Buzz.

Color me skeptical, but not from a lack of good candidates among the American cardinals that will travel to Rome. CBS News interviews Monsignor Anthony Figueiredo in Rome, who tells audiences that the possibilities are “wide open,” and that the extended advance notice of papal transition will give the voting cardinals an opportunity to get [...]

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"The new rules are very complex. And they may actually make things worse."

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops responded on Friday to the new HHS contraception mandate language by pledging to review it.  One of their members has already found it unacceptable.  Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia writes that despite its offer of compromise, the new language actually makes the problem worse for Catholic organizations: White House [...]

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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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"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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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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Full speed ahead.

The legal win last week for Barack Obama at the Supreme Court on ObamaCare came with some significant downside.  Among them, the affirmation of constitutionality for the ACA means that the HHS mandate on contraception remains in place, a diktat to religious organizations to fund and provide access to sterilization, abortifacients, and other means of [...]

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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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Choosing ... poorly.

A web video launched five weeks ago caught the attention of Fox News yesterday, putting a focus back on the fight between the Obama administration and the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, among others, over the HHS mandate on contraception, sterilization, and abortifacients.  The ad does not come from the USCCB but from an organization [...]

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Diktat power.

Democrats managed to wrangle enough votes to table the Blunt amendment that would have amended the HHS mandate to allow employers a religious-conscience exemption from the requirement to supply free contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization to their employees: The Senate voted today against an amendment to restore the religious liberty protections for employers who don’t want [...]

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The $100 billion question.

Earlier this week, Francis Cardinal George of the archdiocese of Chicago sent a message to parishioners in Barack Obama’s home town that imposition of the HHS mandate to fund and facilitate contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization would force the Catholic Church to close its hospitals, clinics, schools, and all other organizations that would otherwise have to [...]

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