Fox News Priest: HHS is "Raping" the First Amendment

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Wednesday May 23, 2012 · 1:31 PM PDT

2012/05/23 · 13:31

In a statement objecting to a perceived lack of coverage of the recent Catholic lawsuits against the Department of Health and Human Service's contraception regulations, Catholic priest Jonathan Morris characterized the HHS policy requiring employers tp include contraception services in their health care plans as a "rape" of the First Amendment:

Any national media outlet that fails to report the obvious raping of our First Amendment rights by this Health and Human Service mandate, is trumpeting either woeful incompetence or shameless bias. The Catholic Church didn't pick this fight, but it knew that if it didn't fight back now, every religion would eventually lose, and America would be fundamentally redefined.

Morris is the Program Director of The Catholic Channel on Sirius XM radio and a Fox News analyst who regularly appears on programs like Fox & Friends and The O'Reilly Factor. The statement was included in a list of comments by conservative figures in a press release from the right-wing Media Research Center. Read More

Georgetown Professors to Ryan: Stop Distorting Catholic Teaching on Budget

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Tuesday April 24, 2012 · 1:19 PM PDT

2012/04/24 · 13:19

Cross-posted from Bold Faith Type
By John Gehring

Rep. Paul Ryan's Catholic problem isn't going away.

In a pointed letter today, nearly 90 Georgetown University faculty have called him to task for his continued misuse of Catholic social teaching in defending a GOP budget that is increasingly under fire from Catholic bishops, theologians and social justice leaders.

The letter comes just two days before Ryan visits the Catholic campus in Washington to deliver the Whittington Lecture. The signers -- including over a dozen Georgetown Jesuit priests and professors of theology, history and government -- do not object to Ryan speaking on campus, but offer a stinging critique of his distortion of Catholic values.

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Friday March 30, 2012 · 10:44 AM PDT

2012/03/30 · 10:44

Cross-posted from Bold Faith Type

Last weekend, Faithful America members from the Boston area confronted Chris Matthews at a book signing in Framingham, Massachusetts about his track record of inviting Family Research Council President Tony Perkins on Hardball as a representative of Christian voters. FRC was named a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center in 2010 for spreading hateful lies and junk research about the LGBT community -- and in part because of an incident in which a senior FRC staffer said on Hardball that there should be "criminal sanctions against homosexual behavior."

Matthews, who just received Human Rights Campaign's Ally for Equality award, responded by falsely claiming that Perkins has never "pulled that homophobic stuff on my show," and insisting that "every time he's on he's challenged."

That's just not true. After SPLC named FRC a hate group, Matthews invited Perkins on to defend his organization. Perkins took the opportunity to repeat his false accusations that gay men are more likely than heterosexual men to molest children, and said "the research is overwhelming that homosexuality poses a risk to children."

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Thursday March 15, 2012 · 7:25 AM PDT

2012/03/15 · 07:25

Cross-posted from Bold Faith Type

Last month, we covered the testimony of Sandra Fluke, the Georgetown University Law student who testified in favor of the HHS regulation requiring all insurance plans to include birth control and other preventive services without co-pay. In particular, she highlighted the consequences of letting employers deny women these services, relaying the story of a friend who lost her ovary after she could no longer afford to pay out of pocket for contraceptive pills to treat her ovarian cysts.

Since Fluke’s testimony and the subsequent backlash from the far Right, the media has been saturated with coverage of the debate between religious liberty and reproductive freedom. However, as Nicole Neroulias’ recent Huffington Post piece rightly points out, framing the story in these terms misses this part of Fluke’s actual testimony.

“[A]s Fluke tried to explain in her opening statement, both frames miss the big picture: Women take the pill to address myriad health issues, from ovarian cancer, menstrual problems, hormone imbalances and fertility treatments to cystic acne, et al. This is the angle I've been waiting in vain for religious and mainstream journalists to acknowledge and investigate.
…
And logically, even when clergy approve of contraceptives for unrelated medical reasons, how would they have their institutions apply these directives? Should women who work at Catholic hospitals and schools get a doctor's note for their bosses before requesting insurance reimbursement for the birth control pill? Would ovarian cysts and infertility make the cut, but acne and bad cramps be more along the lines of God's will?”

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Wednesday March 07, 2012 · 9:50 AM PST

2012/03/07 · 09:50

Cross-posted from Bold Faith Type

Continuing their campaign demanding that MSNBC stop booking hate-group leader Tony Perkins on their news programming, Faithful America has produced an ad to educate the network's viewers about the hateful lies the Family Research Council President tells about LGBT people and how frequently the cable network puts him on air.

Shamefully, MSNBC rejected the ad. After Faithful America attempted to purchase time to run the ad on the network, a representative responded:

Thank you for providing the ad and substantiation. Our policy states that we have sole discretion to accept or reject an ad based on its appropriateness. In this instance we are rejecting the ad.

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Wednesday February 29, 2012 · 10:16 AM PST

2012/02/29 · 10:16

Cross-posted from Bold Faith Type

After Rep. Darell Issa (R-CA) deemed Georgetown Law School student Sandra Fluke “unqualified” to speak at his hearing on the contraception coverage mandate and religious liberty, Fluke testified before a special committee last week about the effect this new policy will have on women.

As Tara covered last week, Fluke described the challenges of a fellow law student and friend who required oral contraceptives to treat her ovarian disease. When the university refused to cover her prescription, she was unable to afford the cost out of pocket and forced to stop taking them. Soon afterward she developed dangerous ovarian cysts and had to undergo an expensive, invasive surgery that might prevent her from ever having children.

Yesterday on America Live with Megyn Kelly, Kelly hosted fellow Fox anchor Trace Gallagher to talk about Fluke’s testimony. What followed was the most brazen display of shoddy journalism and old-fashioned misogyny I’ve ever seen on television news.

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Friday February 24, 2012 · 11:03 AM PST

2012/02/24 · 11:03

Cross-posted from Bold Faith Type
By Tara Culp-Ressler

During last week’s House Committee on Oversight and Government hearing on religious freedom, Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) posed a question to the witnesses about women who take oral contraceptives for purely medical reasons, such as those who need to mitigate their risk for ovarian cancer or blood clots.

Catholic Bishop William Lori responded that "our Catholic law of theology…recognizes that the same drug can be used for different purposes with different effects and our plans reflect that, so we should be given credit for the nuance and the understanding that we have already brought to the table."

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Thursday February 23, 2012 · 10:19 AM PST

2012/02/23 · 10:19

Cross-posted from Faith in Public Action blog

Rick Santorum has drawn scrutiny for attacking what he describes as President Obama's "phony theology," a line that has been widely lambasted along with some older comments now receiving fresh attention.

The initial attack came in the context of an attack on President Obama's environmental record, with Santorum alleging that the President has a “theology not based on the Bible” and a “worldview that puts the earth above man.” But Santorum should probably rethink this religious critique given that the environmental positions he dismisses find support in the teachings of his own Catholic faith.

Most clearly, Catholic leaders acknowledge the reality that human-caused climate change is a real and growing danger to our planet. For the Catholic Church, this is a profound moral challenge that trumps partisan ideology. In contrast, Rick Santorum ignores the scientific consensus on climate change, calling it "patently absurd," "junk science," and a conspiratorial "scheme" by the left to justify more government regulation.

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Friday February 17, 2012 · 5:30 AM PST

2012/02/17 · 05:30

Cross-posted from Bold Faith Type

The most prominent witness at today's House Committee on Oversight and Government hearing on religious freedom was The Most Reverend William E. Lori, Catholic Bishop of Bridgeport Connecticut.

For his opening statement, Bishop Lori made an elaborate analogy between religiously-affiliated institutions being required to include birth control coverage in their insurance policies and a kosher deli being hypothetically required to serve pork to its customers.

From the perspective of the religious institution, Bishop Lori is right in his assessment that Catholic views on birth control are roughly equivalent to Orthodox Jewish views on pork.

However, his analogy ultimately fails because he neglects to consider the other set of competing rights here -- those of individuals whose health care will be affected. When it comes to the life and health of individual Americans, birth control is nothing like pork at all.

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Thursday February 16, 2012 · 5:30 AM PST

2012/02/16 · 05:30

This week in New York, Faithful America members and faith leaders including Bishop Gene Robinson, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, gathered at MSNBC studios to deliver 20,000 signatures calling on the network to stop inviting hate group leader Tony Perkins onto their news programming.

MSNBC sent down representatives to accept the petitions but remained non-committal about their willingness to change their policy.

Here's video of their delivery combined with footage of Perkins on MSNBC:

You can sign the petition here.

Rick Santorum Dissents from Catholic Teaching on Health Care

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Monday February 13, 2012 · 12:27 PM PST

2012/02/13 · 12:27

Cross-posted from Faith in Public Life Action

Rick Santorum's speech at CPAC on Friday included this impassioned segment about how the right to healthcare is not a proper right that comes from a higher power, but a manufactured one pushed by liberals seeking to make people dependent on government. (Video from Right Wing Watch):

This of course, is entirely at odds with the teachings of Santorum's Catholic faith. Here are the U.S. Bishops on this exact issue:

The bishops believe access to basic, quality health care is a universal human right not a privilege
...
All people need and should have access to comprehensive, quality health care that they can afford, and it should not depend on their stage in life, where or whether they or their parents work, how much they earn, where they live, or where they were born. There may be different ways to accomplish this, but the Bishops’ Conference believes health care reform should be truly universal and genuinely affordable.