Monday, April 01, 2013
Tuesday, February 12, 2013
ABC: The 'Anyone But Catholics' Network
According to an analysis by the Media Research Center, the three broadcast networks are using the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI to advance their left-wing social agenda and attack the Catholic Church’s centuries-old doctrine on the priesthood, abortion, and gay marriage. While NBC Nightly News and CBS Evening News predictably dwelled on scandals and the Pope’s “conservatism,” their anti-Catholic coverage paled in comparison to the disgraceful onslaught on ABC World News.
During last night’s ABC World News broadcast:
- In an interview with New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, Diane Sawyer asked if the, “burden of what the Church has been through with the scandals” caused the Pope’s resignation – with absolutely no basis in fact.
- During the same interview, “reporter” Sawyer brazenly editorialized saying, “There has to be fundamental change” to the Church’s positions on social issues.
- Posing as a papal historian, Jeffrey Kofman declared that the Pope’s, “papacy will be remembered for its scandals.” This supposed authority on the Catholic Church then said that Benedict had, “tried to hold back the forces of modernity.”
- ABC correspondent Cecilia Vega, according to Sawyer, “spent the day gathering American reaction from all over,” but then delivered reaction only from liberal Catholics who pushed ABC’s liberal narrative that the Church must “modernize.”
- ABC didn’t name a single accomplishment of Benedict XVI.
Media Research Center President Brent Bozell reacts:
“The liberal media’s snarling, bigoted anti-Catholicism is on full display, and ABC World News has won the race to the bottom. Instead of reporting the historic news of Pope Benedict’s resignation, Diane Sawyer – who calls herself a Catholic – and Disney-owned ABC News used the opportunity to bludgeon the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict with every left-wing grievance imaginable. It was a disgusting and deeply offensive assault on the Church.
“It is indefensible that on the same day this major story broke, ABC World News refused to mention a single accomplishment during Pope Benedict’s tenure, even on lefty-approved environmental issues. It demonstrates the contempt that ABC News and Sawyer have for the Pope and for the Church. Sawyer’s stunning editorializing that, “There has to be fundamental change,” is disgraceful and unprofessional. Who is Diane Sawyer to demand changes to thousands of years of Catholic doctrine? She and The Walt Disney Company owe 1.2 billion Catholics an apology. And she should go to Confession.”
Monday, February 11, 2013
Eight cardinal contenders who could succeed Pope Benedict
The bookmakers in Europe already have their favorites, but the world won't know who will succeed Pope Benedict XVI until that puff of white smoke is sent up the chimney of the conclave room next month.
The College of Cardinals has no shortage of factors to consider in picking the next pope -- from age to geography -- and no dearth of potential candidates.
Here are some of the princes of the church whose names have emerged from Vatican watchers since Monday's surprise abdication announcement:
Cardinal Marc Ouellet: Former archbishop of Quebec, he heads the Congregation of Bishops, a power center. Ouellet, 68, speaks six languages, spent a decade as a missionary in Colombia and has strong ties to Latin and South America. He's considered conservative and made headlines in 2010 when he said abortion was a "moral crime," even in cases of rape. In a 2011 interview, he laughed off the idea of becoming pontiff, saying the workload and responsibility "would be a nightmare."
Cardinal Leonardo Sandri: Born in Argentina to Italian parents, Sandri was No. 2 in the Vatican Secretary of State's office under Pope John Paul II and now serves as prefect of the Congregation for the Oriental Churches. A longtime Vatican diplomat, Sandri, 69, is well-respected but seen by some as more of a top-notch administrator than a theological leader.
Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco: The archbishop of Genoa is well-connected, having served twice as the president of the Italian bishop's conference. A baker's son who says he knew he wanted to be a priest in elementary school, Bagnasco, 70, is considered a conservative force in the church. He was the target of death threats in 2007 after comments opposing same-sex unions and in 2011 he launched a thinly veiled attack on scandal-ridden Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and other politicians, referring to them as "sad and hollow."
Cardinal Odilo Scherer: Born in Brazil to parents of German extraction, Scherer's big advantage is geography; he hails from the region that is home to half the world's Catholics. Considered a moderate, the 63-year-old serves as the archbishop of Sao Paulo and has spots in two key Vatican groups, the Congregation for the Clergy and the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan: The head of the archdiocese of New York is one of the Vatican's most popular figures -- charismatic, camera-ready and conservative. As head of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, he hasn't shied from away from political fights, taking on the Obama administration over contraception. But Dolan, 63, has only been a cardinal for a year.
Thursday, February 07, 2013
No Deal! Bishops to Administration: You Can't Force Catholics to Act Against Faith
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, issued a statement on Thursday signaling to the Obama Administration that the bishops will not make a separate deal to exempt Catholic institutions from an Obamacare mandate that requires health-care plans to cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs that leaves lay Catholic business owners and individual employees still subject to the mandate.
“In obedience to our Judeo-Christian heritage, we have consistently taught our people to live their lives during the week to reflect the same beliefs that they proclaim on the Sabbath,” said Cardinal Dolan. “We cannot now abandon them to be forced to violate their morally well-informed consciences.”
The cardinal said the bishops will also continue to support the many lawsuits against the regulation--including those brought by private busineses--that are moving forward in federal courts around the country.
The Catholic Association, a group of Catholic laypersons dedicated to advancing the principles of the Catholic Church, issued a statement supporting the bishops' stand in defending the religious freedom of all Americans.
“We stand with the bishops today in rejecting the proposed ‘accommodation’ which still violates the religious freedom of Americans," said The Catholic Association.
"The bishops have recognized in their statement that when the religious freedom of one is compromised, the religious freedom of everyone is compromised, whether they be their own affiliated institutions or non-Catholic institutions or for-profit employers," said the association. "We call on this administration to provide an acceptable exemption for people of faith, and to put an end to its anti-religious liberty policies.”
Cardinal Dolan's statement was specifically responding to a new version of the Obamacare regulation that the Department of Health and Human Services proposed last week. The new proposal would slightly modify how Obamacare defines the “religious” institutions that can be exempted from the sterilization-contraceptive-abortifacient mandate. However, the proposed new version of the regulation would still force Catholic non-profits (such as hospitals, charities and colleges) to buy health care plans from carriers that, in turn, would be required to set up theoretically cost-free separate policies to provide free sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients to all beneficiaries. Further, the new proposal would provide no relief at all to individual Catholic lay people, whether they own a business or are employees.
Cardinal Dolan noted that the bishops will continue to judge the Obamacare regulation within the framework they laid out in a document the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops initially published last March and that all U.S. Catholic bishops unanimously approved in June.
“Third, the bishops explained that the ‘HHS mandate creates still a third class, those with no conscience protection at all:individuals who, in their daily lives, strive constantly to act in accordance with their faith and moral values,” said Cardinal Dolan, citing the bishops' unanimous declaration.
“This includes employers sponsoring and subsidizing the coverage, insurers writing it, and beneficiaries paying individual premiums for it. Friday's action confirms that HHS has no intention to provide any exemption or accommodation at all to this ‘third class.’”
Cardinal Dolan’s statement included some placatory language, and the bishops seemed to be taking care to indicate they were not yet closing the door to working with the administration to find an outcome that will allow American Catholics to live both according to their faith and according to whatever final Obamacare regulations the administration ultimately decides to enforce.
“Because the stakes are so high, we will not cease from our effort to assure that healthcare for all does not mean freedom for few,” said Cardinal Dolan.
“Throughout the past year, we have been assured by the Administration that we will not have to refer, pay for, or negotiate for the mandated coverage," the Cardinal said. "We remain eager for the Administration to fulfill that pledge and to find acceptable solutions—we will affirm any genuine progress that is made, and we will redouble our efforts to overcome obstacles or setbacks. Thus, we welcome and will take seriously the Administration's invitation to submit our concerns through formal comments, and we will do so in the hope that an acceptable solution can be found that respects the consciences of all. At the same time, we will continue to stand united with brother bishops, religious institutions, and individual citizens who seek redress in the courts for as long as this is necessary.”
In an analysis published last August, the National Catholic Bioethics Center said that in keeping with Catholic moral teaching all Catholic business owners should drop health insurance coverage for all of their employees by no later than next January if the sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate is not lifted.
Last year, when the initial regulation was finalized, many of the nation’s Catholic bishops wrote letters to their congregations, declaring: “We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law.”
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
Cardinal Dolan of NY, Cardinal Wuerl of D.C., Notre Dame--And 40 Other Catholic Dioceses and Organizations Sue Obama Administration
The Archdiocese of New York, headed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., headed by Cardinal Donald Wuerl, the University of Notre Dame, and 40 other Catholic dioceses and organizations around the country announced on Monday that they are suing the Obama administration for violating their freedom of religion, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.
The dioceses and organizations, in different combinations, are filing 12 different lawsuits filed in federal courts around the country.
The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. has established a special website--preservereligiousfreedom.org--to explain its lawsuit and present news and developments concerning it.
"This lawsuit is about an unprecedented attack by the federal government on one of America’s most cherished freedoms: the freedom to practice one’s religion without government interference," the archdiocese says on the website. "It is not about whether people have access to certain services; it is about whether the government may force religious institutions and individuals to facilitate and fund services which violate their religious beliefs."
The suits filed by the Catholic organizations focus on the regulation that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced last August and finalized in January that requires virtually all health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those that can cause abortions.
The Catholic Church teaches that sterilization, artificial contraception and abortion are morally wrong and that Catholics should not be involved in them. Thus, the regulation would require faithful Catholics and Catholic organizations to act against their consciences and violate the teachings of their faith.
Earlier, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had called the regulation an "unprecedented attack on religious liberty" and asked the Obama administration to rescind it.
“We have tried negotiation with the Administration and legislation with the Congress--and we’ll keep at it--but there's still no fix," Cardinal Dolan, who is also president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said in a statement released by the conference this morning.
"Time is running out, and our valuable ministries and fundamental rights hang in the balance, so we have to resort to the courts now," the cardinal said. "Though the Conference is not a party to the lawsuits, we applaud this courageous action by so many individual dioceses, charities, hospitals and schools across the nation, in coordination with the law firm of Jones Day. It is also a compelling display of the unity of the Church in defense of religious liberty. It's also a great show of the diversity of the Church's ministries that serve the common good and that are jeopardized by the mandate--ministries to the poor, the sick, and the uneducated, to people of any faith or no faith at all.”
Cardinal Dolan's New York Archdiocese filed suit today in the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of New York. Joining the archdiocese as plaintiffs in the suit are the Catholic Health Care Sytem, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre, Catholic Charities of Rockville Centre, and Catholic Health Services of Long Island.
In their suit, these groups name HHS Secretary Sebelius, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and their departments as defendants.
The archdiocese of Washington, D.C., is being joined in its lawsuit by Catholic Charities of the Washington Archdiocese, the Consortium of Catholic Academies of the Archdiocese of Washington (which includes four parochial schools), Archbishop Carroll High School, and the Catholic University of America.
"The lawsuit in no way challenges either women’s established legal right to obtain and use contraception or the right of employers to provide coverage for it if they so choose," said Cardinal Wuerl. "This lawsuit is about religious freedom."
"The First Amendment enshrines in our nation’s Constitution the principle that religious organizations must be able to practice their faith free from government interference," Cardinal Wuerl said.
Wednesday, March 07, 2012
Cardinal: Obama Admin Lectured Bishops on Catholic Teaching
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic bishops, has released a public letter today detailing a stunning conversation he and other bishops had with top White House officials about the controversial Obama mandate.
In the letter, Cardinal Dolan relates a shocking meeting in which top Obama Administration asked to meet with the bishops to “work out the wrinkles” of the mandate. After accepting the invitation and arriving at the White House, the bishops asked whether any ability to broaden the very narrow religious exemptions in the mandate were off the table.
“The invited us to ‘work out the wrinkles.’ We have accepted that invitation,” he wrote. “Unfortunately, this seems to be stalled: the White House Press Secretary, for instance, informed the nation that the mandates are a fait accompli (and, embarrassingly for him, commented that we bishops have always opposed Health Care anyway, a charge that is scurrilous and insulting, not to mention flat out wrong.”)
Dolan writes: “At a recent meeting between staff of the bishops’ conference and the White House staff, our staff members asked directly whether the broader concerns of religious freedom—that is, revisiting the straight-jacketing mandates, or broadening the maligned exemption—are all off the table. They were informed that they are. So much for “working out the wrinkles.” Instead, they advised the bishops’ conference that we should listen to the “enlightened” voices of accommodation, such as the recent, hardly surprising yet terribly unfortunate editorial in America.”
He said, “The White House seems to think we bishops simply do not know or understand Catholic teaching and so, taking a cue from its own definition of religious freedom, now has nominated its own handpicked official Catholic teachers
“We have made it clear in no uncertain terms to the government that we are not at peace with its invasive attempt to curtail the religious freedom we cherish as Catholics and Americans,” the archbishop of New York wrote in a public letter to the Catholic bishops last Friday. “We did not ask for this fight, but we will not run from it.”
The Catholic bishops’ president made it appear the mandate is not going to be changed in any way to protect religious freedom.
Dolan said, “The White House already notified Congress that the dreaded mandates are now published in the Federal Registry ‘without change.’ He added that “The Secretary of HHS is widely quoted as saying, ‘Religious insurance companies don’t really design the plans they sell based on their own religious tenets.’ That doesn’t bode well for their getting a truly acceptable “accommodation.”
Cardinal Dolan also said “We will continue to accept invitations to meet with and to voice our concerns to anyone of any party, for this is hardly partisan, who is willing to correct the infringements on religious freedom that we are now under. But as we do so, we cannot rely on off the record promises of fixes without deadlines and without assurances of proposals that will concretely address the concerns in a manner that does not conflict with our principles and teaching.”
He added that “Congress might provide more hope, since thoughtful elected officials have proposed legislation to protect what should be so obvious: religious freedom. Meanwhile, in our recent debate in the senate, our opponents sought to obscure what is really a religious freedom issue by maintaining that abortion inducing drugs and the like are a ‘woman’s health issue.’ We will not let this deception stand. Our commitment to seeking legislative remedies remains strong. And it is about remedies to the assault on religious freedom. Period.”
“Perhaps the courts offer the most light,” he said about the many lawsuits that have been filed against the mandate.
Dolan warned the bishops that “given this climate, we have to prepare for tough times. Some, like America magazine, want us to cave-in and stop fighting, saying this is simply a policy issue; some want us to close everything down rather than comply (in an excellent article, Cardinal Francis George wrote that the administration apparently wants us to ‘give up for Lent’ our schools, hospitals, and charitable ministries); some, like Bishop Robert Lynch wisely noted, wonder whether we might have to engage in civil disobedience and risk steep fines; some worry that we’ll have to face a decision between two ethically repugnant choices: subsidizing immoral services or no longer offering insurance coverage, a road none of us wants to travel.”
Cardinal Dolan added that “we know so very well that religious freedom is our heritage, our legacy and our firm belief, both as loyal Catholics and Americans. There have been many threats to religious freedom over the decades and years, but these often came from without. This one sadly comes from within. As our ancestors did with previous threats, we will tirelessly defend the timeless and enduring truth of religious freedom.”
Monday, March 05, 2012
Cardinal Timothy Dolan: ‘We Did Not Ask for This Fight, But We Will Not Run From It’
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent a letter on Friday to all the Catholic bishops of the United States reasserting the conviction of the Catholic Church that it will not yield to the Obama administration’s command—issued in the form of a Health and Human Services regulation implementing the president’s health-care plan--that Catholics and Catholic institutions must violate the teachings of their faith by purchasing and providing health insurance plans that pay for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients.
“We have made it clear in no uncertain terms to the government that we are not at peace with its invasive attempt to curtail the religious freedom we cherish as Catholics and Americans,” Cardinal Dolan wrote his brother bishops.
“We did not ask for this fight, but we will not run from it,” he said.
“Since January 20, when the final, restrictive HHS Rule was first announced,” Cardinal Dolan wrote, “we have become certain of two things: religious freedom is under attack, and we will not cease our struggle to protect it.”
Although the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops posted the cardinal’s letter on its website on Friday and issued a press release about it, neither The Washington Post nor The New York Times nor any other American newspaper that appears in the massive Lexis-Nexis database of news sources published a story about it in any of their Saturday editions. Nor, as of the early hours on Sunday, had any secular newspaper that shows up in a Google News search published a story about the letter.
Despite the silence from the establishment media, the cardinal’s defiant letter was in fact a major event in what has become the most significant confrontation over religious freedom in the history of the United States.
On Thursday, the Senate voted 51 to 48 to reject an amendment sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri that would have added “conscience protection” language to the Obamacare legislation, and thus protect employers from being forced to provide health insurance coverage for sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients if they have a moral or religious objection to these things.
If enacted, this amendment would nullify the HHS sterilization-contraception-abortifacient regulation insofar is it effects employers, but not insofar as it effects individuals who buy their own insurance and who would still be mandated under Obamacare to purchase insurance.
“And you now ask the obvious question,” wrote Dolan, “”What’s next?’”
Dolan first noted that the Obama administration’s regulation jeopardizes the church’s ability to carry out the ministries that he said have been entrusted to it by Jesus.
“As pastors and shepherds, each of us would prefer to spend our energy engaged in and promoting the works of mercy to which the Church is dedicated: healing the sick, teaching our youth, and helping the poor,” said O’Connor. “Yet, precisely because we are pastors and shepherds, we recognize that each of the ministries entrusted to us by Jesus is now in jeopardy due to this bureaucratic intrusion into the internal life of the church.”
Cardinal Dolan then said that the so-called “concession” President Obama had offered in February—that he would order insurance companies working with Catholic institutions to provide sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients to the workers at those institutions for free—did not solve the problem.
“For one, there was not even a nod to the deeper concerns about trespassing upon religious freedom, or of modifying the HHS’ attempt to define the how and who of our ministry,” wrote the cardinal.
“Two, since a big part of our ministries are ‘self-insured,’ we still ask how this protects us,” he wrote. “We’ll still have to pay and, in addition to that, we’ll still have to maintain in our policies practices which our Church has consistently taught are grave wrongs in which we cannot participate.
“And what about forcing individual believers to pay for what violates their religious freedom and conscience?” he wrote. “We can’t abandon the hard working person of faith who has a right to religious freedom.
“And three,” he said, “there was still no resolution about the handcuffs placed upon renowned Catholic charitable agencies, both national and international, and their exclusion from contracts just because they will not refer victims of human trafficking, immigrants and refugees, and the hungry of the world, for abortions, sterilization, or contraception.”
The cardinal revealed that President Obama had invited the bishops to work with the White House to “work out the wrinkles” on his proposed accommodation. But that effort failed to make progress as the White House showed no flexibility on the core issue.
“At a recent meeting between staff of the bishops’ conference and the White House staff, our staff members asked directly whether the broader concerns of religious freedom—that is, revisiting the straight-jacketing mandates, or broadening the maligned exemption—are all off the table,” wrote the cardinal. “They were informed that they are. So much for ‘working out the wrinkles.’”
The cardinal said that the bishops would continue to seek a legislative remedy to the administration’s attack on religious liberty and would also pursue protection of religious liberty through the federal courts.
“Perhaps the courts offer the most light,” he said, pointing to the Supreme Court’s recent 9-0 decision against the Obama administration in the Hosanna-Tabor case in which the administration tried to tell a Lutheran church who its ministers would be.
“Given this climate, we have to prepare for tough times,” the cardinal wrote.
He closed the letter by noting to his brother bishops that religious freedom now faces a threat not from a foreign enemy but from within the United States.
“Brothers, we know so very well that religious freedom is our heritage, our legacy and our firm belief, both as loyal Catholics and Americans,” he wrote. “There have been many threats to religious freedom over the decades and years, but these often came from without. This one sadly comes from within. As our ancestors did with previous threats, we will tirelessly defend the timeless and enduring truth of religious freedom.”
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Will the Bishops Go to the Mattresses?
A series of ugly events sets the stage for the bishops’ deliberations.
Flash back to early November. Obama and Archbishop (now cardinal-designate) Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the bishops’ conference, met to discuss topics including tensions in the religious liberty area. “I left the meeting somewhat at peace,” Archbishop Dolan later said.
That meant he believed Obama was likely to give church-sponsored institutions a comprehensive exemption from a Department of Health and Human Services rule requiring virtually all private health care plans to cover sterilization, abortifacients, and contraception under the new national health plan known as Obamacare.
It was not to be. On January 20 HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, acting for the administration, released the rule’s presumably final version. Its only concession to the Church was a year to comply—“a year to figure out how to violate our consciences,” Archbishop Dolan said angrily.
Many people saw in the administration’s move a payoff to Obama’s supporters in the birth control-abortion industry. Administration sensitivity to potential criticism was visible in the release of Sebelius’ announcement late in the day on a Friday, a familiar Washington tactic for minimizing news coverage. In the same vein, the one-year delay in compliance (“more time and flexibility to adapt,” Sebelius said) appeared aimed at keeping the issue out of the presidential campaign.
Furious reactions from bishops and other Church sources greeted the move. The administration’s message to Catholics, one bishop said, was, “To hell with you.” Even the liberal Washington Post editorialized against, while columnist E.J. Dionne, an Obama apologist, said Obama “botched” the issue and “threw his progressive Catholic allies”—like Mr. Dionne—“under the bus.”
Hence the February 10 accommodation—if it really is that. Among other things, the difficulty it raises from the point of view of the Church is that, like a key that opens a lock, it makes the health plan a Catholic institution provides to its employees the key needed for them to unlock coverage for contraceptives, abortifacient drugs, and sterilization directly from the insurance carrier. There also are reasonable grounds for fearing that, no matter how the accountants structure it, costs of this coverage would be passed on to the Church.
If the bishops reject this deal, they don’t have a lot of options. Closing down thousands of Catholic institutions and programs isn’t likely. Remedial legislation pending in Congress has little chance of becoming law with Democrats controlling the Senate and the White House. As for simply refusing to obey the HHS rule, it’s a last resort.
That leaves litigation. Three religiously sponsored lawsuits against the new mandate, involving Belmont Abbey College in North Carolina, Colorado Christian University, and the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) are underway. The bishops could decide to back these challenges or others.
Religion in America scored a smashing 9-0 victory over the Obama. administration in the Supreme Court a few weeks ago when the justices unanimously upheld the constitutional right of churches to decide ministerial personnel matters without government interference. Now the HHS mandate could also be headed for the court.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Notre Dame Faculty to Obama: ‘This Is a Grave Violation of Religious Freedom and Cannot Stand’
Twenty-five Notre Dame faculty members--led by the university’s top ethics expert, and including some of the school’s most eminent scholars--have signed a statement declaring that President Barack Obama’s latest version of his administration’s mandate that all health insurance plans in the United States must cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions, is “a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand."
The statement—put out on the letterhead of the University of Notre Dame Law School--is also signed by leading scholars from other major American colleges and universities, including Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, Georgetown, Brigham Young, Yeshiva and Wheaton College.
Prof. Carter Snead, a professor of law at Notre Dame, was one of the lead organizers of the statement, which was published on his official law school letterhead. Notre Dame's top ethics expert, Snead serves as director of the university's Center for Ethics and Culture, a position to which he was appointed by Father John Jenkins, the president of Notre Dame.
In 2009, Father Jenkins awarded President Barack Obama an honorary Notre Dame law degree.
Some of the other distinguished Notre Dame faculty who signed the statement condemning Obama’s mandate are Prof. Patrick Griffin, chairman of Notre Dame's History Department; Prof. Richard Garnett, an associate dean; John Cavadini, director of Notre Dame’s Institute for Church Life; Christian Smith, director of Notre Dame’s Center for the Study of Religion and Society; Prof. Paolo Carozza, director of Notre Dame’s Center for Civil and Human Rights; Prof. Philip Bess, Notre Dame’s Director of Graduate Studies; and Father Wilson Miscamble, a professor of history.
Other leading organizers of the letter included Prof. Robert George of Princeton and Prof. Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School.
When Obama received his honorary degree at Notre Dame's May 17, 2009, commencement, he vowed to respect the conscience rights of those who believe abortion is wrong.
“Let's honor the conscience of those who disagree with abortion, and draft a sensible conscience clause, and make sure that all of our health care policies are grounded not only in sound science, but also in clear ethics, as well as respect for the equality of women,” said Obama. “Those are things we can do.”
Many Catholic bishops and lay leaders had criticized Notre Dame's decision to grant Obama honorary degree to Obama--pointing to his long-standing position in favor of legalized abortion on demand, which included going so far as to oppose a law in the Illinois state senate that would have simply said that a baby born alive in that state was entitled to the same rights under the U.S. Constitution as any other born "person."
In their statement released late Friday, the 25 Notre Dame faculty members and the many other prominent scholars from other institutions who joined them said that Obama’s sterilization-contraception-abortifacient mandate--even with Obama’s proposed adjustments on Friday--remains as “assault on religious liberty and rights of conscience.”
“The administration will now require that all insurance plans cover (‘cost free’) these same products and services,” said the scholars. “Once a religiously-affiliated (or believing individual) employer purchases insurance (as it must, by law), the insurance company will then contact the insured employees to advise them that the terms of the policy include coverage for these objectionable things.
“This so-called ‘accommodation’ changes nothing of moral substance and fails to remove the assault on religious liberty and the rights of conscience which gave rise to the controversy,” they said. “It is certainly no compromise. The reason for the original bipartisan uproar was the administration’s insistence that religious employers, be they institutions or individuals, provide insurance that covered services they regard as gravely immoral and unjust. Under the new rule, the government still coerces religious institutions and individuals to purchase insurance policies that include the very same services.”
The statement also said that Obama’s latest iteration of the regulation is “an insult to the intelligence of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews and Muslims” and “cannot stand.”
“The simple fact is that the Obama administration is compelling religious people and institutions who are employers to purchase a health insurance contract that provides abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization,” the scholars said. “This is a grave violation of religious freedom and cannot stand. It is an insult to the intelligence of Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, Muslims, and other people of faith and conscience to imagine that they will accept an assault on their religious liberty if only it is covered up by a cheap accounting trick.”
Friday, February 10, 2012
Catholic Bishops Respond to Obama's Revised HHS Mandate
The nation’s Catholic bishops released the following statement in response to Obama’s announcement today that he is revising his pro-abortion HHS mandate.
“The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) sees initial opportunities in preserving the principle of religious freedom after President Obama’s announcement today. But the Conference continues to express concerns. “While there may be an openness to respond to some of our concerns, we reserve judgment on the details until we have them,” said Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.
‘The past three weeks have witnessed a remarkable unity of Americans from all religions or none at all worried about the erosion of religious freedom and governmental intrusion into issues of faith and morals,” he said.
‘Today’s decision to revise how individuals obtain services that are morally objectionable to religious entities and people of faith is a first step in the right direction,” Cardinal-designate Dolan said. “We hope to work with the Administration to guarantee that Americans’ consciences and our religious freedom are not harmed by these regulations.”
The Obama administration’s revisions to the birth control/abortion-causing drug mandate are not meeting with support from pro-life advocates, who say the president’s claims that it is a compromise that respects religious conscience issues is a sham. But leading pro-abortion groups are delighted. On the other hand, pro-abortion groups, including the Planned Parenthood abortion business have offered glowing praise.
The Obama administration has revised its controversial mandate that had forced religious employers to pay for health insurance coverage that includes birth control and drugs like Plan B, the morning after pill, and ella that can cause abortions.
The revised Obama mandate will make religious groups contract with insurers to offer birth control and the potentially abortion-causing drugs to women at no cost. The revised mandate will have religious employers refer women to their insurance company for coverage that still violates their moral and religious beliefs. Under this plan, every insurance company will be obligated to provide coverage at no cost.
That coverage will not only include free contraception but birth control and drugs like ella or the morning after pill that may cause abortions in some cases.
Meanwhile, the Republican presidential candidates have been taking verbal swings at Obama for imposing the mandate on religious employers, which is not popular in the latest public opinion poll and which even some Democrats oppose.
Congressman Steve Scalise has led a bipartisan letter with 154 co-signers calling on the Obama Administration to reverse its unconstitutional mandate forcing religious organizations to include drugs that can cause abortion and birth control in the health care plans of their employees.
Bishops across the country have spoken out against the mandate and are considering a lawsuit against it — with bishops in more than 164 locations across the United States issuing public statements against it or having letters opposing it printed in diocesan newspaper or read from the pulpit.
“We cannot — we will not comply with this unjust law,” said the letter from Bishop Thomas Olmsted of Phoenix. “People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens.”
Responding to the announcement, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, stated: “In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.”
“To force Americans to choose between violating their consciences and forgoing their healthcare is literally unconscionable. . . It is as much an attack on access to health care as on religious freedom,” he added.
The mandate is so egregious that even the normally reliably liberal and pro-abortion USA Today condemned it in an editorial titled, “Contraception mandate violates religious freedom.”
The administration initially approved a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine suggesting that it force insurance companies to pay for birth control and drugs that can cause abortions under the Obamacare government-run health care program.
The IOM recommendation, opposed by pro-life groups, called for the Obama administration to require insurance programs to include birth control — such as the morning after pill or the ella drug that causes an abortion days after conception — in the section of drugs and services insurance plans must cover under “preventative care.” The companies will likely pass the added costs on to consumers, requiring them to pay for birth control and, in some instances, drug-induced abortions of unborn children in their earliest days.
The HHS accepted the IOM guidelines that “require new health insurance plans to cover women’s preventive services” and those services include “FDA-approved contraception methods and contraceptive counseling” — which include birth control drugs like Plan B and ella that can cause abortions. The Health and Human Services Department commissioned the report from the Institute, which advises the federal government and shut out pro-life groups in meetings leading up to the recommendations.
Obama: Americans—Including Catholics--Will Still Be Forced to Buy Coverage for Sterilization, Contraception, Abortifacients
President Barack Obama announced today that “religious organizations” such as charities and hospitals will not be forced by the federal government to directly pay insurance premiums that cover sterilization, contraception and abortifacients but that their insurance providers must nonetheless provide those services free of charge to women insured by those organizations.
Obama did not announce any change at all to the administrations’ sterilization-contraceptive-abortifacient mandate insofar as it applies to individuals and private-sector business owners who will still be forced by the government to buy and/or provide health insurance plans that cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients even if those things directly violate the teachings of their religion and their conscience.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had directly and specifically asked that the administration to rescind the regulation in its entirety so that all individuals, employers and insurers, including Catholics, who have a religious or moral objection to sterilization, contraception and abortifacients would not be forced by the federal government to act against their faith and their consciences.
The bishops said that the First Amendment guarantee of the free exercise of religion protected Catholics and others who have a religious objection to sterilization, contraception or abortion from being forced by the government to buy insurance that pays for those things.
In recent days, leaders of other religious denominations have joined their voices to those of the Catholic bishops, decrying the regulation as an attack on the religious liberty of individuals as well as institutions.
Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission made a forceful appeal for Baptists to resist the regulation.
“Does the government have the right to intrude on the consciences of people to force them to pay for that which they find unconscionable?” said Land. “This goes contrary to our tradition in this country and contrary to our understanding of the First Amendment's religious freedom protections.”
"In my opinion, a Baptist needs to take a stand on this issue,” said Land. “Our Baptist forefathers went to prison and died for the freedoms that we have, and now it's our responsibility in the providence of God to defend these freedoms lest they be taken away by government fiat.’
Still, President Obama did not budge today in insisting that his government will order all insurance companies in America to provide all women with free sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients—and that everyone other than a religiously based organization will be forced to pay for it, whether it violates their religious beliefs or not.
“Today, we've reached a decision on how to move forward,” said Obama. “Under the rule, women will still have access to free preventive care that includes contraceptive services--no matter where they work. So that core principle remains.
“But if a woman’s employer is a charity or a hospital that has a religious objection to providing contraceptive services as part of their health plan, the insurance company--not the hospital, not the charity--will be required to reach out and offer the woman contraceptive care free of charge, without co-pays and without hassles,” said Obama.
“The result will be that religious organizations won’t have to pay for these services, and no religious institution will have to provide these services directly,” said Obama. “Let me repeat: These employers will not have to pay for, or provide, contraceptive services. But women who work at these institutions will have access to free contraceptive services, just like other women, and they'll no longer have to pay hundreds of dollars a year that could go towards paying the rent or buying groceries.
“Now, I've been confident from the start that we could work out a sensible approach here, just as I promised,” said Obama. “I understand some folks in Washington may want to treat this as another political wedge issue, but it shouldn’t be. I certainly never saw it that way. This is an issue where people of goodwill on both sides of the debate have been sorting through some very complicated questions to find a solution that works for everyone. With today’s announcement, we've done that. Religious liberty will be protected, and a law that requires free preventive care will not discriminate against women.”
Obama took no questions after making his statement.
At Catholic Masses across the country over the past two Sundays, Catholic priests have read letters from their local bishops explaining the church's view that the mandate is a direct attack on the First Amendment and calling on Catholics to resist it.
For example, in Catholic churches in Virginia on Sunday, priests read a letter from Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde and Richmond Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo that said: “In so ruling, the administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled either to violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.”
“We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law,” the bishops wrote.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told HHS in September that the regulation was an “unprecedented attack on religious liberty."
Many Democratic lawmakers defended the mandate, saying an aggressive campaign was being waged to stop it.
“Those now attacking the new health-coverage requirement claim it is an assault on religious liberty, but the opposite is true,” Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Patty Murray of Washington, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. “Religious freedom means that Catholic women who want to follow their church's doctrine can do so, avoiding the use of contraception in any form. But the millions of American women who choose to use contraception should not be forced to follow religious doctrine, whether Catholic or non-Catholic.
Thursday, February 09, 2012
TV Network Started by Cloistered Nun Sues Sebelius
Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN)--founded in 1981 by Mother M. Angelica, a cloistered Roman Catholic nun belonging to the Poor Clares of Perpetual Adoration--has filed suit against Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and other senior officials in the Obama administration arguing that a new regulation requiring health-care plans to cover sterilizations and contraceptives—including those that cause abortions—is a violation of the organization’s First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion.
“EWTN’s sincerely held religious beliefs prohibit it from providing coverage for contraception, sterilization, abortion, or related education and counseling,” says a complaint the network filed today in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama. The network is headquartered in Irondale, Ala.
In addition to Sebelius, the suit also names as defendants Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
EWTN says that it is the world’s largest Catholic media network. According to its complaint, it produces eight different video, radio and Internet services and reaches 217 million homes in 144 countries. The network has 175 affiliated broadcast stations in the United States alone.
“EWTN airs family and religious programming from a Catholic point of view that presents the teachings of the Catholic faith as defined by the Magisterium (teaching authority) of the Catholic Church,” the networks says in its suit. “Additionally, it provides spiritual devotions from Catholic religious practice, and airs daily live Masses and prayers. Providing more than 80% original programming, EWTN offers talk shows, children’s animation, teaching series, documentaries, and live coverage of Catholic Church events.”
In its complaint, the Catholic TV network specifically explains its adherence to Catholic teachings on abortion, contraception and sterilization—the church teachings the HHS regulation would force Catholics to violate.
“EWTN thus holds and actively professes religious beliefs that include traditional Christian teachings on the sanctity of life,” says the complaint. “It believes and teaches that each human being bears the image and likeness of God, and therefore that all human life is sacred and precious, from the moment of conception. EWTN therefore believes and teaches that abortion ends a human life and is a grave sin.”
“EWTN’s religious beliefs also include traditional Christian teaching on the nature and purpose of human sexuality,” says the complaint. “In particular, EWTN believes, in accordance with Pope Paul VI’s 1968 encyclical Humanae Vitae, that human sexuality has two primary purposes: to ‘most closely unit[e] husband and wife’ and ‘for the generation of new lives.’ Accordingly, EWTN believes and actively professes, with the Catholic Church, that ‘[t]o use this divine gift destroying, even if only partially, its meaning and its purpose is to contradict the nature both of man and of woman and of their most intimate relationship, and therefore it is to contradict also the plan of God and His Will.’
“Therefore,” complaint continues, “EWTN believes and teaches that ‘any action which either before, at the moment of, or after sexual intercourse, is specifically intended to prevent procreation, whether as an end or as a means’—including contraception and sterilization—is a grave sin.”
The complaint then says: “EWTN cannot provide health care insurance covering artificial contraception, sterilization, or abortion, or related education and counseling, without violating its deeply held religious beliefs.”
“The Mandate and Defendants’ threatened enforcement of the Mandate violate EWTN’s rights secured to it by the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,” the complaint concludes.
The lawsuit is being handled for EWTN by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a non-profit law firm that specializes in First Amendment cases.
“The federal government cannot force people to violate their religion like this,” said Mark Rienzi, a constitutional law professor at Catholic University of America, who is the senior counsel at the Becket Fund. “Mother Angelica founded EWTN to spread the teachings of the Catholic Church—not to betray them.”
Wednesday, February 08, 2012
Cardinal-Designate Timothy Dolan: President Barack Obama Needs To Stop 'Intruding Into Internal Life Of Church'
There was a sharp rebuke Wednesday from Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan that put even more pressure on the president to calm a widening election year uproar. The issue at hand was the president’s insistence that Catholic institutions provide free birth control to their employees.
Dolan came to the South Bronx to bless a library, but he had no blessings — just harsh words — for President Barack Obama, who wants Catholic institutions to pay for birth control, the morning after pill and other services for people who work for them.
“The federal government should do what it’s traditionally done since July 4, 1776, namely back out of intruding into the internal life of a church,” Dolan told CBS 2’s Marcia Kramer.
The leader of the New York Archdiocese picked up support from Speaker John Boehner, who said either Obama reverses the policy or the House will.
“The federal government has drifted dangerously beyond its constitutional boundaries. This attack by the federal government on religious freedom in our country must not stand and will not stand,” Boehner said.
The attacks left the White House foundering. It wants to find some way to calm Catholic opposition, but will not back down on the policy, itself.
“I want to be clear today that the commitment to insuring the women have access to these important health care services remains very strong,” Press Secretary Jay Carney said.
It has been suggested that one avenue of compromise could include granting leeway for a church-related organization not to cover birth control, but refer employees to another insurer that will provide the coverage.
Dolan would not comment on that proposal but said, “I would welcome the fact that officials of the government are saying we need to rethink that.”
The Catholic Church is still developing its strategy on how to deal with the issue. Dolan met Wednesday with members of the Catholic League and other organizations. Sources told Kramer a massive march on Washington is one of the possibilities.
The issue has also exploded on the campaign trail. Carney made the unusual move of calling Mitt Romney by name, charging it is “ironic” for him to be against the policy, since as Massachusetts governor he presided over a similar one.
Obama 'Compromise' Could Make Contraception Mandate Worse, Says Catholic Bishops' Official
The Wall Street Journal and New York Times both report that President Obama may be considering a "compromise" on his mandate that religiously affiliated institutions must cover contraception and abortifacients, and both papers suggest that a compromise under consideration is applying Hawaii's contraception mandate at the federal level. But Richard Doerflinger, a top official at the United States Council of Catholic Bishops, says that in "some ways" the Hawaii model "would be worse." He writes in an email to THE WEEKLY STANDARD:
It's difficult to know what people may mean by the "Hawaii compromise." But a central feature of the Hawaii law is that every religious organization that is eligible for the exemption has to instruct all employees in how they can access all methods of contraception and sterilization locally "in an expeditious manner."
Just a few days ago the White House was saying that this is just about coverage, that no one has to be involved in getting people to the actual services they object to. It would be no improvement to say: "Sure, you don't have to include the coverage, you just have to send all your lay employees and women religious to the local Planned Parenthood clinic." The Administration's press release of January 20 hinted at such a requirement.
That would not be a compromise. In some ways it would be worse.
Doerflinger also discussed the Hawaii law in an interview yesterday with the National Catholic Register:
“I’ve reviewed the Hawaii law, and it’s not much of a compromise,” said Richard Doerflinger of the USCCB Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities and the bishops’ chief lobbyist on life issues in the nation’s capital. “The Hawaii contraceptive mandate has many of the same features as the new federal mandate.”
Like the federal rule, he said, the Hawaii bill “covers all FDA-approved ‘contraceptives’ (including drugs that can cause an abortion); and the religious exemption is very narrow (though it does not include the requirement that the religious organization serve only people of its own faith to be eligible).
“It adds an extra feature — the requirement that any religious organization that is exempt must still tell all enrollees how they may directly access contraceptive services and supplies in an expeditious manner.”
In other words, the Catholic Church must directly send women to drugs and devices that are morally wrong and can do harm to them.
Monday, February 06, 2012
Obamacare vs. the Catholics
On the last weekend of January, priests in Catholic churches across America read extraordinary letters to their congregations. The missives informed the laity that President Obama and his administration had launched an assault on the church. In Virginia, Catholics heard from Bishop Paul Loverde, who wrote, “I am absolutely convinced that an unprecedented and very dangerous line has been crossed.” In Phoenix, Bishop Thomas Olmsted wrote, “We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law.” In Pittsburgh, Bishop David Zubik wrote that President Obama had told Catholics, “To Hell with your religious beliefs.” Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria asked his flock to join him in the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel, which concludes: By the Divine Power of God / cast into Hell, Satan and all the evil spirits / who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
It was a remarkable moment, in part because despite their stern reputation, most Catholic bishops are not terribly conservative. They tend to be politically liberal and socially cautious. If they were less holy men, stauncher conservatives would call them squishes. Real live conservative bishops are so few and far between that whenever one appears on the scene, such as Philadelphia’s Archbishop Charles Chaput, he’s seen as a vaguely threatening curiosity. You can tell when a bishop is conservative because you will hear him referred to as “hardline” or “ultra-orthodox,” so as to mark him apart from the rest of the herd.
But what made the moment even more remarkable is that the bishops were not exaggerating. It is now a requirement of Obamacare that every Catholic institution larger than a single church—and even including some single churches—must pay for contraceptives, sterilization, and morning-after abortifacients for its employees. Each of these is directly contrary to the Catholic faith. But the Obama administration does not care. They have said, in effect, Do what we tell you—or else.
The beginnings of this confrontation lay in an obscure provision of Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which stated that all insurers will be required to provide “preventive health services.” When the law was passed, “preventive” was not defined but left to be determined at a later date.
This past August, Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius finally got around to explaining the administration’s interpretation of the phrase. Based on a recommendation from the Institute of Medicine, the administration would define “preventive health services” to include contraceptives, morning-after pills, and female sterilization. And they would interpret the “all insurers” section to include religious organizations, whatever their beliefs.
Sebelius included one small conscience exemption: A religious employer who objects to medical treatment aimed at prevention of the disease commonly known as “pregnancy” may leave it out of their health insurance coverage provided the employer satisfies three criteria: (1) It has religious inculcation as its primary duty; (2) It primarily employs people of the same faith; and (3) It primarily serves people of the same faith. This fig leaf is enough to cover most small churches—so long as your parish employs only a couple of priests and a secretary, it would probably get a pass. Larger institutions would not.
In the Catholic world, for instance, a diocesan office often employs lots of people—lawyers, janitors, administrative staff—who are not necessarily Catholic. And the duties of such offices extend far beyond inculcation of the faith—to include charity, community service, and education. Or take Catholic universities. There are more than 200 of them, serving some 750,000 students. They clearly do not fit the exemption. Neither would any of the 6,980 Catholic elementary or secondary schools. Nor the country’s 600 Catholic hospitals; nor its 1,400 Catholic long-term care centers. Ditto the network of Catholic social services organizations that spend billions of dollars a year to serve the needy and disadvantaged.
As soon as Sebelius released this decision, the Catholic church panicked. The Conference of Catholic Bishops reached out to the administration to explain the position in which it had put them. But the tone of their concern was largely friendly: Most Catholic leaders were convinced that the entire thing was a misunderstanding and that the policy—which was labeled an “interim” measure—would eventually be amended.
The reason for this optimism was that more than a few important Catholics had previously climbed out on a high branch for Obama politically, and for his health care reform as a matter of policy. Despite what you may read in the New York Times, most lay Catholics are nominally at home in the Democratic party. (Remember that a majority of Catholics voted for Obama in 2008.) And what is true of the laity goes double for those in religious life. In 2009, Notre Dame president Father John Jenkins welcomed President Obama as the school’s commencement speaker in the face of a heated student protest. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops mostly kept its powder dry during the fight over Obamacare, and very few members of the church hierarchy actively, or even tacitly, opposed the bill. Others, such as Sister Carol Keehan, the president of the Catholic Health Association, actually lobbied in favor of it, early and often. So most Catholics took the president at his word when he met with Archbishop Timothy Dolan last fall and assured him that when the final version of the policy was eventually released, any fears would be allayed.
That was their mistake. Obama telephoned Dolan on the morning of January 20 to inform him that the only concession he intended to offer in the final policy was to extend the deadline for conformity to August 2013. Every other aspect of the policy enunciated by Sebelius would remain rigidly in place.
It’s unclear whether Obama anticipated the blowback which resulted from this announcement, or perhaps even welcomed the fight. The liberal Catholic establishment nearly exploded. Sister Keehan was so horrified she threw her lot in with the more conservative Dolan in full-throated opposition to Obama. Cardinal Roger Mahony, the spectacularly liberal archbishop emeritus of Los Angeles, wrote, “I cannot imagine a more direct and frontal attack on freedom of conscience. . . . This decision must be fought against with all the energies the Catholic community can muster.” Michael Sean Winters, the National Catholic Reporter’s leftist lion, penned a 1,800-word cri de coeur titled “J’accuse!” in which he declared that, as God was his witness, he would never again vote for Obama. The editors of the Jesuit magazine America denounced a “wrong decision,” while the Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne called the policy “unconscionable.” When you’ve lost even E.J. and the Jesuits, you’ve lost the church.
The reason liberal Catholics were so wounded is twofold. First, this isn’t a religio-cultural fight over Latin in the Mass or Gregorian chant. The subjects of contraception, abortion, and sterilization are not ornamental aspects of the Catholic faith; they flow from the Church’s central teachings about the dignity of the human person. Second, Obama has left Catholic organizations a very narrow set of options. (1) They may truckle to the government’s mandate, in violation of their beliefs. (2) They may cease providing health insurance to their employees altogether, though this would incur significant financial penalties under Obamacare. (The church seems unlikely to obtain any of Nancy Pelosi’s golden waivers.) Or (3) they may simply shut down. There is precedent for this final option. In 2006, Boston’s Catholic Charities closed its adoption service—one of the most successful in the nation—after Massachusetts law required that the organization must place children in same-sex households.
Which means that what is actually on the block are precisely the kind of social-justice services—education, health care, and aid to the needy—that liberal Catholics believe to be the most vital works of the church. For conservative Catholics, Obama merely confirmed their darkest suspicions; for liberals, it was a betrayal in full.
As a matter of law, this decision by Obama’s health care bureaucrats seems unlikely to survive. Last month, the Supreme Court struck down another attempt by the administration to bully religious believers in the Hosanna-Tabor case. In that instance, Obama’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission argued that a religious organization does not have the right to control its hiring and firing according to its religious belief. The Court struck down this argument 9-0 in a rebuke so embarrassing that Justice Elena Kagan came close to openly mocking her successor as Obama’s solicitor general during oral arguments. It was the kind of sweeping decision that should have deterred the Obama administration from forcing Catholics into complying with the health insurance mandate, because it suggested that the Court will very likely side against the administration once this matter comes before it. Presidents typically dislike being overturned unanimously by the High Court.
The trick, of course, is that when Sebelius issued the final protocol, her lone concession was the one-year delay in implementation. Which, for Obama, has the happy side-effect of pushing the moment of enforcement to August 2013. Meaning that no legal challenge can come until after the 2012 election. Which suggests that the thinking behind the policy may be primarily political. The question, then, is whether Obama’s confrontation with Catholics makes electoral sense.
While Catholics were blindsided by the January decision, the left had been paying close attention to the subject for months. In November, several leftist and feminist blogs began beating the war drums, warning Obama not to “cave” (their word) to the bishops. They were joined by the Nation, Salon, the Huffington Post, and the usual suspects. (Sample headline: “The Men Behind the War on Women.”) At the same time, Planned Parenthood and NARAL launched grassroots lobbying efforts and delivered petitions with 100,000 and 135,000 signatures respectively to the White House urging Obama to uphold the policy and not compromise.
In that sense, Obama’s decision might be thought of as akin to his decision halting the Keystone oil pipeline: a conscious attempt to energize his base at the expense of swing voters, who he concluded were already lost.
The other possibility, of course, is that Obama sees the dismantling of Catholic institutions as part of a larger ideological mission, worth losing votes over. As Yuval Levin noted in National Review Online last week, institutions such as the Catholic church represent a mediating layer between the individual and the state. This layer, known as civil society, is one of the principal differences between Western liberal order and the socialist view.
Levin argues that the current fight is just one more example of President Obama’s attempt to bulldoze civil society. He wants to sweep away the middle layer so that individuals may have a more direct and personal encounter with the state. The attack on Catholics is, Levin concludes, “an attack on mediating institutions of all sorts, moved by the genuine belief that they are obstacles to a good society.”
Seen in this light, Obama’s confrontation with the Catholic church is of a piece with the administration’s pursuit of the rickety Hosanna-Tabor case and another incident from last October, when the Department of Health and Human Services defunded a grant to the Conference of Catholic Bishops. That program supported aid to victims of human trafficking. The Obama administration decided that they no longer wanted the Catholic church in the business of helping these poor souls. That, evidently, is the government’s job.
Of course, there is a third possibility in explaining the president’s motives. It could be that, in deciding to go to war with the Catholic church, President Obama has hit on one of those rare moments where his electoral interests—at least as he perceives them—and his ideological goals are blessedly aligned.
WH: Women ‘Deserve’ to Have Catholic Church Buy Them Sterilizations, Contraceptives and Abortifacients
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday that American women “deserve” to have their employers buy them health insurance plans that cover sterlizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions, with no fees or co-pay, even if the employer is a Catholic or Catholic organization that adheres to the church teaching that sterilization, artificial contraception and abortifacients are morally wrong and that Catholics cannot be involved in them.
“I understand that there have been objections and that some people disagree with us and we are going to work with institutions that have concerns here,” Carney told reporters. “But I think it’s important to note here that we believe these services are important and that American women deserve to have access to that kind of insurance coverage regardless of where they work.”
On Jan. 20, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius finalized a regulation, under the new health-care law, that requires all health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that cause abortions. The regulation has an exceedingly narrow exemption for “religious” employers that would effectively cover only an actual parish church—but not a Catholic hospital, university, or charitable organization. Catholic individuals, Catholic business owners and Catholic insurers would be compelled by the mandate to act against the teachings of their church.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops told HHS in September that the regulation was an “unprecedented attack on religious liberty” and has urged the administration to rescind it in its entirety. Carney has said that President Barack Obama supports the regulation.
At Catholic Masses over the past two Sundays, Catholic priests across America have read letters from their local bishops decrying the mandate as a direct attack on the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion and call on Catholics to resist it.
For example, in Catholic churches in Virginia on Sunday, priests read a letter from Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde and Richmond Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo that said: “In so ruling, the administration has cast aside the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, denying to Catholics our nation’s first and most fundamental freedom, that of religious liberty. And as a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled either to violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so). The administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.”
“We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law,” the bishops said.
White House Press Secretary Carney said Monday that the administration has worked to “find the appropriate balance” between upholding the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion and requiring that all American women be given health insurance that covers sterilizations, contraceptives and abortifacients without fees or co-pay.
“We have worked to find the appropriate balance between religious beliefs and the need to provide preventive services to American women and to make sure that American women have access to those services regardless of where they work,” Carney said. “And we have carved out an exemption for churches and other houses of worship and we will work going forward with institutions where the employer is affiliated with a church for example but where many, many of the employees are of all faiths to find a way to ensure that the policy is implemented and all women have access to these services that also deals with the concerns that have been expressed.”
Saturday, February 04, 2012
Archbishop Chaput says Obama administration sold out Catholic supporters
The Obama administration has betrayed Catholics by refusing to expand the religious exemption in Health and Human Services' contraception mandate, Philadelphia Archbishop Charles J. Chaput says.
“The administration's only concession was to give our institutions a one-year delay to comply,” he said in a Feb. 2 letter. “This is not merely inadequate. It is dangerous. And it betrays the good faith of many Catholics who – until now – have supported the current administration with an honest will.”
Archbishop Chaput is one of over 140 U.S. bishops who have spoke out against the Health and Human Services rules finalized Jan. 20, which require most new health plans to provide contraception and sterilization – including drugs that can cause an abortion – without a co-pay.
Most religious institutions will not be able to opt out, though HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius gave them an additional year to meet the requirements.
In a letter distributed to parishes to be read at Feb. 5 Sunday Masses, Archbishop Chaput said Catholic institutions “cannot comply with this unjust law without compromising our convictions and undermining the Catholic identity of many of our service ministries.”
“This is not just another important issue among the many we need to be concerned about,” he stated.
“This ruling is different. This ruling interferes with the basic right of Catholic citizens to organize and work for the common good as Catholics in the public square.”
On Feb. 1, White House Domestic Policy Council Director Cecilia Muñoz issued a response to critics of the mandate. She stressed the existence of a religious exemption, cited Guttmacher Institute statistics about contraceptive use among Catholics, and said the mandate excluded abortion-causing drugs.
The exemption, however, applies only to institutions that primarily employ and serve members of the same faith for the purpose of inculcating religious values.
Meanwhile, the emergency contraceptive “Ella” – covered without a co-pay under the mandate – can prevent the survival of a living embryo, and thus qualifies as an abortifacient drug according to the U.S. bishops' Ethical and Religious directives.
In his letter, Archbishop Chaput indicated that the issue at hand had nothing to do with any particular individual's decision to contracept, but was primarily a matter of institutions' right to act in accordance with religious convictions.
But individuals and non-religious institutions, he noted, would also be subject to state coercion.
“Almost all health insurers will be forced to include those 'services' in the health policies they write. And almost all individuals will be forced to buy that coverage as a part of their policies.”
He urged Catholics to educate themselves with the resources of the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, and said they should contact their congressional representatives in the House and Senate.
“Your action on this issue matters – not just today but for many years to come; and in ways that will shape the ability of the Church to witness the Gospel publicly through her ministries well into the future.”
Thursday, February 02, 2012
Inoculating Against Religious Freedom
A few weeks ago, Rick Santorum got some criticism for saying the Supreme Court erred in saying states may not outlaw contraception. The idea that Americans could legally be forbidden to buy condoms or birth control pills struck most people as a gross violation of personal liberty.
They are right, of course. But many of those who think it's wrong to forbid Americans to buy contraceptives think it's just fine to require them to buy contraceptives. In this group, unfortunately, are President Barack Obama and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who are hell-bent on enforcing that mandate on nearly everyone. Under the Obama health care plan, employers that provide health insurance to employees must purchase coverage for contraceptives and sterilization. Individuals who buy their own policies have to get the coverage even if they've taken a vow of celibacy.
For Catholic institutions, this is not trivial. The church regards artificial contraception as a violation of the natural order, insisting that "each and every marital act must of necessity retain its intrinsic relationship to the procreation of human life."
The administration makes only miserly room for such views. Churches are effectively excused from the mandate, but other religious institutions -- such as hospitals, universities and charitable organizations -- are not.
A hospital may be named after a saint, founded by an order of nuns, replete with crucifixes and motivated by the teachings of Jesus, but too bad: It will be treated as the moral equivalent of Harrah's casinos or Bain Capital. Those in charge may regard birth control as inherently evil, but they will have to pay for it anyway.
This is particularly ungenerous considering that the administration has provided an exemption for another group. The Amish are excused from the individual mandate to get coverage because they have religious objections to insurance of any kind.
The administration wants to make sure that all women have access to contraception at no cost. But some will find it has the opposite effect.
Employers that furnish health insurance have to cover it. But employers don't have to furnish health insurance -- and some of those with a religious mission may decide not to. When the District of Columbia passed a law that forced Catholic Charities to provide medical insurance to the same-sex partners of its employees, the agency elected to simply drop coverage for spouses.
Anyone left without health insurance under the administration's rule can go to new state-run health insurance exchanges to buy individual policies. But here again, the administration rejects freedom of conscience. The only policies available will include coverage for contraceptives -- including those the church regards as "abortion drugs" -- and sterilization.
This overbearing approach is not essential to health care reform. Experience indicates that freedom can coexist with general access to contraception.
In the past, employers have generally been able to make their own decisions, and most cover it. According to the Guttmacher Institute, nine out of 10 company policies pay for prescription birth control. The federal employee plan allows insurers with religious scruples to sell policies that don't include such coverage -- which doesn't prevent anyone from getting policies that do.
This is an issue on which the Catholic Church is drastically at odds with prevailing opinion and practice. Its position has a way of bringing out latent anti-Catholic sentiment. Writing in The Huffington Post, June Carbone and Naomi Cahn sneer at "the male hierarchy's opposition to birth control." The issue, they insist, "is too important to be left in the hands of a small number of men in robes."
But religious freedom is too important to be left in the hands of people who see it as an obstacle to be pushed aside whenever it's inconvenient. Anytime it is feasible to let organizations and individuals follow the dictates of faith, it's essential that they be permitted to do so.
That's established policy in many areas. When the military relied on the draft, Quakers were allowed to opt out because of their pacifism. When a Seventh-Day Adventist was fired for refusing to work on her Sabbath, the Supreme Court said she was eligible for unemployment benefits. Prison officials have to accommodate the religious practices of inmates.
Why? Out of respect for religious freedom and diversity. Most Americans regard that tradition as a mark of civic health. In this case, the administration treats it as an illness to be cured.
