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From Miami, Florida to Seattle, Washington– Every single Roman Catholic bishop in the United States has condemned in public the Obamacare HHS mandate — all 180 bishops who lead dioceses in the U.S. have spoken. This is a simply incredible, unified, universal Catholic witness on this critical issue of religious freedom.(To those wondering about my methodology, it is now negative instead of positive — I am no longer able to find a single Roman Catholic bishop who has NOT spoken out against the mandate publicly. It is also my presumption that this conclusion applies to all Eastern Rite and Sui...

Imagine that you’re a politician. You know that a story is going to come out, and you know that the story will be damaging to your interests. You can’t control that. But you can control when the story comes out. How should you plan it?That’s easy. Arrange for the story to come out Friday evening. People don’t spend much time with the news on Saturday mornings. Many people won’t even notice the story; you may be able to bury it.OK, now imagine that you’re working in the Obama White House. You want a bit of a favorable “bump� when you...

Last Friday, I posted on Ricochet a piece entitled American Catholicism’s Pact With the Devil. In it, among other things, I traced the crisis now faced by American Catholicism to the reign within the American Church of Joseph Bernardin, Cardinal-Archbishop of Chicago. In my haste, I got a detail or two wrong, and I was challenged not only with regard to the Cardinal’s cursus honorum but also with regard to the role he played in the scandal concerning the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic clergy. This post is meant to correct the record with regard to minor details,...

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama on Feb. 10 confirmed that his administration was offering an “accommodation” to religious groups opposed to a controversial federal rule requiring private health plans to provide contraception and abortion services. As reported in the media, church-affiliated employers would not have to directly cover those services; instead, their insurance plans would cover them. The announcement prompted an expression of gratitude from Daughter of Charity Sister Carol Keehan, the president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, and a polite, but wary response from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which said they needed to study the...

You have to hand it to Barack Obama. He has unmasked in the most thoroughgoing way the despotic propensities of the administrative entitlements state and of the Democratic Party. And now he has done something similar to the hierarchy of the American Catholic Church. At the prospect that institutions associated with the Catholic Church would be required to offer to their employees health insurance covering contraception and abortifacients, the bishops, priests, and nuns scream bloody murder. But they raise no objection at all to the fact that Catholic employers and corporations, large and small, owned wholly or partially by Roman...

“I was struck looking at this,” Washington Post columnist and former foreign editor David Ignatius expressed on ABC’s This Week in admiring how Barack Obama on Friday adjusted the contraception mandate, hailing “the ability to do a do-over quickly” since the administration was not “done deaf” and “they did make changes and this is now a policy that you can defend.” Unaddressed, how it’s just an accounting gimmick and Catholic institutions would still be required to cover what they morally oppose, to say nothing of what gives the government the right to require private insurers to offer a service for...

Father Larry Snyder, the president of Catholic Charities USA, has welcomed the Obama administration’s “compromise” on the contraceptive mandate. He says: This compromise enables Catholic Charities USA to not only continue to provide access to quality healthcare to its 70,000 employees and families across the country of many different faiths and backgrounds, but also guarantees the continued delivery of vital services to the more than 10 million people living in need across the country. So here’s where we stand: Within hours of President Obama’s announcement, without waiting for guidance from the US bishops, the heads of the Catholic Health Association...

When ...the Obama administration finally announced its decision to require religiously affiliated [organizations] to cover birth control in their insurance plans, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops were fully prepared for battle. Seven months earlier, they had started laying the groundwork for a major new campaign ... But the birth control mandate, issued on Jan. 20, was their Pearl Harbor. Hours after President Obama phoned to share his decision with Archbishop Timothy M. Dolan of New York ...the USCCB posted on its Web site a video of Archbishop Dolan, which had been recorded the day before. “Never before,” Archbishop Dolan said,...

2:25 PM 2/7/2012 — For thirty years the Catholic bishops of the United States have trivialized their moral authority by wasting their teaching authority within the Church by embracing every liberal social initiative that came along, from expressing concern for migrants and refugees to lecturing the government on the plight of illegal aliens. All the while, Catholics were ignoring the Church's teaching on a whole host of moral issues like the infallibility of the Church's teaching on contraception without so much as a word from the bishops. Catholics in public office, like Nancy Polosi and Kathleen Sebelius, are not even...

Updated: *167* Bishops (More Than 90% of Dioceses) Have Spoken Out Against Obama/HHS Mandate by Thomas Peters7 days ago In the past I’ve compiled a list of all the bishops speaking out on a particular controversial issue (for instance, over Notre Dame’s invitation to President Obama) — here are the bishops who have spoken out against the Obama/HHS mandate.[See my ongoing coverage of Obama/HHS's war against religious liberty here, here, here and most recently here. I'm also tweeting more updates @AmericanPapist.]If I have missed anyone please let me know in the comments! And please double-check that your bishop really is not there...

Updated: *153* Bishops (Over 80% of Dioceses) Have Spoken Out Against Obama/HHS Mandate by Thomas Peters6 days ago In the past I’ve compiled a list of all the bishops speaking out on a particular controversial issue (for instance, over Notre Dame’s invitation to President Obama) — here are the bishops who have spoken out against the Obama/HHS mandate.[See my ongoing coverage of Obama/HHS's war against religious liberty here, here, here and most recently here. I'm also tweeting more updates @AmericanPapist.]If I have missed anyone please let me know in the comments! And please double-check that your bishop really is not there before...

1st Amendment: Catholic bishops on Sunday issued a response to ObamaCare's mandates on providing contraception in violation of conscience and religious freedom. The message was simple: We will not comply. It was hardly a profile in courage when the Obama administration, hoping to kick the issue down the road past the November election, announced last Friday that Catholic hospitals and other religious institutions will have an extra year to comply with a new requirement that most health plans provide contraceptive benefits at no cost to their members. On Sunday, America's Catholic bishops in an open letter to their parishioners and...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) vowed today that she will join with the Obama administration in standing up against the Catholic Church in defending a new regulation that will require Catholic individuals to buy, and Catholic institutions to provide, health insurance plans that cover sterilizations and artificial contraceptives, including those that induce abortions.... At her Wednesday press briefing, CNSNews.com asked Pelosi: "The administration has issued a regulation that will require all health-care plans to cover sterilization and all FDA-approved contraceptives, including those that induce abortions. This would force Catholic individuals and institutions to act against their consciences. All across...

In the accompanying video, gun rights expert John M. Snyder notes that proponents of religious rights and champions of Second Amendment rights can unite with each other against Obama on the issue of civil rights itself. He says that Catholic leaders can learn from American gun owners on how to deal with Obama's mendacity. Named the "senior rights activist in Washington" by Shotgun News, a national industry-wide weekly, Snyder is the Gun Dean, according to Human Events, a conservative weekly published in the Nation's Capital. www.GunRightsPolicies.org John M. Snyder Manager Telum Associates, LLC Arlington, VA 202-239-8005

Over the weekend, the Catholic Church’s letter went beyond simply issuing oppositional rhetoric to media. Instead, priests read an open note to congregations across the country, dubbing the administration‘s take on women’s health and religious violations as an attack on their faith. In the letter, Bishops highlighted what they called “an alarming and serious matter,“ as their words contended that the federal government has ”dealt a heavy blow” to the Catholic population.

PHOENIX (KPHO) - The Mormon church's role in reporting abuse is under scrutiny after two alleged sexual abuse victims say their church leaders failed to report the abuse to police. Brian Poe was a young teen when he says he forged a bond with a Valley family in the LDS church. A church he later joined. But he says everything changed when the adult woman he trusted, crossed the line. "The mother had initiated kissing - and over the next couple of months things escalated from there," said Brian. During the next three years Brian claims the married woman sexually...

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales has offered the Palestinians a powerful tool of propaganda: the comparison with Jesus’ passion. “We are to be freshly attentive to the needs of those who, like Jesus himself, are displaced and in discomfort”, Archbishop Vincent Nichols said during his Christmas Mass sermon at Westminster Cathedral. “A shadow falls particularly heavily on the town of Bethlehem tonight … We pray for them tonight”. It would have been more in keeping with Nicholas’ mission to mention hundreds of Christians losing their lives to Islamic terrorism and oppressed by Palestinian Muslim...

A freshman lawmaker is proposing to change Wisconsin's Constitution to grant equal rights to the unborn as part of a national push to reframe the abortion debate, a strategy that has failed in at least two states and has divided abortion opponents in Wisconsin and elsewhere. State Rep. Andre Jacque (R-Bellevue) introduced the so-called personhood amendment in November. He says it's needed to protect the state's decades-old abortion ban still on the books - one of just a few around the country - in the event of legal challenges if Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision nullifying such statutes, is...

Catholic Vote TV spot seeks to influence direction of Health and Human Services mandate.CHICAGO — “Dear President Obama, can I ask you a question,” the young Catholic schoolgirl asks, staring resolutely into the camera. “Why are you trying to force my church or my school to pay for things that we don’t even believe in?” That’s the start of the latest ad from CatholicVote.org, seeking to call attention to a range of actions by the Obama administration that impinge on the religious liberty of Catholic Americans. The 30-second spot will debut today on Good Morning America in Pittsburgh. It also...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) on Thursday described America’s Roman Catholic bishops as “lobbyists in Washington, D.C.” in their efforts to persuade the Department of Health and Human Service to rescind a proposed regulation under the new health-care law that would force Catholics to act against the teachings of their church by compelling them to purchase health-care plans that cover sterilizations and all-FDA approved contraceptives, including abortifacients. The proposed regulation, scheduled to take effect on Aug. 1, 2012, would require every health-insurance plan in the United States to cover sterilizations and all FDA-approved contraceptives

The conference has formed a new “religious liberty” committee, the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty and is hiring another attorney and lobbyist to address “religious liberty and marriage issues” on Capitol Hill. The Committee is also planning to lobby against a Congressional repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act and the military’s repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Sadly, as part of this change in focus, the term “religious liberty” is being redefined away from protecting the rights to speak, believe, and practice religion. Instead, “religious liberty” is apparently the right to receive government money without restrictions. And we...

WHAT BCG DOES BETTER CATHOLIC GIVING (BCG) is committed to go beyond important, but limited web-based investigations and just settling for the 'company line' from the CCHD gatekeepers at the USCCB and local (arch)diocesan offices. Their answers haven't sufficed. Hitting the pavement - The BCG will be paying surprise visits to many of the most questionable CCHD-funded organizations, and report our findings right here at the Better Catholic Giving web site. Whenever possible, we will also seek out people who are 'helped' through these CCHD-funded groups to see if they are really 'breaking the cycle of poverty'. This is our...

For many years now, Catholics across America have been asked by their local parishes to contribute to a variety of causes, mostly to help the less fortunate. As Catholics we are called to live the gospel and to practice the corporal works of mercy. This includes aiding those who are in need of basic necessities: from food and shelter to clothing and education. The Catholic Church is indeed the largest charitable organization on the planet. While many Catholic charitable activities have done and continue to do good work on behalf of the poor, there are a number of specific efforts...

Imagine buying an apple from an orchard, biting into it, and discovering that the apple is full of worms. You’d be upset, wouldn’t you? In fact, you’d probably take the apple to the farmer, point out that the apple is full of worms, show him your receipt, and ask for a refund. Now imagine that instead of making amends, the farmer started telling you about how his staff is thoroughly committed to picking only the best apples and that his orchard has a rigorous policy in place to make sure that apples with worms are not sold from his orchard....

Seven years since the American hierarchy last made its required Quinquennial Visit to the Holy See, the bench's first ad limina of B16's pontificate began earlier today -- three days ahead of schedule -- as the Pope received 13 prelates of New England's Region I in private audience. While Benedict will meet with each of the bishops over the next week, this morning's Apartment-bound group was led by the area's top cleric, Boston's Cardinal Séan O'Malley OFM Cap., joined by his five active auxiliaries. Likewise on the Opening Day audience slate were Bishops George Coleman of Fall River, Salvatore...

SAINT CHARLES BORROMEO ARCHBISHOP, CARDINAL 1538-1584 Feast: November 4 Among the great reformers of the troubled sixteenth century was Charles Borromeo, who, with St. Francis of Loyola, St. Philip Neri, and others, led the movement to combat the inroads.   His father, Count Gilbert Borromeo, was a man of piety and ability, and his mother was a member of the famous Medici family of Milan, sister of Angelo de Medici, later to become Pope Pius IV. The second of two sons in a family of six children, Charles was born in the castle of Arona on Lake Maggiore, on...

Dr. William H. Marshner, professor of Theology at Christendom College, thoroughly reviewed the contents of this report on grants fron the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. Dr. Marshner's list of accomplishments and credentials can be found here: http://www.christendom.edu/academics/faculty-marshner.php.

Under the pretense of fighting poverty and injustice, the USCCB-run Catholic Campaign for Human Development has disfigured Catholic Social teaching to make it nothing more than a tool to help promote sexual immorality and Communism.

Appointed twice by Pope John Paul II and again by Pope Benedict XVI to the Pontifical Academy for Life, renowned pro-life leader Judie Brown's bold new book The Broken Path reveals the political intrigue and challenges faced by and at times caused by the hierarchy of America's Catholic Church. After five years of exhaustive research, whether heaping praise or burning coals, The Broken Path makes clear not only what can be done, but what must be done to restore our nation's character, to return our society to a Culture of Life, and to reclaim both the Church and country that...

“Substance” ought to be meaty. Against the 210 pages of a report issued by American Life League (ALL)[i] documenting scores of Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) grantees that violate, in one form or another, CCHD’s own grant guidelines, CCHD issued a page-long press release[ii] and an accompanying one-page “enclosure.” [iii] The fact that this preemptive rebuttal was issued on September 28, 2011, several days before the ALL Report was released on October 3, 2011, may account for the paucity of its self-defense but, then again, it may not. As we have done with prior CCHD communications, here is a...

Catholic Campaign on Human Development: The American Life League Report on links to abortion groups Part 3 in a series by investigative journalist Stephanie Block on the involvement of Catholic bishops with leftist and pro-abortion groups. In a long and lengthening list of frustrations over the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), one certainly has to be its response to criticism. For 40 years, this “charity” has – deliberately on the part of some folks – hidden its primary objectives and misrepresented its critics. Then, when public outcry has grown too strident, it has staged mock “reforms.” The most recent...

CCHD 2010 - 2011 Grants Report EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Background For a number of years, there has been concern with the grants that CCHD distributes. There have been specific complaints that a significant portion of the grants have been given to organizations working in direct contradiction to Church teaching. In 2009, American Life League joined with several other concerned organizations to form the Reform CCHD Now Coalition. In March of 2010, the coalition sent a report on CCHD to each bishop, showing that, in 2009–2010, 51 out of 237 groups receiving CCHD funding either directly or through coalition membership promoted abortion,...

Catholic Campaign for Human Development Update – May, 2011 Extensive research by reform groups during 2009 and 2010 revealed that dozens of Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) grants were going to organizations which either directly or indirectly opposed Church teaching. An in-depth analysis of CCHD’s mission, strategies and actions, conducted in March, 2011 by the St. Gregory VII Chapter of CUF, shows that no sustainable progress has been made to reform CCHD in the last year. We believe that CCHD’s mission statement is fundamentally flawed, and as a result, the Catholic Church is spending millions of dollars each year...

Matters of grave importance could and should prompt bishops to weigh in on politics to make sure that inviolable principles are not violated. The basic rights to life and liberty come to mind. So in this vein, when many bishops weighed in on Obamacare and the plan to fund abortions with taxpayer dollars, some bishops rightfully spoke up to defend life. That is a principle worth defending. But when bishops speak up to defend federal programs from having the future rate of growth cut in extremely modest ways as a way to just begin to address the serious issue of...

Dear President Obama, Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Boehner, Recently, in the midst of the debt-ceiling crisis, a group calling themselves the “Circle of Protection,” led by Jim Wallis of the activist group Sojourners, met with you and your staff to claim that biblical mandates preclude limits to federal programs for low-income people. The Circle includes representatives of the National Association of Evangelicals, Bread for the World, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Wallis and the “Circle of Protection” do not speak for all Christians. However laudable their intentions, the consequence of their action is to provide a religious...

When Pope Benedict XVI appointed the archbishop of Denver, Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M.Cap., as the new archbishop of Philadelphia on July 19, the usual suspects were trotted out to say the usual things that the usual suspects say. Thus David Clohessy of SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, continued his nine-year rant against the Catholic Church by pronouncing Chaput’s record on abuse (which virtually everyone else finds admirable) “dismal.” But then David Clohessy would likely have found St. John Chrysostom, St. Charles Borromeo, or Chaput’s 19th-century predecessor in Philadelphia, St. John Neumann, “dismal,” because if you’re the...

Featured Term (selected at random):COLLEGIALITY The bishops of the Roman Catholic Church, united under the Pope as an episcopal community. According to the Second Vatican Council, "St. Peter and the other Apostles constitute a single apostolic college. In like manner, the Roman Pontiff, Peter's successor, and the bishops, successors of the Apostles, are linked together" (Constitution on the Church, III, 21). This community of Pope and bishops, and the bishops among themselves, was created by Christ and therefore belongs by divine right to the nature of the Church he founded. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's...

The Need of Zeal Most Rev. Fulton J. Sheen "I Thirst.” The Fifth Word from the Cross The cry, "I thirst," refers not to physical thirst. It was His soul that was burning and His Heart that was on fire. He was thirsting for the souls of men. The Shepherd was lonely without His sheep; the Creator was yearning for His creatures; the First-born was looking for His brethren. All during His life He had been searching for souls. He left heaven to find them among the thorns; it mattered little if they made a crown of, them for...

Chaput: Bishops Must Speak United on Politicians, Abortion Washington, DC -- When Catholic politicians push for abortion without impunity, Catholic faithful are often left wondering why Church leaders don't do more to bring up their actions as out of step with Catholic teachings. One leading bishop is explaining why. http://www.lifenews.com/2011/04/15/chaput-bishops-must-speak-united-on-politicians-abortion/

Military intervention in Libya, in the judgment of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), “appears to meet” the just-cause criterion of Catholic teaching on just war. The USCCB, however, cautioned that it has “refrained from making definitive judgments” in light of “many prudential decisions beyond our expertise.” “In Catholic teaching the use of force must always be a last resort that serves a just cause,” Bishop Howard Hubbard of Albany, chairman of the USCCB Committee on International Justice and Peace, wrote in a letter to National Security Advisor Thomas Donilon. “The Catechism of the Catholic Church limits just...

ROME (CNS) -- Japanese church officials are setting up an emergency center to coordinate humanitarian aid operations in Sendai, the area most devastated by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. The center will be managed by Caritas Japan and will draw on the resources of numerous Catholic volunteers who have come forward in the wake of the disaster, the Vatican missionary news agency Fides reported. Japan's bishops, meeting in Sendai March 16, decided to establish the center and initiate additional relief efforts under the supervision of Caritas. "The biggest buildings in Sendai withstood the very strong earthquake. The greatest damage...

The Lion of Munster Sunday, March 6, 2011 A.D. | Author Donald R. McClarey Neither praise nor threats will distance me from God.Blessed Clemens von GalenThe Nazis hated and feared Clemens August Graf von Galen in life and no doubt they still hate and fear him, at least those now enjoying the amenities of some of the less fashionable pits of Hell. Going into Lent, I am strongly encouraged by the story of Blessed von Galen. I guess one could come up with a worse situation than being a Roman Catholic bishop in Nazi Germany in 1941, and confronting...

I thought it might be helpful to show the chronology of the bishops' role in the budget debate in order to help you form an opinion about their conduct. We can come to different conclusions about their motivation, but the results of their actions are matters of fact. BOTTOM LINE: I am not aware of any Republican legislator or conservative commentator who has tried to use the bishops' statements as evidence that the bishops support the Republican position, and I'm sure they would have if the wording of those statements seemed to support their position. Yet, the Democrats have used...

TULSA, Oklahoma, November 30, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Bishop Edward J. Slattery of Tulsa, Oklahoma also chose not to contribute to the national collection for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) LifeSiteNews.com (LSN) has confirmed, making him the sixth bishop confirmed to have done so.In a letter to the pastors of his diocese, read at Masses on the weekend of the November 21-22 collection, Bishop Slattery informed the faithful that the funds contributed to the CCHD collection would be reserved for use within the diocese.Msgr. Patrick Brankin told LSN that Bishop Slattery made his decision in the week before the...

While the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD) has come under well deserved scrutiny for supporting groups such as ACORN and groups with ties to promoting abortion, CMR has uncovered that Ralph McCloud, while heading the CCHD in 2008, was simultaneously working as a highly placed campaign official for a pro-choice politician seeking to unseat a pro-life politician. As you likely know, CCHD is the bishops' anti-poverty program which funds community organizing and economic development projects and has been at the center of a number of controversies. Ralph McCloud was named head of the CCHD in November 2007. In his...

Hundreds of priests filed into Verizon Center in downtown Washington on Monday morning as contemporary praise music boomed from the speakers. The arena was packed with thousands of swaying, praying teenagers, many wearing sweat shirts from the Catholic schools they attend or knit hats that said "We believe" or "March for Life." [snip] Organizers say they expect a larger and more enthusiastic crowd than ever this year, fueled by the increasingly sophisticated use by church leaders of the social networking technology ... [snip] More than 27,000 young people secured tickets for the morning concert, pep rally and Mass, according to...

A bishop from Kazakstan has suggested the preparation of an authoritative document to expose major errors in the interpretation of the teachings of Vatican II. Bishop Athanasius Schneider, an auxiliary of the Karaganda diocese, argues that the Church has been damaged by inaccurate interpretations of the Council documents, which suggest “an anthropocentric, secularizing, or naturalistic shift by the Second Vatican Council” and a dramatic break from previous Church teachings. Bishop Schneider says that the teaching of the Church has been distorted because of secular influences and because too many Church leaders failed to uphold traditional teachings. The result, he says,...

The pro-abortion ACLU legal group is trying to silence the nation’s Catholic bishops when it comes the implementing Obamcare and ensuring the health care law does not fund contraception and birth control with taxpayer dollars.Last week, the ACLU defended the inclusion of contraception in federally-mandated health coverage and criticized the Catholic bishops for asking for contraception to be precluded from coverage.Last September, the bishops contacted the Department of Health and Human Services and asked Obama administration officials to not include contraception and birth control under the “preventative services� covered by the Obamacare law. They said preventing pregnancy is not similar...

Featured Term (selected at random):EPISCOPAL CONFERENCE A form of assembly in which the bishops of a certain country or region exercise their pastoral office jointly in order to enhance the Church's beneficial influence on all men especially by devising forms of the apostolate and apostolic methods suitably adopted to the circumstances of the times (Second Vatican Council, Christus Dominus, III, 38). The local ordinaries and coadjutors have a deliberate vote. Each conference draws up its own statutes, which are subject to the approval of Rome. Decisions of an episcopal conference have the force of law when they have been legitimately...

If true, this is indeed a bombshell... Dave Pierre, the author of the book, Double Standard: Abuse Scandals and the Attack on the Catholic Church, reports the following on his site, TheMediaReport.com:In a stunning ten-page declaration recently submitted to the Los Angeles County Superior Court, veteran attorney Donald H. Steier stated that his investigations into claims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests have uncovered vast fraud and that his probes have revealed that many accusations are completely false.Counselor Steier has played a role in over one hundred investigations involving Catholic clergy in Los Angeles. In his missive Mr. Steier relayed,...