of Urban Horror the title story of which was made into the short film Willis Tower Her stories and poems have appeared in numerous publications Her non fiction books written as L. M Lilly include Super Super Simple Story Structure A Quick Guide to Plotting and Writing Your Novel The One Year Novelist A Step by Step Guide to Writing Your Novel in One Year and Creating Compelling Characters From the Inside Out A resident of Chicago Lilly is an attorney and a member of the Alliance Against Intoxicated Motorists She joined AAIM after an intoxicated driver caused the deaths of her parents in 2007 Her book of essays Standing in Traffic is available on AAIM s website. com QuilleStories site_link Did The Virgin Mary Influence The Supreme Court In 2014 three corporations argued to the United States Supreme Court that paying premiums for health insurance made them a cause of abortions The insurance included no coverage for abortions It did however as federal law required cover IUDs and emergency contraception The Supreme Court ruled that requiring the corporations to pay for this insurance violated their right to freely exercise religion The five justices in the majority were Catholic The corporations religious objections mirrored those of the Roman Catholic Church This short book traces how the Catholic image of the Virgin Mary who is honored as mother and ever virgin and the Church s rules about women contraceptives and sex influence culture in the United States including its legal system In a conversational easy to follow style Contraceptives and Burwell v Hobby Lobby Inc. Please give my review a helpful vote seems clear from the tenor of this book that attorney and author L M Lilly disagrees with the United State s Supreme Court s decision in Burwell v Hobby Lobby which applied the Religious Freedom Restoration Act RFRA to closely held corporations to hold that Obamacare s mandate that employers provide insurance that paid for contraception was unconstitutional because there were less burdensome alternatives available to achieve the governmental objectives. Ms Lilly is of course free to disagree with Burwell although I found her reasoning less than compelling In some ways Lilly s analysis exhibits the cavalier disdain for those outside of her own class presumably the class described as the professional managerial elite by Joan C Williams in ASIN B01N276AU1 White Working Class Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America For example Lilly complains that the word women is hardly mentioned in the majority decision but then why should that word be used frequently since a both men and women use contraception and b the issue in question is the application of Obamacare to the plaintiff s religious rights Likewise Lilly claims that the element of burden was not discussed or established by the court but in fact this is what the court wrote on that subject The court concluded that the contraceptive mandate substantially burdened the exercise of religion by requiring the companies to choose between compromis ing their religious beliefs and paying a heavy fee either close to 475 million in taxes every year if they simply refused to provide coverage for the contraceptives at issue or roughly 26 million annually if they drop ped health insurance benefits for all employees Id. 2d 675 694 So the lower court determined that there was a substantial burden from Obamacare and as a matter of common sense it would seem that compromising religious beliefs or paying a multi million dollar fine should constitute a substantial burden Lilly seems to think that the issue boils down to how much would employers be required to pay for contraception cost ignoring thereby the issue that what was at issue is freedom of conscience and religion It seems that Lilly s worldview does not give freedom of conscience or religion the weight intended by the First Amendment In fact Lilly quotes approvingly Justice Ginsburg s limited definition of the purposes of the First Amendment actually First Amendment is a term not used in this slim book But the dissenting justices may have had the same concern as the dissent expressly noted that approving some religious claims while deeming others unworthy of accommodation could be perceived as favoring one religion over another the very risk the Establishment Clause was designed to preclude But that is just an odd objection The issue raised by Obamacare is not establishment of religion unless it is a secular religion but free exercise i. Lilly also mischaracterizes the court s holding with respect to other religious practices The majority did not say that other practices were not protected by the RFRA Rather the court was conventionally responding to the dissent s floodgates argument by saying that other issues would have to be looked at individually In any event our decision in these cases is concerned solely with the contraceptive mandate Our decision should not be understood to hold that an insurance coverage mandate must necessarily fall if it conflicts with an employer s religious beliefs Other coverage requirements such as immunizations may be supported by different interests for example the need to combat the spread of infectious diseases and may involve different arguments about the least restrictive means of providing them Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores Inc 2014 ___U. However the most objectionable feature of the book is its conventional appeal to bigotry in the form of anti Catholicism Anti Catholicism has been described as the last acceptable prejudice and the thinking man s antisemitism I don t accuse Lilly of consciously being anti Catholic although she may well be since Catholicism is a favorite whipping boy in some quarters however her book trades in a kind of anti Catholicism that we might have seen in the early 20th century. Thus Lilly appeals to the most distinctive of Catholic distinctives to open her book namely Mariolatry If there is one subject sure to provoke a traditional American anti Catholic response it is the accusation that Catholics worship Mary Lilly spends her first chapter in a kind of gorillas in the mist recapitulation of Catholic devotion to the Mother of God going to the extent of putting the term ever virgin into square quotes in the title She makes some tendentious sociological assertions such as the claim that Catholics transferred pagan goddess worship to the Blessed Virgin Mary which is a commonplace claim made by fundamentalist Protestants who are prone to claiming that Catholics are transitional pagans There is also this potted theology After that we re told Mary was a mother remained a virgin forever and was taken up body and soul into Heaven at the end of her life apparently as a reward for spending that life being both a virgin and a mother. This is ridiculous of course as Lilly knows The Catholic Church does not teach that Mary s Assumption was because of her being a virgin and a mother except insofar as she is the Theotokos the Mother of God. Lilly glides right past that fact presumably because it gets in the way but readers should reflect for just a moment on the title Mother of God It literally means that the most exalted human being is a woman and she has the position not merely as a breeder but as a disciple who was present at the start of Jesus s ministry and at the end This is what makes this simplistic formulation problematic Why did God grant Mary this honor The Church cites Mary s virginal motherhood and the dignity of the Mother of God See Munificentissimus Deus Defining The Dogma Of The Assumption Apostolic Constitution issued by Pope Pius XII on November 1 1950 As the four doctrines show the Roman Catholic Church honors its central female figure for being a virgin forever and a mother Because Mary supposedly remained a virgin and devoted herself to motherhood she is seen as immaculate pure and holy Lilly is simply playing the game of trying to make Catholics look sex obsessed by cherry picking As noted Mary is considered a disciple of Christ important enough for Christ on the cross to commend her into the care of the beloved disciple Thus Munificentissimus Deus mentions the following It was fitting that she who had seen her Son upon the cross and who had thereby received into her heart the sword of sorrow which she had escaped in the act of giving birth to him should look upon him as he sits with the Father It was fitting that God s Mother should possess what belongs to her Son and that she should be honored by every creature as the Mother and as the handmaid of God. Lilly s next chapter is problematic In her second chapter she resurrects the Know Nothing fear that Catholics are under the control of the Pope Lilly argues simplistically that the majority were all Catholics and that there was a Catholic theologians brief noting that Catholics were theologically required to obey their bishops From this Lilly infers that the majority were threatened or reminded that they were to toe the Catholic line. But this is absurd and bigoted Catholic jurists have repeatedly voted against the Catholic position For example Scalia supported the death penalty and Lilly notes that Sotomayor was on the other side in Burwell Further the point of the brief was not directed to the justices as Catholics but to point out that Catholics subjected to Obamacare were being put in an untenable moral position. Finally what is the connection between contraception and Mary Lilly presents the connection on an intuitive leap that Catholics are obsessed by sex and virginity and therefore obviously they must be against contraception but really who cares what the reason for opposition to contraception stems from Why is it important Is Lilly simply playing on a genetic fallacy to the effect that the Catholic position on contraception can t be considered a substantial basis for exemption because of its basis in weird not Protestant unAmerican Mariolatry In any event the intuitive leap is wrong Christianity i. e Catholicism has condemned contraception from its first century See the Didache In other words we have evidence of Christian opposition to contraception before we have evidence of Marian doctrines In addition the reason for the opposition to contraception is morality in the sense of distinguishing Christians from pagans the Christians were the ones who kept their children remained married and didn t use prostitutes. This book is slim Lilly is a good prose writer The book covers the issue from a particular perspective Obviously given its problematic anti Catholic bias I cannot recommend it How The Virgin Mary Influenced The United States Supreme Court Catholics Contraceptives and Burwell v Hobby Lobby Inc

How The Virgin Mary Influenced The United States Supreme Court: Catholics, Contraceptives, and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, Inc. By Lisa M. Lilly

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: com She also hosts the podcast Buffy and the Art of Story. com She also hosts the podcast Buffy and the Art of Story, For information on new releases and to get free bonus fiction including a Q: C Davis Mystery novella join her email list at site_link LisaLilly, 2d 675 712 Of course this is precisely how these cases should be handled namely look to see if there are less restrictive alternatives: Presumably since that wouldn t make Catholics look like sex obsessed panty sniffers it wasn t chosen for inclusion.M Lilly she is the founder of WritingAsASecondCareer.M Lilly she is the founder of WritingAsASecondCareer. at 1141 Burwell v Hobby Lobby Stores Inc 2014 ___U.S.___ 134 S.Ct 2751 2766 189 L.Ed.e. the other clause in the First Amendment.S.___ 134 S.Ct 2751 2783 189 L.Ed