As the battle to protect religious liberty rages on our friends at the Cardinal Newman Society are leading the way opposing the Georgetown/Sebelius scandal.
They’ve just released this great new video explaining why this invitation is an unconscionable slap in the face to the bishops and all Americans who care about religious liberty.
Share with your friends and your social networks!
It’s hard to not sound over-the-top in describing how much of an outrage it is that the speaker at Georgetown University’s School of Public Policy diploma ceremony on May 18 will be none other than Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.
The fact that the nominally Catholic architect of the HHS Mandate — which has been publicly denounced by every single bishop who leads a diocese in the U.S. — is being granted this honor by America’s oldest Catholic university is hard to believe.
Yet at the same time, given the history of the choice of commencement speakers at some other reputable Catholic universities in recent years, it isn’t hard to believe at all.
Clearly, as the Cardinal Newman Society (CNS) observes, Georgetown’s invitation to Sebelius “can only be interpreted as a direct challenge to America’s Catholic bishops.” [Continue reading …]
On Saturday, rallies were held to “Unite Against the War on Women”, a pretty obvious response to the Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally campaign.
As the picture indicates, the response was paltry. Even in New York City, where thousands gathered on March 23 in defense of religious freedom, only a few hundred showed up to protest.
They may have had a few B-list celebrity speakers, but they were pitching their muddled message to largely empty audiences. Outside of some talk about the so-called “war on women”, their message was as scattered as could be. [Continue reading …]
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made some rather candid admissions at an April 26 Congressional hearing.
Before she promulgated the HHS Mandate, did she consult Supreme Court decisions regarding religious liberty?
No.
Did she have a legal memo prepared?
Again, no.
Check out the exchange between Sebelius and Congressman Trey Gowdy (R-SC) at yesterday’s hearing:
This Saturday, April 28, a coalition of pro-choice groups are sponsoring “Unite Against the War on Women” rallies at several cities across the country.
Among the sponsors are the National Organization for Women, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and a group called “Rock the Slut Vote” — not to be confused with a group called “This Slut Votes,” which is also a sponsor.
The UniteWomen.org “About Us” page informs us that the idea for the rallies originated February 19 — a mere nine days after the Pro-Life Action League and Citizens for a Pro-Life Society announced that the Nationwide Rally for Religious Freedom in opposition to the HHS Mandate would be held on March 23.
Coincidence?
The UniteWomen.org website is nothing if not a panoply of the bizarre.
If you go to the homepage, the first thing you’ll notice is a series of rotating pictures, one of which is: [Continue reading …]
The Newman Club Newark has a great new video making the case for why the HHS Mandate has got to go.
Notice the clear, simple message on the students’ T-shirts at the 2:03 mark: “Stop government interference with religion.” That gets the point across.
Check it out!
In response to the stunningly powerful homily recently given by Bishop Daniel Jenky, CSC in which he excoriated President Obama’s “radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda,” some faculty members of the University of Notre Dame are calling on him to step down from the University’s Board of Fellows.
Why?
Because in his homily, Bishop Jenky said the following:
Remember that in past history other governments have tried to force Christians to huddle and hide only within the confines of their churches like the first disciples locked up in the Upper Room.
In the late 19th century, Bismarck waged his “Kulturkampf,” a Culture War, against the Roman Catholic Church, closing down every Catholic school and hospital, convent and monastery in Imperial Germany.
Clemenceau, nicknamed “the priest eater,” tried the same thing in France in the first decade of the 20th Century. [Continue reading …]
Bishop Daniel Jenky of the Diocese of Peoria gave a stunningly powerful homily this weekend in which he excoriated President Obama’s “radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda.”
Celebrating Mass at a men’s conference entitled “A Call to Catholic Men of Faith,” Bishop Jenky spoke in his homily about the ever-present difficulties of being a Christian, and noted:
[It]’s not supposed to be easy! The world, the flesh, and the devil will always love their own, and will always hate us. As Jesus once predicted, they hated me, they will certainly hate you. …
For 2,000 years the enemies of Christ have certainly tried their best. But think about it. The Church survived and even flourished during centuries of terrible persecution, during the days of the Roman Empire.
The Church survived barbarian invasions. The Church survived wave after wave of Jihads. The Church survived the age of revolution. The Church survived Nazism and Communism.
And in the power of the resurrection, the Church will survive the hatred of Hollywood, the malice of the media, and the mendacious wickedness of the abortion industry.
The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate. [Continue reading …]
It’s with great excitement that Monica Miller and I announce that the next Stand Up for Religious Freedom will take place Friday, June 8 at noon local time, coast to coast.
The huge controversy over Barack Obama’s HHS Mandate is growing, and it’s time to take the next step to stop this attack on religious freedom.
Last month, over 63,000 Americans gathered at sites in 145 cities for a massive rally in protest of the Mandate.
They said NO to the HHS Mandate, which forces employers—including religious charities—to provide contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs in their health plans, for free.
Now it’s time to build on that great momentum with the next Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally, and June 8 is the perfect date.
Right now the entire Obamacare law, with its oppressive mandates and abortion loopholes, is under review by the United States Supreme Court. A ruling is coming at the end of June.
If the Supreme Court strikes down Obamacare, the June 8 Rally sets the agenda for future health care reform, demanding respect for religious liberty and freedom of conscience.
But if the Court leaves Obamacare intact, the June 8 Rally advances our demand that the HHS Mandate must go.
Come out on June 8—which happens to be the 223rd anniversary of the day James Madison introduced the Bill of Rights in Congress—and help prepare the ground for the Obamacare ruling!
Last month’s Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally hit the “reset” button on the HHS Mandate controversy, putting the focus where it belongs: respect for religious freedom.
On June 8, people of faith will hit the streets again to demand that all our health care laws respect the role of religious faith in the public square.
Over the next week, the Rally Captains for the March 23 event will be letting the national team know whether they’re in for the June 8 Rally. Dozens have already signed on.
On Friday, April 20, Monica and I will be putting out the call for new Rally Captains in the cities where rallies were hosted last month.
If your city wasn’t on the Rally map last time around and you want to host a rally this time, just get in touch with the national team and we’ll get things started.
With the release of a new document entitled, Our First, Most Cherished Liberty: A Statement on Religious Liberty, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops has upped the ante in the fight to protect religious freedom.
The document, issued in the throes of Obamacare’s examination by the US Supreme court, opens with a history of the Catholic Church and religion in general in American history. Our nation’s history of great respect for freedom of religion makes the current crisis all the more poignant.
The bishops then go on to outline several of the major threats facing religious freedom today: the HHS Mandate and Obamacare’s lack of conscience protections, governments threatening to regulate and dictate Church structures and governments, discrimination against Christian students and small churches, and the shuttering of Catholic adoption and foster care services in several states just to name a few.
What should Christians’ response to this unprecedented assault on religious freedom be? [Continue reading …]