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February 11, 2012 Saturday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 1 Kgs 12:26-32; 13:33-34 Jeroboam thought to himself:"The kingdom will return to David's house.If now this people go up to offer sacrificesin the temple of the LORD in Jerusalem,the hearts of this people will return to their master,Rehoboam, king of Judah,and they will kill me."After taking counsel, the king made two calves of goldand said to the people:"You have been going up to Jerusalem long enough.Here is your God, O Israel, who brought you up from the land of Egypt."And he put one in Bethel, the other...

SANTA PAULA, California, February 10, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In a strongly-worded letter addressed to California’s two U.S. senators, Thomas Aquinas College President Michael McLean expressed “strong disapproval” over Obama’s mandate that would require the school’s employee health plan to include coverage for sterilization, abortifacients, and contraception. “Voluntary sterilization, abortion, and artificial contraception are all directly contrary to Catholic teaching and cannot, in any way, be supported by individual Catholics or Catholic institutions desiring to live in accordance with the teachings of the Catholic Church,” McLean stated in the letter. Thomas Aquinas College, located in southern California, is a prominent Catholic...

February 10, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The following statement was just released in response to the Obama adminstration’s announcement this morning that it is putting in place an “accommodation” to take into account religious liberty on their birth control 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...

February 10, 2012 WASHINGTON – The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) have issued the following statement: The Catholic bishops have long supported access to life-affirming healthcare for all, and the conscience rights of everyone involved in the complex process of providing that healthcare. That is why we raised two serious objections to the "preventive services" regulation issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in August 2011. First, we objected to the rule forcing private health plans — nationwide, by the stroke of a bureaucrat's pen—to cover sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause...

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,...

Now on Cavuto. Obama struck-out twice as badly as before on mandating contraception coverage for religious institutions. First, analysis. Pat Caddell indicates that Obama is in twice the trouble he was yesterday with religious groups, esp. Catholics. Today's decree from Obama just doubles-down on mandating that Catholic organizations offer contraception to all its members. Organizations are pissed! Second, business. Insurance companies are outraged that they now have to pay for universal contraceptive coverage without ever even being asked. This just drives the insurance companies farther from the Libs/Dems. Third, religion. Mons. Jim Lisante on Cavuto. He says the Church is...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: Everybody's reporting that Obama's caving on this mandate that the Catholic services provide abortion and all. There's not a cave here! There may be an accommodation, but there's no big cave-in here. It's still the government mandating this stuff happen. They're just changing the provider. It's not done by the church. He says he gave them a way out of it by mandating the insurance companies do it, but that's not the point here. Great to have you. It's Friday. Let's go to! JOHNNY DONOVAN: Live from the Left Coast at our satellite studios in Los Angeles,...

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on President Obama’s revised healthcare plan as it affects Catholic institutions:President Obama’s latest ploy just adds insult to injury. If the insurance plan of a Catholic institution must cover services it deems immoral, then such a healthcare plan is offensive, plain and simple.The Catholic League, for example, uses Christian Brothers as its insurance carrier. So if a future employee of ours were to demand free abortion-inducing drugs, and she is allowed to request free drugs from Christian Brothers, then the rest of us would, in effect, be subsidizing her abortion. This is outrageous and...

WASHINGTON, February 10, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The White House announced today that, instead of forcing religious employers to pay for birth control, it will force insurance companies to offer the drugs free of charge to all women, no matter where they work. The plan, touted as a concession to freedom of religion and conscience, was immediately denounced by pro-life Rep. Chris Smith. “The so-called new policy is the discredited old policy, dressed up to look like something else,. said Smith. .It remains a serious violation of religious freedom. Only the most naï or gullible would accept this as a change...

Senior administration officials are pleased with the initial response to President Obama’s pending announcement on an “accommodation” for religious organizations regarding the rule requiring employers to provide health insurance that covers birth control. Though they’re on opposite sides of the birth control and abortion debate, both Sister Carol Keehan, the president and CEO of the Catholic Health Association, and Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, issued statements Friday morning applauding the compromise, which allows religious organizations to keep contraception out of its coverage while requiring the insurance companies to step in and offer contraceptive coverage to the...

If not the religious institutions….or the women….who pays for the contraceptive services? The Obama administration claims it pays for itself, pointing to this new report: http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2012/contraceptives/ib.shtml “While the costs of contraceptives for individual women can be substantial and can influence choice of contraceptive methods, available data indicate that providing contraceptive coverage as part of a health insurance benefit does not add to the cost of providing insurance coverage. Evidence from well-documented prior expansions of contraceptive coverage indicates that the cost to issuers ... is zero.” We shall see what the insurance companies say…

Very simply: With the cost of abortion and contraception an implicit cost of every health insurance contract, neither Catholics nor anyone else of conscience will be able to buy health insurance without paying for abortions. This is no change from Obama's original explicit mandate.

Featured Term (selected at random):IMPETRATION One of the fruits of prayer and good works, especially one of the four ends of the Eucharistic Sacrifice. Impetration with right disposition and the fulfillment of prescribed conditions invariably obtains from God what is asked of him, provided it is to our spiritual advantage. It is ensured petition. (Etym. Latin impetratio, the action of procuring or obtaining by request or entreaty.) See Also: ENDS OF THE MASS All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

File under: “How to fake a walkback.” With its unconstitutional, coercive, discriminatory Obamacare abortion mandate under fire, the White House announced…nothing today. A supposed “accommodation” to the policy will result in no compromise in the impact of the HHS edict forcing religiously affiliated health care providers and employers to provide insurance coverage for contraceptives, abortifacients, and related services that violate the religious principles and freedom of the mandate’s targets. In fact, close observers say today’s announcement will make things worse.The deets: With the White House under fire for its new rule requiring employers including religious organizations to offer health insurance...

The Obama administration will attempt to accommodate religious groups that are unhappy with a new mandate that forces them to offer health insurance that covers contraceptive methods. With the White House under fire for its new rule requiring employers including religious organizations to offer health insurance that fully covers birth control coverage, ABC News has learned that later today the White House — possibly President Obama himself — will likely announce an attempt to accommodate these religious groups. The move, based on state models, will almost certainly not satisfy bishops and other religious leaders since it will preserve the goal...

IRONDALE, Ala. (Legal Newsline) -- The Catholic television network EWTN is suing the federal government over the requirement by the Department of Health and Human Services for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare. The act mandates that contraception, abortion and sterilization services have to be included in their health plans. "We had no other option but to take this to the courts," EWTN President and CEO Michael Warsaw said Feb. 9. "There is no question that this mandate ...

Catholic author Russell Shaw warned in November that the persecution of religion in the United States “will be a tight-lipped campaign of secularist inspiration in which the coercive power of the state is brought to bear on church-related institutions to act against conscience or go out of business.�[1] Shaw’s prediction quickly came to pass with the Contraception Mandate now threatened by the Obama Administration. In late January, Obama signed off on a Health and Human Services ruling that is a direct affront to Catholics. Under his new Health Care program, Catholic institutions – including charities, hospitals and schools – will...

Full Article less graphics EWTN Sues Obama Admin EWTN SUES Obama Admin In a remarkable decision, EWTN is suing the Obama Administration over the Contraception Mandate. This extraordinary act, as well as near unanimous outcry from other Faiths, is sparking a Religious Liberty controversy that the Obama Administration, seemed willing to take on. "We had no other option but to take this to the courts," says EWTN President and CEO Michael P. Warsaw. "Under the HHS mandate, EWTN is being forced by the government to make a choice: either we provide employees coverage for contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs and...

Rubio blasts Obama as 'terrible president' in CPAC speech By Justin Sink - 02/09/12 11:40 AM ET Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), suspected to be close to the top of every Republican presidential candidate's wish list for a running mate, delivered a blistering critique of President Obama at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. "The president of the United States looks like he's a really good father, looks like he's a really good husband, but he is a terrible president," Rubio said to applause from an audience of prominent conservative activists. Rubio blasted the president's record, arguing repeatedly that he...

Only two days after admitting that Barack Obama has a problem with his "frightening" birth control decision, Chris Matthews on Thursday was back on offense. He berated Rick Santorum as a "theocrat" and knocked Reverend Franklin Graham as a "disgrace." The Hardball host singled out Family Research Council President Tony Perkins as the representative of all those who would question Obama's faith. Matthews interrogated, "Tony, do you think this president is a Muslim?" He added, "Why [do] your people" make such allegations? An exasperated Perkins replied, "no" and shot back, "My people?...The things that we have said have always been...

February 10, 2012   Memorial of Saint Scholastica, Virgin   Reading 1 1 Kgs 11:29-32; 12:19 Jeroboam left Jerusalem,and the prophet Ahijah the Shilonite met him on the road.The two were alone in the area,and the prophet was wearing a new cloak.Ahijah took off his new cloak,tore it into twelve pieces, and said to Jeroboam: "Take ten pieces for yourself;the LORD, the God of Israel, says:'I will tear away the kingdom from Solomon's graspand will give you ten of the tribes.One tribe shall remain to him for the sake of David my servant,and of Jerusalem,the city I have chosen out...

If Catholics are forced to pay for abortions, will Muslims be forced to have and pay for porcine heart valve replacement surgery?

Stories involving a Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew typically end with a punch line. We wish that were the case here, but what brings us together is no laughing matter: the threat now posed by government policy to that basic human freedom, religious liberty. Last month the federal Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Affordable Care Act requires employers to pay for insurance coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, sterilizations and contraception. What made the announcement especially troubling is that HHS specifically declined to exempt religious institutions that serve those outside their own faiths, such as hospitals and...

20 Catholic (and Christian) Institutions Opposing Obama/HHS Mandate by Thomas Peters10 hours ago (February 9, 2012) My list of bishops who have publicly condemned the Obama/HHS mandate is now at 171 (representing almost 95% of Catholic dioceses). Only 4 bishops have yet to issue statements — and I expect they will shortly!Now I’d like to begin compiling a list of Catholic (and Christian) institutions who have said publicly they will fight or oppose the mandate.A few ground-rules: I’m only going to include institutions that have issued public statements online or a statement to the press which is available online....

From Slave to Saint The Story of St. Josephine Bakhita By: Jill Boughton The girl was walking in the fields some ways off from her home, when two strangers appeared and asked her to pick them some fruit. Brought up to show courtesy to adults, the nine-year-old hurried to obey. Not until she was in the forest did she realize it was a trick. “I saw two persons behind me,” she later recalled. “One of them briskly grabbed me with one hand, while the other one pulled out a knife from his belt and held it to my side....

CHAPTER III: THE REAL OBSTACLES In the last chapter I have dealt in a preliminary fashion with the Protestant case in the conventional controversial sense. I have dealt with the objections which I suspected very early of being prejudices and which I now know to be prejudices. I have dealt last and at the greatest length with what I believe to be the noblest of all the prejudices of Protestantism: that which is simply founded on patriotism. I do not think patriotism is necessarily prejudice; but I am quite sure it must be prejudice and nothing else but prejudice, unless...

Constitution: The Air Force removes a reference to God from its logo as the Army forbids Catholic chaplains from reading an archbishop's letter to those in uniform. What's next, the crosses at Arlington National Cemetery? 'It is a blow to a freedom that you have fought to defend and for which you have seen your buddies fall in battle," read the letter from Archbishop Timothy Broglio, who leads the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services to the Catholic chaplains in the U.S. military. The letter that the Army's Office of the Chief of Chaplains kept from being read to...

LAKE FOREST, CALIFORNIA, February 9, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – Rick Warren, perhaps the nation’s most influential evangelical pastor, has tweeted he would “go to jail� rather than cave in to a government mandate that violates God’s commandments. Pastor Rick Warren, pastor of the 20,000-member Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, California, tweeted his defiance of the Obama administration’s requirements that religious institutions cover all forms of contraception, including abortifacients like Ella and the IUD, as part of their health care plans. On Tuesday, Warren addressed the issue three times on his Twitter feed. “I’d go to jail rather than cave in...

Tim Thomas BOSTON, February 9, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Boston Bruins star goalie Tim Thomas sent waves through the sports world Wednesday when he announced through his Facebook page that he supports Catholics in their fight against the Obama administration’s mandate that forces coverage of contraception, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs. “I Stand with the Catholics in the fight for Religious Freedom,” wrote Thomas, who won last year’s Conn Smythe Trophy as the Stanley Cup MVP. To date over 170 Catholic bishops heading U.S. dioceses have spoken up against the mandate after Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced last month...

I doubt there’s much Joe could do. Fortunately for the good country Biden has very little power in the Obama administration, mainly because he’s a gaffe prone jackass. Via Politico: In the Columbus Dispatch this morning, in advance of a Biden visit, Catholic nun and CEO of a Catholic health care service Judith Ann Karam pleads with Biden to help reverse the ruling: I ask the vice president to help Catholic and other faith-based employers with a recent federal action. We are very disappointed with the Health and Human Services rule on women’s preventive services that requires the inclusion of...

Decades ago, priests, religious brothers and religious sisters were colorfully visible features of Catholic hospitals, serving as nurses, chaplains, business officers, and chief administrators. With the decline in vocations, this obviously religious leadership largely disappeared, but Catholic values, for the most part, still animated these institutions. What has begun to concern a number of observers is that, as today’s medical personnel, staffers, and administrators at Catholic hospitals have accommodated themselves more and more to secularist assumptions, even those values are in danger of disappearing.But now the slow and steady creep of secularization has been given a massive push by the...

What if Obama lifts the regulation that requires Catholic institutions to offer their employees medical insurance policies that cover the abortion pill? Is there another regulation that requires all insurers to only offer medical insurance policies that include such coverage? If so, from whom would the Catholic institution purchase the medical insurance?

I thank Vice President Joe Biden for visiting Ohio today. The Sisters of Charity Health System is a Cleveland-based Catholic health-care organization which, in collaboration with other Catholic health ministries, actively promoted the passage of the Affordable Care Act. We are dedicated to increased health-care coverage and access and are supportive of the law’s efforts to improve quality of care and patient outcomes.(Emphasis Mine)

I thank Vice President Joe Biden for visiting Ohio today. The Sisters of Charity Health System is a Cleveland-based Catholic health-care organization which, in collaboration with other Catholic health ministries, actively promoted the passage of the Affordable Care Act. We are dedicated to increased health-care coverage and access and are supportive of the law’s efforts to improve quality of care and patient outcomes. (Emphasis Mine)

The federal government’s new mandate — requiring Catholic charities, schools, universities and hospitals to supply employees with health insurance that covers birth control, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs — has become maybe the most controversial issue of our day. I’ve been inspired by the unified reaction from our Catholic community. The bishops of almost every diocese in the country have spoken out. So have our largest Catholic institutions. Many individual Catholics — of every political opinion — have united in opposition.

No Democratic president ever picked a fight with the Catholic Church in quite the way that Barack Obama has. One of the first things that Jimmy Carter did when he came into office was to scrap federal funding for abortions,... Even Bill Clinton – the “sex president” – supported some limits on partial birth abortion [snip] Yet Obama’s attempt to force Catholic employees to provide contraception coverage in employee healthcare plans has united the entire Church establishment – Left and Right – against him. And this is the establishment that garlanded him with honours three years ago at Notre Dame...

We’ve covered the hot debate raging between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church on this site. And we’ve covered plenty of arguments for and against the Obamacare mandate that businesses, through their insurers, offer free contraception. But we haven’t covered a defense quite like this. It goes like this: “Maybe the founders were wrong to guarantee free Exercise of religion,” but they did and the administration needs to respect that. Wait, what? That‘s what Washington Post editor Melinda Henneberger told MSNBC’s Chris Matthews last night while defending Catholics. Here’s the full quote: “Maybe the Founders were wrong to guarantee...

HANCEVILLE, Alabama, February 9, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Lawyers for the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) say that the broadcasting network has taken the Obama administration to court over a mandate forcing Catholic employers to pay for birth control, sterilization, and abortifacient drugs. The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty announced that it had filed suit Thursday morning on behalf of EWTN, considered the largest religious media network in the world. “The federal government cannot force people to violate their religion like this,” said Mark Rienzi, Senior Counsel at the Becket Fund and a constitutional law professor at the Catholic University of...

One of the most influential evangelical leaders in the United States says Christians should go to jail rather than comply with the Obama administration’s mandate to provide all contraception, including abortion-inducing drugs, in their health care plans. Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), told LifeSiteNews.com “we will not comply” with the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring religious institutions to cover abortifacient products such as Plan B, Ella, and the IUD. “We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write our letters from the Nashville jail, just...

The Obama administration's new mandate that religious organizations pay for their workers' birth control has become a bludgeon for Republican culture warriors, as social issues have surged to the forefront in the presidential campaign. Conservatives who believe religious freedom always trumps gender equity in the public arena are outraged. But so too are Roman Catholic and evangelical moderates who have stuck with President Barack Obama, an abortion rights supporter, because of his 2008 pledge to reduce the abortion rate and find common ground among religious and secular Americans. These backers say the administration could have easily avoided the controversy by...

Featured Term (selected at random):ROME The diocese of the Pope, also called the See of Peter, the Apostolic See, the Holy See, and the Eternal City. According to ancient tradition, St. Peter first came to Rome in A.D. 42; St. Paul arrived about A.D. 60. Both were martyred here under Nero, most probably in 64. The history of the city from that time to the present can be divided into several periods: 1. the age of persecution, to the Edict of Milan in 313; 2. freedom recognized by the empire and the building of the first churches, to the fall,...

They may be outraged now, but the American Catholic Church has been forging alliances with the secular state on social issues for too many years. Now, the Bishops who promoted and shilled for ObamaCare look like schmucks. Excerpt: "They got what they deserved", he said. "They fell into bed with the secular left, and then wondered why they force them to do what the secular left wants them to do." Link to Video (2 mins, 25 seconds)

It’s ironic that it is Barack Obama now ramming a contraception policy down Catholics’ and other Americans’ throats. Little more than a month ago, former Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos spent 10 minutes in a Republican debate grilling presidential contenders Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney on, of all things, contraception. What inspired the bizarre questions? First, Santorum is a practicing Catholic who doesn’t believe in the use of artificial birth control. Second, responding to a query from ABC’s Jake Tapper about a week prior to the debate, Santorum reiterated a constitutional fact: States have a right to ban contraception should they...

The Archdiocese of San Antonio recently asked for your prayers. The archbishop and auxiliary bishop are hoping these entreaties move President Barack Obama to reverse a mandate that even health care plans in Catholic-affiliated institutions fund birth control as preventive care. Ultimately, Catholic institutions will be using less subtle pressure. But I have a different prayer. That the president not make second-class citizens of folks working for Catholic-affiliated institutions, Catholics and non-Catholics both. In a letter to the faithful last week, Archbishop Gustavo García-Siller and Auxiliary Bishop Oscar Cantu say Obama's decision imperils religious liberty. Respectfully, let me suggest that...

"This was a terribly misguided judgement," Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York said in an interview of CBS This Morning. Dolan, who is set to become a cardinal later this month, said he met with Obama in the Oval Office late last year and was promised the White House would work with the Catholic church on a number of issues, including education, healthcare and charitable work. "I am hoping that this massive negative reaction to this ruling, I am hoping that he will go back to those assurances that he gave me," Dolan said.

When President Obama signed off on the new HHS regulations that demand every Catholic institution in the country not officially designated a "church" either shut down or offer its employees subsidized sterilization, "morning after" pills and all other forms of contraception, neither the president nor his political team recognized the enormity of the mistake they were making. In attacking the Roman Catholic Church in America on the question of abortion rights absolutism, the president and his team had thought they were dividing women from Republicans when in fact they were uniting Catholics of all political persuasions in a single front...

February 9, 2012   Thursday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time   Reading 1 1 Kgs 11:4-13 When Solomon was old his wives had turned his heart to strange gods,and his heart was not entirely with the LORD, his God,as the heart of his father David had been.By adoring Astarte, the goddess of the Sidonians,and Milcom, the idol of the Ammonites,Solomon did evil in the sight of the LORD;he did not follow him unreservedly as his father David had done.Solomon then built a high place to Chemosh, the idol of Moab,and to Molech, the idol of the Ammonites,on the...

NASHVILLE, TENNESSEE, February 8, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – One of the most influential evangelical leaders in the United States says Christians should go to jail rather than comply with the Obama administration’s mandate to provide all contraception, including abortion-inducing drugs, in their health care plans. Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC), told LifeSiteNews.com “we will not comply” with the Dept. of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring religious institutions to cover abortifacient products such as Plan B, Ella, and the IUD. “We want the law changed, or else we’re going to write...

Featured Term (selected at random):COTERIE A small circle of persons who form an intimate group, applied to the followers of some school of thought or sectarian belief. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Journalism: When the abortion giant's funding was in jeopardy, the media provided 24/7 coverage with a decidedly liberal slant. When the feds assaulted First Amendment religious freedom, you could hear the crickets chirp. Secular progressive bias in the media was never more evident than in the past few weeks with the difference in coverage of two major news stories — the temporary cutoff of funds from the Susan G. Komen Foundation to Planned Parenthood and the ultimatum from the Obama administration that the Catholic Church and its institutions had a year to find a way to violate their consciences and...