HHS mandate

When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going

by Bernadette O'Brien

Just as Mr. Darcy’s aunt, the overbearing Lady Catherine De Bourgh, held that if she’d ever been taught music she would have been a great proficient, I’ve sometimes had the chumpaciousness to think that if I’d ever learned to draw…

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No King But Cesar

by Rachel Lu

It was one of those modern moments that would be impossible to parody. On Easter Sunday, visitors to Google’s main site were greeted with a unique doodle portraying a solemn-faced figure. Robed all in white and gazing meditatively towards the…

The HHS Mandate Requires You to Pay for Abortions

by James D. Agresti

In a recent National Public Radio broadcast and accompanying article entitled “Morning-After Pills Don’t Cause Abortion, Studies Say,” NPR journalist Julie Rovner reported that the Obama administration’s contraceptive mandate doesn’t force people to pay for abortion-inducing drugs. The article focuses…

Will the Next Pope Oppose the “Dictatorship of Relativism” as Fiercely as Benedict?

by Dr. William Oddie

One of the most central insights of Pope Benedict’s pontificate was summed up in his phrase “the dictatorship of relativism.” In his now famous conversation with the German journalist Peter Seewald (the same one on which he said that popes…

The HHS “Compromise” Confirms that Obamacare was a Mistake

The Obama administration has found the policy equivalent of alchemy. Employees of religious organizations will receive contraception coverage. And neither the individuals nor the groups will have to pay for it. It’s magic. Otherwise known as making the insurer pay….

Catholic Reaction to Obama’s HHS “Compromise”

by Kenneth D. Whitehead

There was surely never any chance that the Obama Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) could revise its current birth prevention mandate in a way that would be acceptable to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The…

What Happens to American Catholics if the HHS Mandate is Enforced?

by Carson Holloway

For more than a year, Americans have been lauding or protesting the HHS mandate that requires employers to cover contraceptives, including abortifacients, in their insurance policies. Since many employers don’t object to such a policy, the debate has focused on…

Muzzling Military Chaplains

by George Neumayr

One of the items on Obama’s second term agenda is to root out traditionally Christian chaplains from the military. He sees them as bigots unworthy of conscience protections. Like Chick-fil-A, they don’t uphold Obama’s “values.” Obama’s mouthpieces in the military…

The War We Are In

by Christopher Manion

These are not the best of times. In fact, some folks say that the Catholic Church in the United States confronts today the greatest challenge in its history. Things were already tough before the November elections, but now they’re in…

A Man for This Season, and All Seasons

by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap.

A day after the 2012 Summer Olympics closed in London, Joseph Pearce wrote that he felt like his “body had been covered in slime. I also felt a great sense of gratitude that I had shaken the smut and dirt…

Why the Liberal Welfare State Denies Catholic Freedom

A couple of months ago I wrote that the Church generally supports and cooperates with political authorities. She interprets their efforts charitably, supports whatever can be justified, and, when some particular measure is undeniably bad, tries to show what would…

The Contraceptive Imperative

by Kenneth D. Whitehead

You don’t have to go out of your way today to be confronted with the subject of contraception. In November, 2012, the United Nations Population Fund issued its annual report entitled “By Choice, Not by Chance,” describing contraception as a…

Abuse of Power in the Executive Branch

by Howard Kainz

In Civics 101, we learn about the venerable mainstay of democratic republics—the separation of government into Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches. Properly employed, this separation should result in a beneficial “balance of power,” preventing usurpation of power by any particular…

Godless Secularism Assaults Life and Liberty

by Archbishop William Lori

Following is the homily given October 14 by Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore and the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington on the…

Biden on the HHS Mandate: A Lie or a Terminological Inexactitude?

by Donald DeMarco

Winston Churchill deserves the credit for replacing the word “lies” with the “fabrication of terminological inexactitudes.” No one wants to be accused of telling a lie. Churchill’s ingenious phrase may mean the same thing as a lie, but it has…

Biden on the HHS Mandate: The Vice President’s Response was Two-Faced

I continue to read more and more from Catholics upset with Joe Biden’s defense of the Obama Administration’s HHS mandate in the vice-presidential debate. I got news for you. It’s worse than you think. During the debate, Biden’s opponent Paul…

Obama Wages War on Catholicism

by William A. Donohue

Americans who oppose abortion have learned to live with Roe v. Wade, but they (as well as some abortion-rights advocates) have never come to terms with proposals forcing them to fund abortion. This was on President Obama’s mind when he…

Latest Challenge to HHS Mandate Rejected by Federal Court: A Sign of What’s to Come?

by Kenneth D. Whitehead

The recent decision by a federal court in Missouri to reject one of the lawsuits challenging the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “Obamacare” mandate, requires near universal carrying of insurance plans that cover, gratis, contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing…

Who Are We?: Catholic Faith in Light of the HHS Mandate

by Pete Jermann

Who do they think they are? Such must have been the thought of many Catholics when the Obama Administration ruled that Catholic institutions must provide contraceptive services to their employees. We responded with outrage, indignation and, perhaps most of all, surprise over…

Obama’s Attack on Religious Freedom: It’s Worse Than You Think

by David Paul Deavel

It is the election campaign season and all of you need to know that no possible statement from anybody anywhere anytime is free from hyperbole, WORDS IN ALL CAPS, and exclamation marks! This stricture applies very much to No Higher…

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