Advocates for religious freedom were stung by the latest news from the appellate bench. On July 14, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Little Sisters of the Poor, who had appealed a lower-court decision in their legal challenge to the Department of Health and Human Services’ contraceptive mandate.
"Sometimes it might seem that fighting or struggling against threats to religious liberty is a daunting task," Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore acknowledged, but we know that "with God all things are possible."
Analysts say that the administration's new "interim final rule" will take time to interpret, but the early judgment is that it does little to accommodate religious liberty.
Thu Jul 3, 2014 - 5:08 pm EST. This past Monday marked the second time in a couple of weeks Pope Francis has raised the specter of Christian persecution in the West. As you'll read below, Pope Benedict XVI did the same even more blatantly at the conclusion of his pontificate. The sense of this reality is in the air, we can all feel it; heck there?s even a new movie about it. On July 18 the film PERSECUTED will open in theatres across America.
Here, updated from the first Fortnight for Freedom, are 21 ideas - some pious, some civic, some basic, some fun - for defending religious liberty and engendering "a new birth of freedom."
NEW ORLEANS (CNS) -- During their June 11-13 spring general assembly in New Orleans, the nation's Catholic bishops voted to extend their Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty and to approve work on a limited revision of their quadrennial document aimed at guiding Catholics in election decisions.
10-30-2012: The Department of Health and Human Services has mandated that most large employers include in their health plans, at no cost, pharmaceutical contraceptives, sterilization procedures, and certain forms of so-called "emergency contraception." Catholic philosophers and theologians have been debating whether complying with the mandate would be morally acceptable. They usually begin by asking whether complying would be "formal" or "material" cooperation with evil. If formal, then complying with the mandate is ruled out. (More... click on title.)
"To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propogations of opinions he disbelieves is sinful and tyrranical." Thomas Jefferson, 1779. (Click on title above for more information.)
WASHINGTON (CNS) -- A coalition of nearly 200 Catholic dioceses, agencies and businesses has asked a federal court in Oklahoma to block enforcement of a Department of Health and Human Services mandate that it says would force its members to violate their religious beliefs.
We invite individuals, families, Churches and schools to join us in a national novena of prayer for the reversal of the unjust mandate that the HHS, under the Obama administration, has imposed on our country.
Denver, Colo., Feb 15, 2013 / 04:03 am (CNA).- A lawyer involved in prominent religious liberty cases says the American Civil Liberties Union's opposition to religious exemptions will ultimately discriminate against believers.
Feb 7, 2013 - 08:29 pm .- The U.S. bishops said that the Obama administration’s suggested revisions to the federal contraception mandate fail to address the major religious liberty concerns they voiced last year.
From one of our own, local (Waco) professors: This column is a second excerpted and adapted from comments by the author at Georgetown University (Washington, D.C.) as part of the symposium, “Which Model, Whose Liberty? Differences between the U.S. and European Approaches to Religious Freedom.”
by Deal W Hudson and Keith A Fournier / Catholic Online
The media attention to this event did nothing but paint in bold colors the contrast of Obama's pro-abortion position with the teaching of the Catholic Church and, particularly, with Cardinal Dolan. It was Cardinal Dolan himself who made sure that President Obama's unconscionable lack of concern for innocent human life was fixed in the minds of all the dinner attendees as they left the venerable Waldorf Astoria.