Discipline and cohesion.

Worth a follow-up only because critics wondered why the Defense Department hadn’t responded in full to earlier questions about its supposedly new policy restricting proselytizing by “leaders.” In the middle of the Benghazi hearings yesterday, Ben Goad at The Hill did get the Pentagon on record with a confirmation that, er, nothing has changed: The [...]

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First Amendment and military discipline.

Did the Pentagon bar Christians from talking about their faith while serving in the military? Not exactly, but a new push to aggressively stop proselytizing has chaplains nervous, according to the Deseret News: The latest salvo came this week when conservative blogger Todd Starnes wrote on Fox News and the Christian Post that the Pentagon confirmed that “religious proselytization [...]

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Intercultural communications.

I missed this incident of Academia Gone Wild when it happened, as I was in Rome covering the papal conclave, but it has all the hallmarks of cluelessness and faux “tolerance” that we’ve come to expect from higher education.  It started with a professor of intercultural communications (no, seriously) at state-run Florida Atlantic University requiring [...]

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Why government should either limit its interest or butt out altogether.

As with many in the punditry industry today, my morning reads focused on the Supreme Court’s hearing today on two cases involving the definition of marriage in public policy.  There are plenty of articles in which analysts handicap the various potential outcomes, which after the decision on ObamaCare seems like a riskier prospect than ever [...]

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The Vatican “must stop interfering in China’s internal affairs, including in the name of religion.”

George Weigel notes in his book Evangelical Catholicism that the popes of this era have more control over the episcopate than ever before.  Whereas entanglements with monarchies in the past limited the power of the Holy See to appoint bishops as it wished, the pontiff now selects bishops freely in every nation but two: China [...]

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The imperfect antidote for arrogance.

In a little under an hour, three members of the House Republican caucus will announce a new legislative effort to undo the HHS contraception mandate’s infringement on freedom of religious practice, and prevent the next incursion as well.  The Catholic Association sent out a press release hailing the introduction of the Health Care Conscience Rights [...]

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"Insufficient ... creates still a third class, those with no conscience protection at all[.]"

This won’t surprise anyone who read the tea leaves from Archbishop Charles Chaput on Monday, but nonetheless news.  The US Conference of Catholic Bishops pledged renewed opposition to the recently revised HHS contraception mandate today. The statement from Cardinal Timothy Dolan highlighted the lack of any real protection against the requirement to facilitate access to [...]

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"Elections don't trump the Bill of Rights."

If you missed last week’s Friday afternoon document dump, the Department of Health and Human Services updated its controversial contraception mandate, in part due to a demand in federal court.  The new rules supposedly expand the religious exemption to include non-profit organizations that have an affiliation with a church or ecclesial community, but the new [...]

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No, not really.

Actually, the answer is no, and it wasn’t intended to do so either, as I write in a new column for The Fiscal Times.  The Obama administration was under a court order to modify the mandate regulation after a legal representation to a federal court that HHS never intended to enforce the mandate in its [...]

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Extreme.

Are there such people as pro-life Democrats? We had a few in Congress a few years back, as I recall, but then they voted for the ObamaCare bill without language that permanently protected taxpayers from funding abortions.  Nevertheless, there still seem to be a significant number of Democratic voters who remain pro-life, even if there [...]

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Religious freedom is more than a hobby.

Normally I’d be inclined to run something like this on a Sunday, when I like to explore more faith-based topics.  However, today is Hobby Lobby Appreciation Day, where consumers who support the Christian ownership’s stand against the HHS mandate that attempts to impose a highly restrictive definition of religious expression can put their money where [...]

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Not just the HHS mandate?

A decision by the Supreme Court this morning opens up a potential new avenue of attack against ObamaCare on the grounds of religious liberty — and not just the HHS contraception mandate.  The court overturned the dismissal of a lawsuit brought by Liberty University over the health-system overhaul, in a move that was not opposed [...]

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"The only thing we're certainly not prepared to do is give in."

If the Obama administration hoped that the election results and the narrow split in Barack Obama’s favor among Catholic voters would force the US Conference of Catholic Bishops into retreat on the HHS contraception mandate, the USCCB’s unity yesterday had to be a bit disappointing.  The current president of the USCCB announced that the bishops [...]

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Limited government, and religious liberty.

The ballot in my state has two somewhat controversial referendums, both of which probably have more drama than any of the candidate races — including, until just recently, the presidential election.  One measure should pass rather easily, as the voter-ID requirement has maintained its popularity throughout most of this cycle.  The other would move the [...]

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Government definitions of religious expression.

During the Vice Presidential debate’s final 30 minutes, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan were asked to describe how their Catholic faith informed their public policy.  As part of that exchange, the topic of the HHS contraception mandate arose, and Joe Biden insisted that the rule wouldn’t apply to any “Catholic institution – Catholic or otherwise, including [...]

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Prelims.

Don’t get too excited by this court decision, an injunction against the HHS contraception mandate that goes into effect on Wednesday.  We’ve seen other court rulings on ObamaCare go one way, only to be disappointed in the final test at the Supreme Court.  Still, I’d rather win the first round than lose it (via The [...]

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Mandate goes into effect on Aug. 1

The Obama administration is facing growing resistance to its anti-conscience mandate two weeks before the policy goes into effect. Yesterday evangelical Wheaton College announced it was joining a lawsuit against the mandate. Last week another Illinois institution, Catholic Charities of Chicago, sued the administration. The Department of Health and Human Services mandate becomes official on [...]

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A come-to-Jesus moment?

Today’s Roman Catholic calendar lists May 21st as the feast day of St. Christopher Magallanes, a martyr killed for celebrating Mass during the Cristero War in Mexico. Perhaps Catholics today may want to recall St. Thomas More — the patron saint of lawyers, who was executed for refusing to agree to a mandate that gave [...]

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“He has said to his base, African-Americans, ‘I am going against your beliefs and your thoughts.’”

And so it begins.  Yesterday, my friend Deacon Greg Kendra asked his readers whether they had heard anything in their Catholic parishes about Barack Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage; I didn’t in mine, but it was Mother’s Day, on which our pastor focused.  In Baltimore, at least, it was a little different — and much [...]

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No halos from the churches.

Barney Frank told the panel on ABC’s This Week that “I don’t think anyone’s vote was changed” when Barack Obama endorsed the legalization of same-sex marriage — but that might be too optimistic an analysis.  The New York Times reports that the White House went on a charm offensive with leaders of faith organizations, including [...]

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Leap of faith, or hypocrisy?

The last we heard from Robert Jeffress, the pastor of the influential First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas was telling CNN at the Values Voters Summit in October that Mormonism is a cult and that evangelicals had a duty to vote for Christians. Six months later, Jeffress has had a change of heart — or [...]

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The clearest clarification yet.

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 [...]

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"I've never said it, not one time."

Missouri Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver today defended the president’s Christianity and said it makes no sense to accuse him of waging a “war on religion.” His remarks — presumably inadvertently — led him to also denounce Democrats’ repeated refrain that Republicans are waging a “war on women.” The Daily Caller reports: “If you believe that [...]

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Timing.

Getting a film to make an impact often depends on timing, as well as the ability to get the word out.  For instance, no one might have expected a historical epic like Braveheart to have much cultural influence, but the combination of having a star like Mel Gibson and the political timing of a push [...]

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Charge!

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 [...]

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