This weekend would be an ideal time for the leaders of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) to reconsider the political strategy they have adopted in their fight against the Obama administration’s contraceptive mandate. In their bid to undo that offensive mandate, the bishops could theoretically look for help from each branch of the Read more
Someone reminded me of this document put out by the USCCB on communion in 2006, which states: In virtue of our membership in the Catholic Church we are ordinarily free to receive Holy Communion. In fact, it is most desirable that we receive the Lord’s Body and Blood, so that Holy Communion stands out clearly as Read more
US House Minority Leader and Democratic politician Nancy Pelosi has told the Catholic Church its teaching on birth control is not working. Speaking at a special hearing called by the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, Pelosi illustrated her claim by saying that an “overwhelming number ” of American Catholic girls from age 14 or Read more
I feel like an idiot. When the U.S. bishops came out so strongly against the new government rules regarding contraceptives and health insurance, they said the issue was one of religious freedom. And I believed them. When the bishops argued that it was not the administration’s place to decide whether Catholic hospitals or colleges fit Read more
For a brief moment, Catholics on all sides were united in defense of the freedom of the Catholic Church to define for itself what it means to be Catholic in America. They came together to defend the church’s institutions from morally objectionable potentially crippling burdens imposed by the Obama administration under the Affordable Care Act. Read more
If abortion rights advocates are feeling their oats this week, they have good reason. In just two-and-half a weeks, they’ve claimed two major victories, forcing the Susan G. Komen Foundation to back off its policy change denying grants to Planned Parenthood clinics and convincing the Obama administration to maintain only a very limited exemption for Read more
President Obama has abandoned his stand that religious organisations must pay for birth control for workers. Seeking to end the election-year furore, particularly from the Catholic Church, Obama’s compromise meant women would still get free birth control; Obama demanding that insurance companies step in and provide the coverage. Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan of New York initially called Read more
Pope Benedict XVI insisted on Saturday that all of society’s institutions and not just the Catholic church must be held to “exacting” standards in their response to sex abuse of children, and defended the church’s efforts to confront the problem.
Benedict acknowledged in remarks to visiting U.S. bishops during an audience at the Vatican that pedophilia was a “scourge” for society, and that decades of scandals over clergy abusing children had left Catholics in the United States bewildered.
Read the article...The number of organizations engaged in religious lobbying or religion-related advocacy in Washington, D.C., has increased roughly fivefold in the past four decades, from fewer than 40 in 1970 to more than 200 today.
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The US Catholic bishops say religious freedom is being whittled away by same-sex marriage, abortion and healthcare legislation, and they are vowing to up their efforts to protect it. “For some time now we have viewed with growing alarm the ongoing erosion of religious liberty in our country,” Bishop William Lori, bishop of Connecticut told the Read more