Tag Archives: Group: USCCB

Religion News Service: A former adviser to Sarah Palin and an attorney with a long record of advocating conservative causes, will become the first spokeswoman for the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the USCCB announced Monday (April 29).

USCCB: On Tuesday, March 26, a March for Marriage will take place in our nation’s capital to show citizens’ support for upholding marriage as the union of one man and one woman. Information about the March can be found at
the March for Marriage website. Those who cannot participate in person are encouraged to participate spiritually by offering prayers and fasting on March 26.

USCCB: The general counsel of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops states that the current proposed revisions of the Obama Administration’s contraceptive mandate are “an unprecedented …violation of religious liberty by the federal government” and must be changed.

CNSNews: The Catholic bishops of the United States are asking the Republican-controlled House of Representatives to do something concrete and effective–rather than merely symbolic—to repeal a regulation the administration has issued under Obamacare that will force Catholics and other Christians to act against their faith in purchasing or providing health-care plans that cover sterilizations, contraceptives, and abortion-inducing drugs.

Windy City Times: A network of conservative Christian organizations has successfully fought pro-choice and LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) civil rights legislation by claiming that such policies infringe on “religious liberty,” according to a major new report released today. The report, by Dr. Jay Michaelson, Religious Liberty Fellow at Political Research Associates (PRA), is entitled Redefining Religious Liberty: The Covert Campaign Against Civil Rights . . . Key players in reframing the debate include the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). According to the report, these organizations, supported by Catholic organizations such as the Knights of Columbus, aim “not simply to win religious exemptions to the law, but to contest the authority of secular law itself.” They are allied with such conservative evangelical organizations as Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom . . . The report is available for download here www.politicalresearch.org/resources/reports/full-reports/redefining-religious-liberty/ . | Larger report on the same topic available at ValleyNewsLive via PR Newswire: As New Pope Inaugurated, New Report Exposes Catholic Church’s and Right’s ‘Religious Liberty’ Campaign Against Gay, Reproductive Rights

USCCB: “All persons must be protected from violence, but codifying the classifications ‘sexual orientation’ and ‘gender identity’ as contained in in S. 47 is problematic,” they wrote. “These two classifications are unnecessary to establish the just protections due to all persons. They undermine the meaning and importance of sexual difference. They are unjustly exploited for purposes of marriage redefinition, and marriage is the only institution that unites a man and a woman with each other and with any children born from their union,” said Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, California; Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco; Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana; Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore; and Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles.

LifeSiteNews: If the U.S. Catholic bishops cannot rely on the president to protect religious liberty, they will instead lobby Congress. That’s the message of a letter written to Congress by Archbishop William E. Lori lobbying for two legal provisions on behalf of the U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

USCCB: He listed three key areas of concern: the narrow understanding of a religious ministry; compelling church ministries to fund and facilitate services such as contraceptives, including abortion-inducing drugs, and sterilization that violate Catholic teaching; and disregard of the conscience rights of for-profit business owners. These are the same concerns articulated by the USCCB Administrative Committee in its March 2012 statement, United for Religious Freedom.

Staten Island Advance: The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative religious liberty group which is representing several for-profit businesses in lawsuits over the regulation, said it would continue to press for exemptions for business owners in court. So far, about 10 businesses have obtained temporary injunctions against the regulation while their cases move through the courts.

USCCB: Urging the Court to uphold DOMA http://www.usccb.org/about/general-counsel/amicus-briefs/upload/united-states-v-windsor.pdf the USCCB brief in United States v. Windsor says that “there is no fundamental right to marry a person of the same sex.” The brief also states that “as defined by courts ‘sexual orientation’ is not a classification that should trigger heightened scrutiny,” such as race or ethnicity would . . . In a separate brief filed in Hollingsworth v Perry urging the Court to uphold Proposition 8 http://www.usccb.org/about/general-counsel/amicus-briefs/upload/hollingsworth-v-perry.pdf, the USCCB states that there are many reasons why the state may reasonably support and encourage marriage, understood as the union of one man and one woman, as distinguished from other relationships.

Valerie Tarico at Truth-Out.org: In the end the real morality of our position lies in the right of babies to be truly loved and wanted and in the right of parents to bring babies into this world when they’re fully ready to welcome them with open arms. As my friend Patricia said, every baby should have its toes kissed. Her simple message speaks volumes. Parents who get to plan and choose are more likely to eagerly await that toe kissing.

ACLU of Massachusetts v. USCCB, Nos. 12-1466, 12-1658 (1st Cir. Jan. 15, 2013) (Lynch, Chief Judge, Torruella, Circuit Judge, and DiClerico, District Judge.) LYNCH, Chief Judge. The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts (ACLUM), asserting taxpayer standing on behalf of …

Reality Check: The arguments were in the case of ACLU of Massachusetts v. Sebelius, a challenge to HHS’ distribution of program funds authorized by the Trafficking Victims Protection Act to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

CNSNews: House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who is Catholic, indicated on Friday that she supports forcing St. Mary’s Medical Center, the oldest continuously operating hospital in her San Francisco-based congressional district, to provide health plans to its workers that cover sterilizations, contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs free of charge even though the Catholic faith says this Catholic hospital may not do so because these things are intrinsically immoral.

The Atlantic: For Gay Catholics, an Alternative to the Collection Plate Still, the reality is this: Every time Catholics tithe at a local parish, they are not only helping to keep the lights on for Mass and to make sure …

Baltimore Sun: Lori said he hopes the bishops can take better advantage of “the most persuasive argument of all” — the living example of “strong families with loving fathers, mothers and children” — and some of his colleagues suggested finding more positive terminology for their position, as they had in debates over abortion.

AP: A top Roman Catholic bishop says the church will never comply with the Obama administration mandate to provide birth control coverage in health insurance.

LifeNews: A top legislative staffer for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says the nation’s Catholic leaders will push again for Congress to approve conscience exemptions for the Obama HHS-Abortion mandate in Obamacare.

CNSNews: Erik Stanley, senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund), said flatly that CREW’s complaint is “bogus.” “This is a favorite tactic of advocacy groups that believe in a radical secularist view of America,” Stanley …

LifeSiteNews: Although the Catholic bishops’ stuck to the issues, a few priests – and many Protestant clergy – have openly defied the 1954 tax ordinance and endorsed a political candidate from the pulpit. Nearly 1,600 pastors took part in last month’s Pulpit Freedom Sunday, arranged by the Alliance Defending Freedom. The IRS has not yet investigated any participating church.

Here.

Erik Scheidler at the Washington Times: Despite 10 months of controversy — including a public clash between the White House and the U.S. Catholic bishops, countless rallies and protests across the country and the filing of dozens of federal lawsuits — many liberals and independents remain puzzled by the fight over the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate contained in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. They don’t understand how conservatives can insist that the HHS mandate constitutes an unprecedented attack on religious freedom.

USCCB: “The recognition that marriage is and can only be the union of one man and one woman is grounded in our nature, being clear from the very way our bodies are designed. This recognition obliges our consciences and laws. It is a matter of basic rights—the right of every child to be welcomed and raised, as far as possible, by his or her mother and father together in a stable home,” Archbishop Cordileone said. “Marriage is the only institution whereby a man and a woman unite for life and are united to any child born from their union. The public good demands that the unique meaning and purpose of marriage be respected in law and society, not rejected as beyond the constitutional pale. Redefining marriage never upholds the equal dignity of individuals because it contradicts basic human rights. The ruling yesterday is unjust and a great disappointment.”

USCCB: Last night, the following statement was made during the Vice Presidential debate regarding the decision of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to force virtually all employers to include sterilization and contraception, including drugs that may cause abortion, in the health insurance coverage they provide their employees: “With regard to the assault on the Catholic Church, let me make it absolutely clear. No religious institution—Catholic or otherwise, including Catholic social services, Georgetown hospital, Mercy hospital, any hospital—none has to either refer contraception, none has to pay for contraception, none has to be a vehicle to get contraception in any insurance policy they provide. That is a fact. That is a fact.” This is not a fact.

Antony Davies and Kristina Antolin at the Wall Street Journal: But that word—voluntarily—is key, and it’s where Mr. Ryan’s religious detractors go awry: Charity can only be charity when it is voluntary. Coerced acts, no matter how beneficial or well-intentioned, cannot be moral.

LifeSiteNews: Catholic Relief Services (CRS), “the official overseas relief and development agency of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops” is vociferously defending its 2010 grant of $5.3 million to CARE.  LifeSiteNews reported July 17 that CARE is a major advocate of contraception and indeed also of legal abortion. The

CNSNews: The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to uphold most of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—AKA Obamacare—sets the stage for an historically unprecedented confrontation between Roman Catholics and the federal government over whether Catholics remain free to exercise their religion in the United States of America. | USCCB press release: Bishops Renew Plea To Congress And Administration To Repair Affordable Care Act
Supreme Court decision does not address fundamental flaws in the law Legislation still needed to fix conscience, abortion funding, immigration problems

Washington Post: Alliance Defense Fund, an evangelical-founded legal advocacy group, called the court’s decision “alarming and deeply wrong.”
“Obamacare treats American citizens like subjects. This administration has used health care law to become a dictator of conscience,” according to the Alliance Defense Fund about the health-care law, which the group says “holds your health care hostage and offers no real choice. Either comply and abandon your religious freedom and conscience, or resist and be fined for your faith. All current ADF legal challenges to the Obama administration’s abortion pill mandate will proceed, and we are confident that the Supreme Court will strike it down as unconstitutional.”

FRC Blog: The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), a five-year recipient of the funding, has an Anti-Trafficking Services Program through its Migration and Refugee Services division, which has proven highly effective for more than ten years. Despite this program’s proven track record of helping people escape slavery and start a new life, when the USCCB re-applied for grant funding in 2011, the application was denied. The only explainable reason? The program fails to offer victims sterilization, contraception, and abortion.

AP: Roman Catholic groups on Thursday embarked on a two-week campaign of prayer vigils, rallies and other events to draw attention to what they consider government attacks on religious freedom. Called the “Fortnight for Freedom

LifeNews: A leaked email from a liberal, George Soros-funded “Catholic” group called Faith in Public Life, is working behind the scenes to attack the bishops and try to get media outlets to run negative stories about the campaign.

Religion Clause Blog: A website created by the Bishops to make information about the Fortnight for Freedom available, includes the following description . . .

LifeNews: The United States Catholic bishops are readying American Catholics for what may be the largest campaign of civil disobedience since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960’s.

Huffington Post (includes video): Like-minded religionists of several denominations — including Southern Baptist leader Richard Land and Baltimore Archbishop William Lori — gathered in Washington Thursday (May 24) to organize a response to what they see as the sorry state of religious freedom in America today.

Washington Post: Bishop Stephen Blaire, of Stockton, Calif., said in an article in America, a left-leaning magazine published by the Jesuits, that a wider range of views need to be heard when the bishops meet next month in Atlanta.

Religion Clause Blog: The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops yesterday submitted its formal comments on the Department of Health and Human Services Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking relating to health insurance coverage of contraceptive services.

The Hill: “[F]orcing individual and institutional stakeholders to sponsor and subsidize an otherwise widely available product over their religious and moral objections serves no legitimate, let alone compelling, government interest,” lawyers for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops wrote in a letter to federal regulators.

USCCB: Future ‘accommodation’ excludes many, cannot meet incompatible goals Outstanding issues should be resolved ‘in favor of more, not less, religious freedom’

LifeSiteNews: The Archdiocese of Washington has weighed in on Georgetown University’s invitation of U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius as a commencement speaker in clear terms, saying that the school has unmoored itself from Catholic identity and chosen a stance against the country’s Catholic bishops.

USCCB: However, we cannot be silent in the face of words or actions that would undermine the institution of marriage, the very cornerstone of our society. The people of this country, especially our children, deserve better.

LifeNews: 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 Liberty, the Alliance Defense Fund, and Priests for Life; have organized the “Stand Up For Religious Freedom” rallies “in defense of religious freedom and STAND UP against the Obama administration’s HHS mandate at federal building in cities across the country.”

Washington Times: Two weeks of protests, from July 21 to July 4 have been called by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops which has sought to end the administrations’s contraception mandate, among other policies.

The HIll: “I want them to take a bigger look,” Boehner said at a Wednesday press conference. “And the bigger look is, if we don’t make decisions, these programs won’t exist, and then they’ll really have something to worry about.”

LIfeSiteNews: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) filed a notice of appeal April 17, asking a federal appeals court to vacate a decision by a Massachusetts federal judge declaring that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) violated the First Amendment in its contract with USCCB to provide case management services to victims of human trafficking, because the contract did not require USCCB to facilitate abortion and contraception.USCCB has also requested a stay of the lower court’s decision until the appeals court can rule.

USCCB: The U.S. bishops have issued a call to action to defend religious liberty and urged laity to work to protect the First Freedom of the Bill of Rights. They outlined their position in “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty.” The document was developed by the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), approved for publication by the USCCB Administrative Committee March 13, and published in English and Spanish April 12. The document can be found at http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/our-first-most-cherished-liberty.cfm.

The Hill (includes video): Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, said Sunday the Obama administration’s policy on contraception was “a dramatic radical intrusion of government bureaucracy in the internal life” of the Catholic Church and vowed to continue to fight the ruling.

NC Register: The University of Dallas, for example, provides links on its politics department’s Web pages to 58 national or international lobby groups and think tanks offering internships, such as the American Conservative Union and the Alliance Defense Fund, and some targeting specific issues such as National Right to Life. As well, there are links to Republican members of Congress. Democratic politicians are named, but not linked.

James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal: Cardinal Dolan thought he heard Barack Obama pledge respect for the Catholic Church’s rights of conscience. Then came the contraception coverage mandate.

Catholic Culture: Yet S.B. 1070 and related state immigration laws have provisions that could either criminalize this charity, criminalize those who provide or even permit it, or require the institutions that provide it to engage in costly (if not impossible) monitoring of the individuals they serve, and then to exclude from that charity all those whose presence Arizona and other states would criminalize.

Religion Clause Blog: Apparently the critical issue has become the White House’s narrow definition of religious organizations that are exempt from the health care insurance mandate: non-profit religious employers whose primary purpose is the inculcation of religious values and which also both employ and serve only individuals who share the groups’ religious tenets.

Catholic Culture: For the government to hold fast to its new definition of ministry, one crafted by the American Civil Liberties Union, reflects deafness to the Constitution that is unbecoming to the man sworn to defend it.

LifeNews: Religious freedom is a fundamental right of all. This right does not depend on any government’s decision to grant it: it is God-given, and just societies recognize and respect its free exercise. The free exercise of religion extends well beyond the freedom of worship. It also forbids government from forcing people or groups to violate their most deeply held religious convictions, and from interfering in the internal affairs of religious organizations.

Christopher Manion at Crisis Magazine: In the first Sunday in February, Catholics across the country heard homilies condemning the HHS mandate requiring Catholic institutions to subsidize free contraceptives for their employees. A friend of mine, shaking her head, wondered why the diktat had caught our bishops by surprise.

USCCB: The U.S. Senate urgently needs to support legislation that would apply longstanding federal law on conscience protection to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), said the chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

PDF available here.

USCCB: “While there may be an openness to respond to some of our concerns, we reserve judgment on the details until we have them,” said Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan, president of USCCB.

LifeNews: Catholic Bishops Respond to Obama’s Revised HHS Mandate

Catholic Culture: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has released a statement that offers “clarifications regarding the Health and Human Services regulations on mandatory coverage of contraceptives, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.”

USCCB: “Our society does not operate in an amoral or value-less vacuum,” said Bishop Salvatore Cordileone of Oakland, chairman of the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage. “To flourish, it must be infused with moral direction that is grounded in the truth. Of course, the true meaning of marriage, like the gift of human life, is ultimately not subject to a vote or court ruling. But in California, as in every other state where marriage has been put to a vote, the people justly upheld the truth of marriage. How tragic for California, for the nation, and especially for children, that this correctly-informed judgment has now been set aside.”

Kaiser Health News: he United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is promising a legal challenge to federal rules the Obama administration reaffirmed Friday requiring health insurers to provide women with a range of preventive health services, including birth control, without charging a co-payment, co-insurance or deductible.

The Washington Post: A coalition of nearly 40 religious leaders has published an open letter that seeks to recast the battle against same-sex marriage as a fight on behalf of religious freedom.

NPR (includes audio): Americans’ religious liberties are under attack — or at least that’s what some conservatives say.

Constitutional experts warn a new law that allows the president to permanently detain U.S. citizens without trial could be used against pro-life activists, who have already been defined as potential terrorists in documents by some government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security.

NCRegister.com: As some ask why Catholics seem to be the only ones fighting for religious freedom, a high-profile theological group prepares to issue statement in early 2012.

Kerri Toloczko at Breitbart’s Big Government: Appeals and lawsuits and all kinds of messy proceedings ensued with Catholic Bishops and Wisconsin-based and national social conservative organizations weighing in on the matter, such as the Alliance Defense Fund, which assisted Mr. Noesen on the legal side.

LifeNews.com: Nancy Pelosi is simply unable to honor the Catholic Church to which she claims to be a member — as she has put her foot in her mouth again by claiming the nation’s Catholic bishops are lobbyists because they oppose an Obamacare mandate.

LifeNews.com: A House committee held a hearing today on the decision by the Obama administration to deny to the nation’s Catholic bishops a grant for a program helping sex trafficking victims because it would not refer for abortions.

The Hill: The American Civil Liberties Union said Wednesday that the Obama administration shouldn’t scale back new rules requiring healthcare plans to cover contraception.

USCatholic.org: Deirdre Dessingue, associate general counsel at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. “But there has been a change in the mood.” She cited several factors affecting that change in mood . . . and continuing efforts by the Alliance Defense Fund to draw the IRS into a battle with a church whose pastor has endorsed a political candidate from the pulpit. “Churches should be allowed to decide for themselves what they want to talk about,” said Erik Stanley, ADF senior legal counsel. “The IRS should not be the one making the decision by threatening to revoke a church’s tax-exempt status.” That approach is far from the stand taken by the USCCB, however.

EWTN News: Twenty-seven U.S. senators requested information on how the Department of Health and Human Services graded applicants for anti-trafficking grants and asked why the U.S. bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services was denied one.

Catholic Culture: Anthony Picarello, general counsel of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, has joined Bishop David Choby of Nashville and Vanderbilt University chaplain Father John Sims Baker in opposing Vanderbilt University’s proposal to apply its nondiscrimination policy to student religious organizations.

USA Today: The U.S. Catholic bishops Monday blasted “aggressive secularism” and the Obama administration for attacking the Church — and all believers — on religious liberty by curtailing the voices of faith in the public square.

USCCB: atholics seeking reliable information on what the Catholic Church teaches about marriage will now be able to visit www.marriageuniqueforareason.org. . . , a website featuring resources such as an extensive FAQ section on the meaning of marriage, a compilation of Catholic teaching on marriage, a blog, and videos, “Made for Each Other” and “Made for Life.”

KTUL.com: The gay Catholics group DignityUSA says the column was outrageous and inflicted “tremendous damage on the souls” of gay people.

LifeNews.com: The nation’s Catholic bishops are considering a lawsuit against the Obama administration for denying a grant previously granted for a program helping victims of sex trafficking because the bishops would not refer the women for abortions.

NCRegister.com: The federal government’s decision to end funding for a Church program for trafficking victims has fueled concerns that “abortion politics” are at work.