Posts Tagged ‘Catholic’

A Catholic priest presided over a service Thursday to give proper names to the 45 babies whose bodies were found in the West Philadelphia abortion clinic of Dr. Kermit Gosnell. He is charged with killing five people - a patient and four viable babies that prosecutors say were born alive. He has also been charged with performing late-term abortions that violate Pennsylvania’s 24-week limit on the procedure.

Read more By Jennifer Harper at The Washington Times

Four years ago, we Americans did something that not many decades earlier had been considered unthinkable, in electing an African-American to the presidency. That was a milestone, one that even those of us who voted for John McCain could, as I said that very night, take pride in. This year, a ticket with a Mormon and a Catholic on it could make it to the White House. The Mormons and Catholics who were targets of religious bigotry and violence back in the 19th century made a bet on America — that someday America would be truer to its founding principles of tolerance and liberty. They were right: It gets better.

By Michael Potemra at National Review

Cardinal Dolan thought he heard Barack Obama pledge respect for the Catholic Church’s rights of conscience. Then came the contraception coverage mandate.

The president of the U.S. Conference of Bishops is careful to show due respect for the president of the United States. “I was deeply honored that he would call me and discuss these things with me,” says the newly elevated Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York. But when Archbishop Dolan tells me his account of their discussions of the ObamaCare birth-control mandate, Barack Obama sounds imperious and deceitful to me.

Read more By JAMES TARANTO at Wall Street Journal

Rights: The president’s phony contraception compromise might be enough to convince Catholics their rights aren’t being trampled. But what about the rest of us, who face more rights violations in the name of ObamaCare?

The “accommodation” for the church was an exercise in misdirection. Instead of forcing Catholic organizations to violate a basic tenet of their faith and pay for contraception coverage directly, Obama will instead require insurance companies to provide the coverage free of charge.

But wait a second. Since insurers can’t print money, the only way they’ll be able to afford this new “free” benefit will be to raise premiums on their customers, including the Catholic Church. So the church will end up paying for birth control, just not directly.

Read more at Investor’s Business Daily

Former Democratic congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper, a Catholic from Erie, Pennsylvania, cast a crucial vote in favor of Obamacare in 2010. She lost her seat that November in part because of her controversial support of Obamacare. But Dahlkemper said recently that she would have never voted for the health care bill had she known that the Department of Health and Human Services would require all private insurers, including Catholic charities and hospitals, to provide free coverage of contraception, sterilization procedures, and the “week-after” pill “ella” that can induce early abortions.

“I would have never voted for the final version of the bill if I expected the Obama Administration to force Catholic hospitals and Catholic Colleges and Universities to pay for contraception,” Dahlkemper said in a press release sent out by Democrats for Life in November. “We worked hard to prevent abortion funding in health care and to include clear conscience protections for those with moral objections to abortion and contraceptive devices that cause abortion. I trust that the President will honor the commitment he made to those of us who supported final passage.”

Read more by John McCormack at weeklystandard.com

In politics, the timing is often the message. On Jan. 20 — three days before the annual March for Life — the Obama administration announced its final decision that Catholic universities, hospitals and charities will be compelled to pay for health insurance that covers sterilization, contraceptives and abortifacients.

Preparing for the march, Catholic students gathered for Mass at Verizon Center. The faithful held vigil at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Knights of Columbus and bishops arrived to trudge in the cold along the Mall. All came to Washington in time for their mocking.

Catholic leaders are still trying to process the implications of this ambush. The president had every opportunity to back down from confrontation. In the recent ­Hosanna-Tabor ruling, a unanimous Supreme Court reaffirmed a broad religious autonomy right rooted in the Constitution. Obama could have taken the decision as justification for retreat.

–SNIP– Consider Catholicism’s most prominent clerical leader, Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, head of the Conference of Catholic Bishops. Dolan had pursued a policy of engagement with the administration. In November, he met face to face with Obama, who was earnestly reassuring on conscience protections. On Jan. 20, during a less-cordial phone conversation, Obama informed Dolan that no substantial concession had been made. How can Dolan make the argument for engagement now?

Read more by Michael Gerson at WashingtonPost.com

A Catholic bishop in North Dakota recently gave an interview in which he gave some of the strongest comments yet from a Catholic Church leader on the thorny questions of what to do about Catholic politicians who support abortion.

Bishop Samuel Aquila makes it crystal clear he believes there is a process by which Catholic officials should confront pro-abortion politicians and that they should be “expelled” from the Church if they don’t back down from supporting abortion.

Read more from Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com, 8/16/2011 at http://www.lifenews.com/2011/08/16/catholic-bishop-boot-pro-abortion-politicians-from-church/