Posted by Rachel Evans (October 23, 2012 at 10:12 am)
Stand Up Rally #3
Having secured speakers for the third Owensboro Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally, we expected a letter from our U.S. Congressman to be read to us by one of his staff members.
Moments before noon, she informed us that the Congressman was on his way to our rally! We were certainly pleased that he had rearranged a full schedule to come join us! Rep. Guthrie told the crowd that he would continue representing his constituents by vigorously fighting against the HHS Mandate.
“Rest assured I am doing my part in Washington to help overturn this destructive rule. As many of you know, I am a member of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and its Health Subcommittee which has held several hearings on this rule during which I have expressed my opposition. Additionally, I have cosponsored the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, which would reverse this rule by allowing health plans to decline coverage of contraception when it conflicts with their religious beliefs. I will continue to hold the Obama Administration accountable and will continue to encourage my colleagues in Washington to do the same.”
[Continue reading …]
Posted by John Jansen (May 22, 2012 at 3:51 pm)
Yesterday, 43 Catholic institutions filed suit against the Obama Administration over the HHS Mandate.
News of these lawsuits shouldn’t come as a surprise. Since early March, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, has been all but guaranteeing that lawsuits would be filed.
A few weeks later, Dolan, appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation, said, “We didn’t ask for this fight, but we won’t back away from it.”
Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon points out in the Wall Street Journal how it’s come to this in an op-ed appropriately titled, “Why the Bishops Are Suing the U.S. Government” that is accompanied by a picture of some of the 2,300 participants at the Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally in Philadelphia on March 23 (see above, right).
Professor Glendon writes:
The main goal of the mandate is not, as HHS claimed, to protect women’s health. It is rather a move to conscript religious organizations into a political agenda, forcing them to facilitate and fund services that violate their beliefs, within their own institutions. [Continue reading …]
Posted by John Jansen (April 2, 2012 at 1:54 pm)
Cardinal Timothy Dolan gave a lengthy and candid interview this weekend with James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal in which he reiterated the Catholic Church’s opposition to the “radical, unprecedented, and dramatically intrusive” HHS Mandate.
Early on, Dolan recounts his conversation with President Barack Obama following their 45-minute discussion at an Oval Office meeting last November:
“I said, ‘I’ve heard you say, first of all, that you have immense regard for the work of the Catholic Church in the United States in health care, education and charity. . . . I have heard you say that you are not going to let the administration do anything to impede that work and . . . that you take the protection of the rights of conscience with the utmost seriousness. . . . Does that accurately sum up our conversation?’ [Mr. Obama] said, ‘You bet it does.'”
The archbishop asked for permission to relay the message to the other bishops. “You don’t have my permission, you’ve got my request,” the president replied.
But as we all know from the way subsequent events played out, this “request” was soon forgotten. [Continue reading …]
Posted by John Jansen (March 12, 2012 at 8:38 pm)
Last week the Stand Up for Religious Freedom Coalition highlighted a recent letter sent by Timothy Cardinal Dolan, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), to his brother bishops.
Therein, Cardinal Dolan repeatedly underscored the fact that the HHS Mandate is first and foremost an assault on religious freedom, and that is how we need to frame this issue.
One of the the most striking passages in the letter reads as follows:
At a recent meeting between staff of the bishops’ conference and the White House staff, our staff members asked directly whether the broader concerns of religious freedom—that is, revisiting the straight-jacketing mandates, or broadening the maligned exemption—are all off the table. They were informed that they are. So much for “working out the wrinkles.” Instead, they advised the bishops’ conference that we should listen to the “enlightened” voices of accommodation, such as the recent, hardly surprising yet terribly unfortunate editorial in America. The White House seems to think we bishops simply do not know or understand Catholic teaching and so, taking a cue from its own definition of religious freedom, now has nominated its own handpicked official Catholic teachers.
The very first freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment is that of freedom of religion — which is most emphatically not limited merely to freedom of worship — and explicitly states that “prohibiting the free exercise thereof” is a no-no. [Continue reading …]
Posted by John Jansen (March 5, 2012 at 9:16 pm)
The president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, issued a letter [PDF] to his brother bishops on Friday in which he strongly hinted that the USCCB intends to file a legal challenge to the Obama Administration’s HHS Mandate:
[O]ur bishops’ conference, many individual religious entities, and other people of good will are working with some top-notch law firms who feel so strongly about this that they will represent us pro bono. In the upcoming days, you will hear much more about this encouraging and welcome development.
As with so many of the public statements issued by U.S. Bishops regarding the HHS Mandate, Cardinal Dolan did not mince words, calling the mandates, at various places, “choking,” “suffocating,” and “strait-jacketing.” [Continue reading …]
