“This is about the government coercing religious institutions to violate their own beliefs.” So clarifies the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty in their feature ‘The Truth Should Not Be A Secret’. It aims to debunk the top myths that quickly circulated out of spin control centers from the administration and their complicit media partners. I’ve … Read more
When the Obama administration made the decision not to exempt Catholic hospitals and universities from the mandate to provide insured employees with contraceptives, morning after pills, and sterilization without a co-pay, one of those consulted was Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood. Richards obviously has a special interest in having contraception covered, since dispensing contraception … Read more
Each month, to test our courage, my wife Lisa and I stand before an auditorium full of couples about to marry in the Catholic Church and explain to them the Church’s teachings about sexuality. The crowd is generally not happy to be there. Many are not Catholic and few, needless to say, want to hear … Read more
Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is fighting for the mandate in Obamacare designed to force all health care plans to provide free (that is without a co-pay) contraception, morning after pills, and sterilization. She insists that this is a battle for women’s health. Those who see this as a question of religious freedom have largely let the … Read more
President Obama’s mandate requiring free access to contraception with virtually no employer exemption is at core a consitutional threat to religious liberty, not a heated debate about contraception and Church teaching. However, it quickly turned into that. So now that we’re on the subject. Advocates of President Obama’s contraception mandate should admit that its main … Read more
Earlier this month in a Catholic Exchange piece I said that those in support of the HHS mandate think that the Catholic position prohibiting contraception is irrational; I failed to mention that they also think the prohibition is immoral. This is why, in addition to focusing primarily on religious freedom, we must also directly address contraception. I … Read more
Developments on a university campus suggest it is time for the Supreme Court to update its famous definition of abortion.
A fascinating theory has been advanced by Dick Morris, which, in turn, is being considered by Rush Limbaugh and other leading conservatives. Morris speculates that the Obama HHS mandate on contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients is a fight with the Catholic Church that Team Obama wants — and with the focus based narrowly on contraception, not … Read more
On June 25, 2009, a seven year old boy was abducted at gunpoint from his terrified parents. They had just boarded a plane to fly to the country where the boy’s mother had been born, and where her kin still lived. They were leaving their own country for good, because they had grown weary of … Read more
I am disquieted by the way in which the issue of the HHS mandate has largely been framed – not only by the Left, but perhaps more by the Right.
In the vault of modern political oratory is a speech of one senator in the 1960’s quoting George Bernard Shaw: “You see things; and you say,’Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say,’Why not?’ “ There are noble dreams, such as those of our nation’s Founding Fathers right up to the last … Read more
In October 2009, I published a column titled, “Can Obama and Congress Order You to Buy Broccoli?” Now I need to ask a follow-up: Can Obama order grocers to give away bread? I wrote the broccoli column after Sen. Orrin Hatch raised serious questions in the Senate Finance Committee about the constitutionality of President Obama’s … Read more
A quiet, closed-door meeting in Washington next month will be of crucial importance in shaping the Church’s response to the nation’s biggest church-state crisis in decades. When some 40 bishops of the administrative committee of the national bishops’ conference gather March 14-15 at conference headquarters, they’ll be looking at the Obama administration’s January mandate to … Read more
No, I’m not exaggerating. The American experiment in religious liberty is officially over. The First Amendment provided institutional structures that allow different religions to peacefully coexist. All groups agree to not try to capture governmental structures for the benefit of their own particular denomination. But the Obama administration has ended that truce. The administration made … Read more
What a fitting capstone to the Obama presidency. And imagine that a majority of professing Roman Catholics elected this man in November 2008.
When we were colonists and fought a war against the king and Parliament so that we could secede from the British Empire and be independent of it, we also fought for the value of personal freedom. That is the idea that in matters of personal choice, the government should play no role. The king only … Read more
America’s Catholic bishops are princes of diplomacy, highly educated, erudite, men of tact, propriety. They’re asked to shepherd the flock with a long historical timeframe—like, say, eternity. They tend not to have knee-jerk reactions to issues of the moment. And so, it’s not often when a paragon of decorum, namely, Pittsburgh Bishop David Zubik, publishes … Read more
A defining moment in Mitt Romney’s post-pro-life-conversion political career came in his third year as governor of Massachusetts, when he decided Catholic hospitals would be required under his interpretation of a new state law to give rape victims a drug that can induce abortions. Romney announced this decision — saying it was the “right thing … Read more
For months, the Catholic bishops and major Evangelical and Jewish groups have urged Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to exempt conscientious objectors from mandatory health insurance coverage for sterilization and contraception, including abortifacients. The current regulations exempt churches and church-controlled organizations that hire and serve primarily members of the same faith, but many … Read more
Under this administration and this Congress — which includes the Republican-controlled House of Representatives led by Speaker John Boehner — the right of Catholics to freely exercise their religion is treated with less deference than the presumed right of stockyard owners to fill the skies with effluvia. I mean this literally. When Congress wants … Read more