Free Republic

May 29, 2012 http://www.holylove.org/ NOVENA FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA St. Michael says: "Praise be to Jesus." "You recognize me, don't you? I am Michael, the Archangel. Jesus sends me to you once again as the need arises. As I am the Defender of the Truth, I must point out the paradox of what has become law in your country. On one hand, you are told you have the right to choose between life in the womb or abortion. On the other hand, you are told you do NOT have the right to deny anyone birth control or abortion...

Your parents spill a few secrets as they get older. One night at dinner with my mom, I ventured that the rhythm method had worked well for her, given that there were six years between my sister Peggy and my brother Kevin, and six more between Kevin and me. She arched an eyebrow. "Well, sometimes your father used something," she said. My parents were the most devout Catholics I've ever known. But my dad came from a family of 16 in County Clare in Ireland, and my mom's mother came from a family of 13 in County Mayo. So they...

It is a sign of the times that the Trayvon Martin case is waning away from public attention, and that the U.S. Catholic bishops have not addressed the fundamental issues of racial justice at stake for the nation. A failure to address the social structures and culture that is death-dealing for African-American and Latino men and women in America -- the context for the Feb. 26 killing of Martin -- is a “supreme dishonor to the Creator” in terms of the most basic tenet of Catholic social teaching: that we are all made in the image and likeness of God....

In two campaign speeches over the last two days, President Barack Obama has twice mistakenly mentioned "my sons"� when defending his administration's regulation requiring virtually all health-care plans in the United States to provide women, without any fees or co-pay, with sterilizations and all Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those that can cause abortions. Obama, of course, has two daughters--10-year-old Sasha and 13-year-old Malia--but no sons. On Monday, 43 Catholic dioceses and organizations across the country--including the archdioceses of New York and Washington, D.C. and the University of Notre Dame and Catholic University of America—filed 12 different lawsuits against...

A few points: 1. Contraception is a leftist ploy to break down the family, faith in God, and all of society. 2. Freepers and Americans who use it need to repent to God. 3. The states need to ban it. 4. There is no right to contraception. 5. Contraception leads to abortion. 6. Stop sexual immorality.

The inevitable conclusion from last week's statement from Ave Maria University has arrived, perhaps a little more quickly than most would have imagined. Six days ago, the Catholic university followed in the footsteps of Franciscan University, which explicitly dumped its student coverage because of the HHS contraception mandate. Ave Maria also objected to the HHS mandate, but said that large cost increases might end up driving their decision. Today they announced that the 15% of their student body that relied on their relatively inexpensive health insurance would have to look elsewhere, and the university made clear the full extent of...

The main goal of the contraception mandate is not to protect women's health. It is a move to conscript religious organizations into a political agenda. This week Catholic bishops are heading to federal courts across the country to defend religious liberty. On Monday they filed 12 lawsuits on behalf of a diverse group of 43 Catholic entities that are challenging the Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) sterilization, abortifacient and birth-control insurance mandate. Like most Americans, the bishops have long taken for granted the religious freedom that has enabled this nation's diverse religions to flourish in relative harmony. But...

Contraceptives and the Environment What the Pill Is Doing to Our Water Supply By Rebecca Oas, PhDWASHINGTON, D.C., MAY 16, 2012 (Zenit.org).- In 1960, the combined oral contraceptive pill was first approved for use in the United States.  Seven years later, “the Pill” was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, illustrating its enormous societal impact[1]. Roughly two generations later, statistics from the United Nations show that, within more developed nations worldwide, just under 16% of “partnered” women use contraceptive pills, a number which does not include usage among single women[2].However, even as the popularity of oral contraceptives remains high,...

May 17, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Professors at four Jesuit-run Catholic universities have recently stepped into the media to voice their disagreement with Catholic bishops on church teachings, including on contraception and the nature of marriage, and condemning the prelates for promoting an “idiosyncratic minority view” as Catholic dogma. The professors’ statements come at the same time that Pope Benedict has emphasized to U.S. bishops that reform of Catholic universities in the United States is the “most urgent challenge” facing the Church in the country. The pope told U.S. bishops who were visiting Rome recently that a lack of progress towards...

The tragic link between abortion and contraception May 16, 2012 By Most Rev. James D. Conley, S.T.L., Apostolic Administrator In 1992, the U.S. Supreme Court made the second-most important decision about abortion to date. The case was Planned Parenthood v. Casey and at issue was the right of states to regulate the practice of abortion. The court's decision was a double-edged sword. Tragically, it confirmed the decision of Roe v. Wade and affirmed the principle that abortion should be legally available in the United States through all nine months of pregnancy. The decision was wrong, from both a moral and...

The news earlier this month that Georgetown University had invited HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to deliver a commencement speech resulted in an eruption of criticism for the school's president, John J. DeGioia. The church has bitterly criticized the HHS mandate that would force Catholic institutions to fund contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients that violate the tenets of Catholic doctrine, and the invitation of the author of that mandate offended many of those who oppose the imposition of the mandate. DeGioia tried to defend his decision on Monday by claiming that the invitation was offered before the HHS mandate was announced, and...

OTTAWA, May 11, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - At the March for Life 2012 Mass celebrated in Ottawa’s Notre Dame Cathedral yesterday, Archbishop Terrence Prendergast welcomed the enthusiastic and standing-room-only crowd before launching into a homily dissecting the “my body, my choice” slogan, arguing that it espouses “a false sense of personhood.” “Today as a culture here in Canada we tend to prize our individuality as a false sense of autonomy over relationships, community engagement and duty. In the abortion debate, individual autonomy is often at the core of discussion,” the archbishop pointed out. “You’ve heard the slogan ‘my body, my choice’...

A sociology professor at Fordham University has blasted U.S. bishops and Catholic universities that uphold the Church’s teaching on contraception as “un-[C]hristian.” Writing in the Huffington Post, Associate Professor of Sociology Jeanne Flavin accused the bishops of showing a “staggering disregard for young women’s everyday lived reality, and their futures� for their stance against providing insurance coverage for contraceptives.Flavin, the author of Our Bodies, Our Crimes: The Policing of Women’s Reproduction in America, seems incensed by the recent decision by Xavier University to stop providing contraceptive coverage and the bishops very public struggle for religious liberty against the HHS contraceptive...

A powerful quote from a source that might surprise some readers:Beneath the issue of contraception is a question about the role ideals and norms play in our communal lives. Yes, they restrict our behavior in ways that are sometimes inconvenient. Yet in doing so, they intrinsically call us and our communities toward a life that we might not otherwise choose on our own. What's more, they amplify the need for repentance and reconciliation, rather than watering down such a need through the "pragmatic" concession to the fallenness of the world. We may occasionally fail to meet them. But confronting our...

The federal Department of Health and Human Services ignited a political firestorm in January that’s still smoldering when it declared institutions of the Catholic Church would have to include coverage of contraception, sterilization and abortifacients in their employee insurance policies. Most Americans initially backed the church in its contention that the HHS requirement, conjured out of the Affordable Care Act, violated the constitutional guarantee of religious liberty by forcing the church to provide drugs and services that run counter to its moral teachings. So the Obama administration engaged in a sleight-of-hand by declaring a “compromise” in which the insurance companies,...

Featured Term (selected at random):ONAN Son of Judah and Shua. When Onan's brother, Er, died, Judah ordered Onan to marry the widow, Tamar, and produce a son who would be Er's child, according to the levirate law (Deuteronomy 25:5-6). Onan married her but frustrated the law by withdrawal during intercourse. In punishment, Yahweh caused Onan's death (Genesis 38:8-10). In modern usage, onanism is variously used to mean contraception or masturbation. (Etym. Hebrew Onan.) All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Georgetown University Healy Hall. Credit: Aurelien Guichard More than 100 students and alumni of Georgetown University criticized activist Sandra Fluke’s recent invitation to speak on campus without clarification of the Catholic Church’s teaching on contraception. The group signed a letter calling on the Jesuit university to release a statement “clarifying its position on this fundamental issue of debate” to ensure that students are accurately informed on both the university’s current insurance policy and Church teaching. The statement came in response to an April 16 campus event, titled “A Conversation with Sandra Fluke on Contraception Access.”Fluke gained national attention in February,...

An injectable form of birth control doubles breast cancer risk among young women, according to a new study. The study examined younger women, ages 20 to 44, and confirmed a link between depo-medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA) - the main ingredient in the contraceptive sold under the brand name Depo-Provera - and breast cancer risk.

Ms. Sandra Fluke is attached to an organization with high moral values, that places an emphasis on ethics, honesty and integrity. There is in fact not only a student code at Georgetown University, there also an ETHOS CODE , and there is also the history, tradition and mission statement of the Catholic university guiding certain behaviors (both on and off campus as stated and each student is to be aware of this).It is this very essence and aspect of core institutional values which "15-Minutes-of-Fame Sandra" very publicly whined about, mocked and assailed on national TV and also asserted that the...

"The most important men in town would come to fawn on me! They would ask me to advise them, Like a Solomon the Wise. "If you please, Reb Tevye..." "Pardon me, Reb Tevye..." Posing problems that would cross a rabbi's eyes! And it won't make one bit of difference if i answer right or wrong. When you're rich, they think you really know!" C-FAM is reporting that Melinda Gates, co-chair of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and a Catholic, is telling governments to dismiss the controversial link between contraception and population control and explicitly rejects Catholic social teaching along...

Young Catholic Women Try To Give Church’s Position On Birth Control New Sheen Ashley McGuire is part of a movement of younger, religiously conservative Catholic women who are trying to rebrand what may be Catholicism’s most-ignored teaching: its ban on birth control methods such as the Pill. Michelle Boorstein April 15 Ashley McGuire fell in love with the Catholic Church five years ago, after reading its teaching against artificial birth control. McGuire, then a skeptical Protestant college student, initially saw the ban as a mandatory march to “domestic slavery.” But the more she read, the more she was blown away...

"Can't Feed 'Em? Don' Breed 'Em" - - Wonkette.com April 15, 2010 Seems like sound advice to me.Advice that even my liberal friends can agree with. I mean, isn't that what the "Pro-Choice" movement is all about? Allowing women a "choice" when a mistake is made, when that mistake rains on future plans or worse yet, when a woman cannot afford to support that mistake?Strangely enough, liberals and conservatives can reach common ground. They just disagree on how to get there. Liberals are Pro-Choice, which affords one the opportunity to "fix" a mistake, while conservatives, for the most part, are Pro-Life, preferring abstinence instead. Liberals subscribe to the belief that government should provide for their contraceptive needs, while conservatives don't believe in funding protection against one's sexual exploits. At the core, however, remains the common belief that one should not breed children if one cannot afford children. As I said,...

Mitt Romney would be wise to take a good hard look at what Rick Santorum did right and what he did wrong during his campaign. In his quest to unseat President Obama, Romney will face some of the same challenges Santorum faced. Back in the summer of 2011, nobody thought Santorum had a shot at the Republican nomination. Nationally, he was polling at about 3 percent. But through sheer hard work and persistence, he won the Iowa caucus and was catapulted into the big time. There are many lessons to be learned from Santorum's political journey, beginning with having a...

The debate over forcing a religious institution to pay for employees' contraception morphed into unfounded claims that Republicans want to outlaw contraception. A Democratic strategist's foolish dig against an opposition candidate morphed into the generalized accusation that Democrats don't believe raising children is work. While these manufactured controversies captivate the journalists who sensationalize them and the politicians who try to take advantage of them, the women of America are once again being reduced to reproductive organs with voting rights and petty concerns.

President Obama has become an expert at making phony claims and exploiting bogus issues. On the energy front, who can forget his claim that we’d have no need for new oil production or exploration if we simply kept our tires properly inflated and got regular tune-ups? Now it’s fuel made from algae, a technology that is, at best, decades away and will probably be just as cost-ineffective as ethanol. The president’s phony issue du jour is the Republican Party’s alleged war on women. The issue’s roots were planted at the Jan. 7 Republican primary debate in New Hampshire. ABC News'...

April 11, 2012 (C-FAM) - On Holy Thursday Melinda Gates publicly professed her Catholic faith and then personally attacked her Church over its position on contraception. I could not help but be reminded of Judas and his mysterious betrayal of Christ that night, sealed with a kiss. In fairness to Mrs. Gates, her speech wasn’t expressly about the Church. It was about her foundation’s new “NoControversy” initiative to promote universal access to contraception. Her message was simple: Contraception is not controversial.  And to convince people of this, she argued that population control, abortion, and forced sterilization have nothing to...

In the clearest statement of what’s at stake for Catholic employers when it comes to the Obamacare contraception mandate, a leading Catholic cardinal recently said that it is, in fact, a sin for employers to comply with the mandate. Cardinal Raymond Burke told EWTN’s Thomas McKenna that Catholic employers would not only be guilty of material cooperation with sin, but also formal cooperation because they would knowingly and deliberately be providing employees with contraception: ~ ~ ~ Thomas McKenna: “So a Catholic employer, really getting down to it, he does not, or she does not provide this because that way...

The death of the American feminist poet Adrienne Rich (pictured) this week has brought many accolades on account of her literary gifts and contribution to the feminist movement over the past 50 years. In her transformation from conventionally married mother of three sons in the 1950s, to lesbian partner and apologist in the 1970s, she became not only the voice but a living example of the revolutionary character of second wave feminism. Adrienne Rich The chief legacy of that movement has been brought into sharp focus in recent months by the battle royal between Catholic authorities (mainly) and the Obama...

Cardinal Burke: Catholic Employers Cannot Provide Contraceptive Coverage! FaithApril 10th, 2012 Jenn Giroux The upcoming episode of Catholic Action Insight hosted by Thomas McKenna to air on EWTN on Wednesday, April 11 at 2:30pm and April 13 at 9:00pm EST will surely ignite discussion among Catholics on the impending mandate which is an attack on religious liberty.  In this interview, Cardinal Raymond Burke speaks out for the first time in a public interview on matters of faith, religious liberty, and culpability in relation to this threatened mandate for employers.Cardinal Raymond Burke, Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura (photo credit: abbey-roads.blogspot.com) “We...

Influential evangelical pastor Rick Warren said Sunday that he is not satisfied with the Obama administration’s compromise on a requirement that religious-affiliated organizations provide contraception coverage to employees, and said religious freedom is at stake.“The issue here is not about women’s health,” Warren said on ABC’s This Week. “There is a greater principle, and that is do you have the right to decide what your faith practices?”The controversy has animated political discourse the last several months, with Republicans charging that Democrats are waging a "war on religion" while Democrats retort that Republicans are fighting a "war on women." The initial...

Washington (CNN) – South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley said Thursday the leading Republican presidential candidate was carrying a "golden bullet" to connect with women voters. Speaking on CNN's "The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer," the Palmetto State Republican said Mitt Romney's wife Ann, along with the candidate himself, would need to answer women with concerns about his platform. Polls released in the past week show Romney trailing President Barack Obama by a large margin among female voters. "If Gov. Romney has not related to women, he needs to get out there and talk about the issues they care about," Haley...

Last week, pro-lifers in Idaho performed live ultrasounds on pregnant volunteers in order to show everyone watching that the non-traumatic ultrasound showed moving, living children. It was an attempt to prove that women seeking abortions should see that image of their child. The media and pro-aborts reported the act as a “spectacle,” “strange,” and “part reality TV.” But who has ever been offended by an ultrasound photo of an unborn baby? “Offensive,” “strange,” and “inappropriate” describe the actions of pro-abortion groups, including Planned Parenthood. Nothing makes it clearer than their videos and school trips. These groups are constantly creating a...

A recent Gallup survey reveals that the role of religion in Americans’ lives has changed little in the last 20 years. When asked how important religion is, 55% of those queried in 2011 answered “very important” as compared with 58% who gave the same answer in 1992. This can’t be very good news for the president, who views religion as at best a bully pulpit for social change (as evidenced by his 20-year association with the incendiary Rev. Jeremiah Wright) and at worst as a force with the potential to poison the minds of leaden-eyed, gun-toting “clingers.” Yeah, I know,...

At least one comes to mind, Dan. Guess who? Turns out that oft-flogged figure from liberals of 98 percent of American women using contraception is too low, at least according to former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, who's now working at something or someplace called HDNet. (video clip after page break) Appearing on last night's Rachel Maddow show, Rather claimed that use of birth control is virtually universal. Whether this conclusion is based on Rather's reporting, first-hand knowledge or some combination thereof was left unstated. Fans of unintentional humor who were watching weren't disappointed -- RATHER: I still can't believe...

Featured Term (selected at random):EUGENIC STERILIZATION Depriving people of their generative powers in order to eliminate offspring having allegedly undesirable traits and to develop an environment more advantageous for human beings having allegedly desirable traits. the Catholic Church forbids the procedure because "public magistrates have no direct power over the bodies of their subjects. therefore, where no crime has taken place and there is no cause for grave punishment, they can never directly harm or tamper with the integrity of the body, either for reasons of eugenics or for any other reason' (Pius XI, Casti Connubii, II, 68-70). All items...

JANET BAIRD writes: President Obama and the Department of Health and Inhuman Services, as you know, recently decreed that free sterilizations be available to all college-age women under Obamacare. But the truth is even more sinister. Note the wording of the HHS regulation. As reported at CNS news, ‘[a]ll Food and Drug Administration [(FDA)] approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity,’ as prescribed by a provider,” said the HHS description of the regulation. [emphasis added] This clause caught my eye, “for all women with reproductive capacity.” Have you thought about the...

This month of March, Pope Benedict XVI issued a prayer request which was intriguing – it was about women. It was all the more intriguing for me since my eldest child – Hannah-Marie – is fast approaching her 16th birthday and has often complained about not being able to serve Mass as do her many younger brothers. The Pope’s prayer intention for March was: “That the whole world may recognize the contribution of women to the development of society.” I thought it may be of benefit to ask some of the many prayerful and inspirational Catholic women I have been...

Legal experts believe that the Obama administration’s contraception mandate fails to meet requirements needed to limit freedom of religion under federal law. George Mason University law professor Helen Alvaré argued that “in many Catholic institutions, such as hospitals and universities, the refusal to insure for contraception is the single clearest statement the Church makes.” The contraception mandate will prohibit these institutions' ability to witness to their faith through their actions, she said. Alvaré participated in a March 22 panel on “Religious Freedom and Healthcare Reform,” sponsored by the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University's Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and...

ABC, CBS, and NBC covered the far-left Occupy Wall Street movement with glee during 2011, devoting 33 stories on the air during the first eleven days of October alone to publicizing the protests. However, the Big Three networks have yet to mention the planned demonstrations in 140 cities across the U.S. today at noon local time against the Obama administration's sterilization, abortifacient, and contraception mandate. The Coalition to Stop the HHS Mandate, which is being coordinated by the Illinois-based Pro-Life Action League; and includes multiple pro-life, social conservative, and religious groups, including Human Life International, The Becket Fund for Religious...

When Rush Limbaugh exercised his 1st amendment right to free speech and criticized Sandra Fluke for whining about paying for her birth control pills, Democrats and the liberal mainstream media pounced. Granted Rush used some harsh words to describe Sandra Fluke, but that was his first amendment right. What’s despicable is the hypocrisy exhibited by Democrats and President Obama who don’t apply this same standard of decency to left wing comedian Bill Maher, who on a daily basis says things more offensive than Rush Limbaugh ever has. Could it be because Bill Maher is a huge supporter of Democrats and...

The controversy with Rush Limbaugh gave Sandra Fluke instant name recognition in the world of media and politics. So it was only a matter of time before someone asked her about running for office. Fluke said for now she is focused on law school, but that “maybe someday” she’ll consider the idea. At a panel about women’s history, Fluke said: “Numerous American women have actually written to me in the last few weeks to say that I should run for office [...] And maybe someday I will. But for now, I actually have to finish law school.” Not a yes,...

IRVINE, CALIFORNIA, March 20, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – As critics accuse Planned Parenthood of trying to facilitate the sex lives of minors, a featured speaker at one of the abortion provider’s local affiliates has suggested parents allow their teenage children to have sex in their home. Planned Parenthood of Orange and San Bernadino Counties invited Amy T. Schalet, author of Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex, to keynote the organization’s “Consider This” luncheon last week. Dr. Schalet, an assistant sociology professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said American parents should be more like their...

From NRO: At a House Republican press stakeout today, Washington state’s Cathy McMorris Rodgers said: "Over the last few weeks as the Republicans have been focusing on economy and jobs the Democrats have been trying to change the subject, and they’ve been trying to distract America from the real issues. They call it a “war on women.” And, as a woman, I’m here to tell you that the Democrats are off base and the polls back us up. CBS News poll recently shows that the American women actually support, a majority of them, support the Republican position on the conscience...

(CNSNews.com) - The definitive study of contraception use in the United States--which was produced by the U.S. government's National Center for Health Statistics and published by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention--refutes the claim President Barack Obama made in a White House briefing on Feb. 10 that “nearly 99 percent of all women” have used contraception. In fact, according to the study--which looked at the contraception use of American women between the ages of 15 and 44--13.9 percent had never had heterosexual intercourse, period. Also, according to the study, 38.2 percent of American women age 15-44 said they...

This is not about access to contraception, which is ubiquitous and inexpensive, even when it is not provided by the Church’s hand and with the Church’s funds. This is not about the religious freedom of Catholics only, but also of those who recognize that their cherished beliefs may be next on the block. This is not about the Bishops’ somehow “banning contraception,” when the U.S. Supreme Court took that issue off the table two generations ago. Indeed, this is not about the Church wanting to force anybody to do anything; it is instead about the federal government forcing the Church—consisting...

An influential Christian leader is calling for the evangelical community to match the Catholic church's efforts mobilizing against the Obama administration's policy on contraception coverage. "I'm asking evangelical churches to get as involved as the Catholic church has," said Chuck Colson, founder of the Prison Fellowship and the Christian radio broadcast Breakpoint. "Catechize members. If it's from the pulpit, that's fine. If by pastoral letter, that's fine. If by announcements at Bible studies, that's fine. The church in America is a sleeping giant. On an issue like this, it will be aroused." Colson e-mailed more than 500,000 people of faith...

The administration this afternoon released its “Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on preventive services policy.” Translation: President Barack Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius are moving forward with their controversial contraception mandate, which requires even religiously affiliated employers to provide their employees with insurance that covers contraception — even if those employers object to contraception on religious grounds. But don’t worry: Secretary Sebelius says your religious liberty is assured, so it is assured. “The President’s policy respects religious liberty and makes free preventive services available to women,” she said. ”Today’s announcement is the next step toward fulfilling that commitment.” Never...

In case you’re wondering who is helping Sandra Fluke run up the allegedly unaffordable birth control bills she demands other people pay, there’s no need to wait for her amen corner in the “mainstream” media to look into it. The Graph has the answer: adam_mutterperl The name is Adam Mutterperl, of the zillionaire moonbat Mutterperl clan. Some background: The Mutterperl family, via Adam’s great grandfather Sol’s handbag fortune, established the “Mutterperl Scholarship Endowment Fund” in 1951 for Brandeis University. This school, as some people call it, is named for Louis Brandeis, a secular Jew, Zionist, and United States Supreme Court...

The question has been asked: "Why are President Obama and the Democrats spending so much time and effort on universal coverage of contraception?" Surely they knew that there would be religious objection. Surely they did not think that such a decision would not go unchallenged. Why waste time and resources defending a controversial stance with so many other things going on? Recent polls show President Obama's approval numbers dropping among female voters, despite the "War on Women" attributed to the Republicans, and religious leaders have spoken openly from the pulpit, decrying the legality and morality of the contraception mandate, despite...