Good ecumenism...

Pastors and members of several Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod congregations will gather Tuesday to show support for the Catholic Church's opposition to federal Health and Human Services department rules requiring many religious institutions to provide employees with health insurance that includes contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.

“We see this HHS contraceptive mandate as an attack on freedom of religion,” said Christopher Barnekov, a member of St. Paul Lutheran Church on Barr Street who is helping to organize the event.  Plans call for pastors and congregation members — a group expected to include LCMS Indiana District President the Rev. Daniel May and the Rev. Charles Gieschen, academic dean at Concordia Theological Seminary — to gather at noon in the sanctuary at St. Paul Lutheran, 1126 Barr St.

They will bring with them letters of support for the Catholic Church's stand against the HHS policy. The letters have been signed by the congregations, individuals and LCMS groups, such as deaconesses, Barnekov said.
The group then will walk together the few blocks from St. Paul to the front steps of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception on Calhoun Street, Barnekov said. They will time their arrival so they meet Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of the Catholic Diocese of Fort Wayne-South Bend and other Catholics as they exit about 12:40 p.m. from a noon Mass at the Cathedral.  Members of the LCMS group will present Rhoades with the letters of support and offer other brief words, Barnekov said.

You can read the rest of it all here...

Makes you think of good old Martin Niemöller...  The best ecumenism is when we stand together against those who would oppress by making little of our most cherished religious beliefs...  Whether it is the raw oppression of the naked sword or the quiet threat that simply removes our established freedoms by restricting them ever so little, we stand or fall together.

First they came for the communists,
    and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
    and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Jews,
    and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for me
    and there was no one left to speak out for me.