US Bishops Notify Congress of Policy Goals

This article comes from the National Catholic Reporter.

The bishops want equal access to the Internet for all!
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Letters outline US bishops’ policy priorities 

Feb. 03, 2011

By Michael Sean Winters


The U.S. bishops released two letters to members of Congress late last month that outline “principles and priorities that guide the public policy efforts” of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

The first letter, signed by the newly installed conference president, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, exhorts the lawmakers to protect human life from conception to natural death. “Our prayers and hopes [are] that this newly elected Congress will advance the common good and defend the life and dignity of all, especially vulnerable and poor persons whose needs are critical in this time of difficult economic and policy choices.”

The letters were dated Jan. 14 and released to the public Jan. 18.

Dolan pledges to “seek ways to work constructively with the administration and the new Congress and others of goodwill to pursue policies which respect the dignity of all human life and bring greater justice to our nation and peace to our world.”

The second letter – signed by Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, head of the pro-life committee; Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, Calif., chairman of the justice and human development committee; and Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles, chairman of the migration committee – dealt specifically with the issue of health care legislation.

Dolan wrote that the bishops approach public policy “not as politicians but as pastors and teachers … [of] the largest community of faith in the United States, one that serves every part of our nation and is present in almost every place on earth.”

The bishops “will work to retain essential, widely supported policies which show respect for unborn life, protect the conscience rights of health care providers and other Americans, and prevent government funding and promotion of abortion,” Dolan wrote. He asked that the Hyde Amendment, which prevents the use of federal funds for all elective abortion, be enacted as a permanent provision.

Dolan then articulated the bishops’ concern to defend traditional marriage, calling for vigorous enforcement of the Defense of Marriage Act, which limits the degree to which the federal government can recognize same-sex partnerships.

The letter next addressed a variety of concerns about social justice and the poor that range the bishops more on the political left than the political right.

It said that the bishops support economic policies that protect the poor, and call for aid to Catholic schools and continued funding for faith-based organizations that cooperate with the government in providing social services.

Dolan also addressed a novel issue: equal access to the Internet, the first time this issue has received such prominent attention from the bishops’ conference.

He called for comprehensive immigration reform, “recognizing that human dignity comes from God and does not depend on where people were born or how they came to our nation.” Among those items the bishops seek are “a path to earned citizenship, with attention to the fact that international trade and development policies influence economic opportunities in the countries from which immigrants come,” and some effort to prioritize family reunification.

Turning to international affairs, the letter calls for a “responsible” end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and voices special concern for the religious freedom of Christians and others, noting recent attacks on Christians in Egypt, Iraq and Nigeria, as well as the assassination of a Pakistani official who had spoken against that country’s blasphemy law.

Dolan also urged “continued and persistent leadership” to secure a lasting peace in the Holy Land, support for peaceful change in Sudan, and continued efforts to alleviate the sufferings of the people of Haiti.

Dolan’s letter follows the pattern set by Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical letter Caritas in Veritate, albeit with far less explicit theological arguments. Dolan’s letter articulates a variety of concerns, all of which flow from the church’s teaching on human dignity, even though some of those concerns are shared mostly with Republicans and others mostly with Democrats.

Dolan’s letter appears to be a far cry from the position held by some conservative Catholics, such as Princeton University Professor Robert George, who argue that the church’s focus should be narrower, restricted to so-called “nonnegotiable” issues like opposition to abortion and support for traditional marriage and religious freedom.

Some might be disappointed to find that immigration comes near the very end, as if it were not a real priority for the bishops and a pressing issue for the country.

The second letter from the three bishops whose committees were most engaged in last year’s health care debate is primarily interesting because it didn’t support efforts to repeal the health care reform law.

“Throughout the last Congress the Catholic bishops of the United States affirmed our strong support for universal access to health care,” the bishops write. “Basic health care for all is a moral imperative, not yet completely achieved.”

They call for Congress to address the health care needs of immigrants, a need unaddressed in last year’s health care law.

The letter from the three bishops enumerates the bishops’ reservations concerning federal funding of abortion and conscience protections for health care workers and Catholics hospitals. They note that these last concerns can all be achieved by enacting other bills that amend the law without repealing it. One such effort, previously introduced in the last Congress, would put the original Stupak-Pitts language back in the law, codifying the Hyde Amendment by law rather than executive order, as President Obama did last year. The Stupak-Pitts Amendment failed last year when no Senate Republican promised to vote for the health care law if the amendment was attached to it.

Another prospective bill would shore up conscience protections for Catholic health care workers, a growing concern of the bishops.

No one seeking to repeal the health care law will likely find solace in this letter.

Both letters exemplify a lack of sharp elbows. The respectful tone, the lack of any demonization or mischaracterization of the views of others, the ideological balance and measured analysis, these all distinguish the bishops’ voices from so many others in the public square.

If the next three years of Dolan’s leadership follow the form and content of this letter, the church’s relationship with the political realm might be less volatile and more constructive then we’ve seen in recent years.

[Based in the nation’s capital, Michael Sean Winters writes the Distinctly Catholic blog.]

Canon Lawyer: Bishops Have Authority Over the Word "Catholic"

This article comes from the In the Light of the Law blog.
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Lisa Fullam's dangerous advice should be ignored

When informed that the Vatican would oppose him, Joseph Stalin shrugged and asked “How many troops does the pope have?” To the dictator, the only views that mattered were those backed-up by men with guns.

Lisa Fullam has offered authorities at Catholic Healthcare West / St. Joseph's Hospital in Phoenix similarly myopic, even dangerous, advice when she suggested that, because the word “Catholic” is not copyright-able, the enterprise should continue to call itself “Catholic” despite Bp. Thomas Olmsted’s threatened prohibition of such use, and simply “let the canonical chips fall where they may.” Apparently Fullam believes that, since men with badges will never show up to enforce a cease-and-desist order (that will never be issued) by a civil court regarding the word “Catholic”, Catholic hospital officials need not worry about bishops tossing a few “canonical chips” their way.

I strongly suggest that St. Joseph's seek advice from another expert.

If the only criterion for authentic Catholic conduct is “what Church rules are enforceable by civil courts?”, then there won’t be much left of Catholic codes of conduct. Thank God. I don’t want states being the final arbiter of what is acceptable Catholic conduct and what is not, and I would hope that Fullam doesn’t want that, either.

But if Fullam’s point is that a bishop’s authority over the use of the label “Catholic” is, absent state enforcement options, nugatory, then she needs to study up on some elementary canon law (and ecclesiology, for that matter). A bishop’s authority over the use of the word “Catholic” is reflected in, e.g., 1983 CIC 216 and 300, and those norms just get the conversation started. Canons 1319 comes next to mind, but an exploration of those options goes beyond what I can cover in blog post.

Fullam’s nonchalance about ecclesiastical authority notwithstanding, I suggest that Catholic Healthcare West / St. Joseph's Hospital officials put a careful reading of these and related canons on the agenda for their next meeting.

I’m pretty sure that Bp. Olmsted has them memorized.

US Bishop Revokes Hospital's Catholic Status

This article comes from the Catholic News Service.
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Bishop Olmsted revokes Phoenix hospital's status as Catholic facility

By J.D. Long-Garcia
Catholic News Service

PHOENIX (CNS) -- St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix can no longer identify itself as "Catholic," Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted announced during a Dec. 21 news conference in Phoenix at the Diocesan Pastoral Center.

The Phoenix bishop issued a decree revoking the 115-year-old hospital's affiliation with the Catholic Church. In the decree, the bishop wrote that he could not verify that the hospital provides health care consistent with "authentic Catholic moral teaching."

"I really want to have Catholic health care," Bishop Olmsted said during the news conference. "We should be working together, not against each other."

Still, he said it was his duty to strip St. Joseph's Hospital of its Catholic identity because its leadership, as well as that of its parent organization, San Francisco-based Catholic Healthcare West, is not committed to "following the teachings of the Catholic Church."

To demonstrate that the hospital is no longer Catholic, Bishop Olmsted is prohibiting the celebration of Mass on the hospital's campus and will have the Blessed Sacrament removed from the hospital's chapel.

Linda Hunt, president of St. Joseph's, said in a statement after the bishop's news conference that the hospital was "deeply disappointed" by the action but would "continue through our words and deeds to carry out the healing ministry of Jesus."

In May, officials at St. Joseph's publicly acknowledged that an abortion occurred at the hospital in late 2009. The Arizona Republic, in its initial story on the matter, also revealed that Mercy Sister Margaret McBride had incurred an automatic excommunication because of her role on the ethics committee that sanctioned the abortion.

"Consistent with our values of dignity and justice, if we are presented with a situation in which a pregnancy threatens a woman's life, our first priority is to save both patients," Hunt said in her statement. "If that is not possible, we will always save the life we can save, and that is what we did in this case.

"We continue to stand by the decision, which was made in collaboration with the patient, her family, her caregivers and our ethics committee," she added. "Morally, ethically and legally we simply cannot stand by and let someone die whose life we might be able to save."

The public scandal resulting from the 2009 abortion isn't the first time Bishop Olmsted took issue with Catholic Healthcare West's adherence to the "Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services," to which all Catholic hospitals in the United States are required to adhere.

Seven years ago, the bishop learned that Catholic Healthcare West did not comply with these directives at Chandler Regional Hospital.

"I have continued to insist that this scandalous situation needed to change," the bishop said. "Sadly, over the course of these years, CHW has chosen not to comply."

During the news conference, Bishop Olmsted detailed other Catholic Healthcare West facility violations of the U.S. bishops' directives.

St. Joseph's Hospital is involved with the Mercy Care Plan -- an organization that provides health care through Arizona's Medicaid program. By virtue of its involvement in the plan, the hospital has been "formally cooperating with a number of medical procedures" against Catholic teaching -- a fact that the bishop said he learned about in the past few weeks.

This cooperation included setting up a structure through which patients receive procedures -- such as abortions and sterilizations -- which are against church teaching, according to Father John Ehrich, director of medical ethics for the Phoenix Diocese.

Learning about the Mercy Care Plan was the "tipping point" in Bishop Olmsted's relationship with the hospital, Father Ehrich said.

The Mercy Care Plan, the largest provider of Medicaid in Arizona, has been in existence for 26 years. In meetings with diocesan leadership, the hospital said it had learned of Mercy Care Plan's cooperation with unethical procedures 16 months ago.

"They hid it from the bishop for a year and a half," Father Ehrich said. The hospital, he said, promised to address the issue but had signed contracts good through 2013.

"It's a systemic problem," Father Ehrich said. "We're not talking about one isolated incident."

Through its involvement in the Mercy Care Plan, the bishop said Catholic Healthcare West has been responsible for a litany of practices in direct conflict with Catholic teaching. These include: contraceptive counseling, provision of various forms of contraception, voluntary sterilization and abortions "due to the mental or physical health of the mother or when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest."

"The Catholic faithful are free to seek care or to offer care at St. Joseph's Hospital," the bishop said. "But I cannot guarantee that the care provided will be in full accord with the teachings of the church."

Bishop Olmsted, explaining his authority to revoke the Catholic identity of St. Joseph's Hospital, cited Canon 216, which states: "No undertaking is to claim the name Catholic without the consent of competent ecclesiastical authority."

"I have hoped and prayed that this day would not come," the bishop said. "However, the faithful of the diocese have a right to know whether institutions of this importance are indeed Catholic in identity and practice."

After learning about the abortion earlier in the year, Bishop Olmsted met with hospital officials to learn more about the particular case, he said at the news conference.

"It became clear that, in their decision to abort, the equal dignity of mother and her baby were not both upheld," he said. The baby "was directly killed," which is a violation of the ethical and religious directives.

Throughout the process, St. Joseph's Hospital and Catholic Healthcare West have maintained that the intention was to save "the only life that could be saved," the mother's, according to the hospital.

The bishop responded to the claim in a May 14 statement, reiterating that "the direct killing of an unborn child is always immoral, no matter the circumstances, and it cannot be permitted in any institution that claims to be authentically Catholic."

The U.S. bishops' Committee on Doctrine also weighed in on the issue with a June 23 statement.

"No circumstance, no purpose, no law whatsoever can ever make licit an act which is intrinsically illicit, since it is contrary to the law of God which is written in every human heart, knowable by reason itself and proclaimed by the church," the committee said.

The withdrawal of a hospital's Catholic identification is not without precedent.

Bishop Robert F. Vasa of Baker, Ore., announced in February that St. Charles Medical Center in Bend had "gradually moved away" from the church's ethical directives and can no longer be called Catholic.

As a result of that decision, Mass is no longer celebrated in the hospital's chapel and all items considered Catholic were removed from the hospital and returned to the church. The hospital retained the St. Charles name and a cross remains atop the building.

Pope: All Nations Must Provide Universal Health Care

This article comes from the blog In All Things at America.

Apparently, the pope believes that money grows on trees and that national sovereignty and self-determination is a thing of the past.

It must be nice to sit on the sidelines and make impossible demands.

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Pope Calls for Guaranteed Health Care

By Kerry Weber

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Pope Benedict XVI and other church leaders said it was the moral responsibility of nations to guarantee access to health care for all of their citizens, regardless of social and economic status or their ability to pay.

Access to adequate medical attention, the pope said in a written message Nov. 18, was one of the "inalienable rights" of man.

The pope's message was read by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, to participants at the 25th International Conference of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry at the Vatican Nov. 18-19.

The theme of this year's meeting was "Caritas in Veritate - toward an equitable and human health care."

The pope lamented the great inequalities in health care around the globe. While people in many parts of the world aren't able to receive essential medications or even the most basic care, in industrialized countries there is a risk of "pharmacological, medical and surgical consumerism" that leads to "a cult of the body," the pope said.

"The care of man, his transcendent dignity and his inalienable rights" are issues that should concern Christians, the pope said.

Because an individual's health is a "precious asset" to society as well as to himself, governments and other agencies should seek to protect it by "dedicating the equipment, resources and energy so that the greatest number of people can have access."

"Justice in health care should be a priority of governments and international institutions," he said, cautioning that protecting human health does not include euthanasia or promoting artificial reproductive techniques that include the destruction of embryos.

Care for human life from conception to its natural end must be a guiding light in determining health care policy, the pope said.

In his own written statement, Cardinal Bertone had strong words in support of the need for governments to take care of all citizens, especially children, the elderly, the poor and immigrants.

"Justice requires guaranteed universal access to health care," he said, adding that the provision of minimal levels of medical attention to all is "commonly accepted as a fundamental human right."

Governments are obligated, therefore, to adopt the proper legislative, administrative and financial measures to provide such care along with other basic conditions that promote good health, such as food security, water and housing, the cardinal said.

Private health insurance companies, he said, should conform to human rights legislation and see to it that "privatization not become a threat to the accessibility, availability and quality of health care goods and services."

Cardinal Bertone recommended that government leaders in poor countries use their limited resources wisely and for the good of their citizens.

The governments of richer nations with good health care available should practice more solidarity with their own disadvantaged citizens and help developing countries promote health care while trying to avoid a "paternalistic or humiliating" way of assisting, the cardinal said.

Cardinal Bertone warned of the "war of interests" between pharmaceutical companies and developing nations who have little access to medicines because they can't pay for them. He said that those manufacturers should not be driven by "profit as the only objective" in the creation and distribution of medicines.

Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski, president of the Pontifical Council for Health Care Ministry, said in opening remarks that to have good health "is a natural right" recognized by international institutions.

Despite such recognition, he said, great imbalances persist and developing nations find themselves with inadequate structures and without the ability to provide basic medicines to their people. Wealthier countries, on the other hand, have a "technical" approach to the sick, which ignores "the sick person in his entirety and dignity," Archbishop Zimowski said.

The council, created by Pope John Paul II 25 years ago, will continue the church's mission to serve the sick and promote health for all, the archbishop said.

Who Speaks for the Catholic Church?

This article comes from the Catholic News Agency.

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Allen interview of Cardinal George supports report of 'parallel magisterium' worries

Kansas City, Mo., Jun 22, 2010 / 03:07 pm (CNA).- Cardinal Francis George, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), in an interview last week agreed that the rift over the federal health care bill between the bishops and the Catholic Health Association (CHA) exposed a major question concerning who speaks for the Church.

The cardinal’s recorded comments echo other reports. Last week, episcopal sources, who requested anonymity, told CNA that the cardinal lamented the rise of a “parallel magisterium” in the health care debate and blamed CHA and other groups for the passage of the bill.

On Tuesday, Vatican expert John L. Allen, Jr. published the full text of his June 16 interview with Cardinal George on the blog of the National Catholic Reporter’s website.

The cardinal noted the difference of opinion over the actual content of the health care legislation, saying supporters of the health care legislation have not answered USCCB counsel Anthony Picarello’s objections to its treatment of abortion funding.

“What worries me more than a difference over empirical content, however, is the claim that the bishops cannot speak to the moral content of the law,” the cardinal told Allen. “That seems to be what the CHA has said, though I’d be happy to be proven wrong.”

Later in the interview, Allen asked: “From your point of view, is this ultimately an ecclesiological question – who speaks for the Church?”

“Yes, exactly,” Cardinal George replied. “Our disagreement may be narrow, but it’s a narrow difference that has exposed a very large principle. It affects the nature of the church, and therefore it has to concern the bishops.”

The prelate said he had written to CHA president Sr. Carol Keehan, reporting that he wants “to try to reshape the relationship in dialogue together.”

“As part of that conversation, we have to clarify the claims being made, primarily on this question of our role in assessing the moral quality of law, because it affects every area we touch on,” he continued, noting the question’s relevance to the immigration debate.

“Are we supposed to just say that the present situation is morally unjustified, or do we have the right and the duty to make moral judgments about whatever legislation comes down the line?”

At one point in the interview, he invoked the example of Blessed Cardinal Clemens von Galen, who under the Nazis “not only condemned euthanasia as an unethical procedure, but he also condemned the laws which permitted it.”

“This is the question that has to be raised: Are we to offer moral teaching solely about actions, or also the laws which permit and foster them?” Cardinal George commented to Allen.

He suggested an effort to put the language of the Hyde Amendment back into the health care legislation would “go a long way toward fostering reconciliation” between the bishops and the CHA.

At the U.S. bishops’ executive session last week, the USCCB president reportedly discussed the fallout resulting from CHA’s support for the health care legislation despite the bishops’ opposition.

Several bishops who wished to remain anonymous told CNA that Cardinal George charged CHA and other Catholic groups with providing “cover” for undecided legislators to support President Obama’s legislation. He said these groups’ actions also weakened the moral voice of the bishops in the U.S., caused confusion and wounded Catholic unity.

Differences between the USCCB and the CHA were not just two equally valid conclusions inspired by Catholic teaching, he commented.

According to these episcopal sources, the cardinal clearly remarked that Sr. Carol and her colleagues are to blame for the passage of the bill. The prelate also criticized as meaningless the president’s executive order allegedly barring abortion funding, saying that Sr. Carol was mistaken to think that the legislation is pro-life.

Stupak Describes "Health Care Hell"

This article comes from Newsweek.

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Health Care Hell

By Bart Stupak

During the past few months, I often drew strength from a poem taped to my desk in Washington and framed on the wall of my home office in Menominee, Mich. "Bullfight critics ranked in rows," it begins, "Crowd the enormous plaza full/But only one is there who knows/And he's the man who fights the bull."

Written by a Spanish matador, the poem really resonated with me last fall as I wrestled with two longstanding personal convictions—that health care is a national right, and that federal dollars should not be used to pay for abortion—thrown into conflict by a universal-insurance bill that would cover abortion. I tried to warn my House colleagues that I wasn't going to give up one belief for the other. But ultimately they left me no other choice: the Stupak amendment passed last November, upholding the current law that prohibits public funding for abortions—and beginning the most grueling period in my nearly 20 years on the Hill.

The attacks started almost immediately, with activists and editorialists churning out slogans ("Stop Stupak!") and jokes ("Stupak is as Stupak does"). For solace I would go to my corner church, St. Peter's on Second and C streets, and slide into a left-side pew (I am a Democrat, after all) to pray and think. I was disappointed when the Senate did not pass my pro-life language in its version of the health-care bill. And while I questioned my position constantly—am I not seeing the forest for the trees?—I resolved, along with a coalition of other pro-life Democrats, not to back down. I snatched maybe three hours of sleep a night.

That pattern continued, and the attacks intensified, right down to the House reconciliation vote on March 21. By then I had realized that health-care reform would pass, so rather than vote no and lose my power to add pro-life protections, I gathered my coalition to try to reach an agreement with President Obama: an executive order confirming that no federal money would support abortion. On that Sunday, seven or eight of us pro-lifers sat with silver urns of coffee, yellow legal pads, and red pens in a discreet room away from the White House, hammering out the language. We also put in a final call to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which had been among my strongest supporters during the fall.

 

I was disappointed by what I heard. No, no, no, no, they said. We need statutory law. But an executive order can have the full force of law, I said. Lincoln used one to free the slaves. George W. Bush used one to block stem-cell research using human embryos. And President Obama assures me that this is "ironclad." Besides, I said, it's time to negotiate or lose our chance to shape the bill. Help me with it? No, they said. Won't you at least look at it? No.

That call changed my relationship with the pro-life movement. In the 18 years I've been in Congress, pro-life Democrats like me have delivered, working out compromises that protect human life. Now we had the most important piece of legislation for our movement yet—with pregnancy prevention, prenatal and postnatal care, and care for kids—and we couldn't get support.

In the past few weeks, I've received so many death threats that I was advised to get a security escort around Washington. My wife, Laurie, has had to unplug our home phone to avoid drunken messages from people screaming, swearing, and generally acting profane—usually around the time the bars in their states close. We've had to endure TV, radio, and bus-stop ads. One day I got 1,500 faxes, all hate mail.

Ultimately, what stings the most isn't the hatred. (After all, people hate cops, lawyers, and politicians, and I've been all three.) It's that people tried to use abortion as a tool to stop health-care reform, even after protections were added. That realization has stayed with me in the weeks since, a time that I've spent shuttling between Michigan and Washington, as I have for years. My decision not to seek reelection isn't about anything other than it being time to do something else with my life. The truth is that I've been thinking of a career change for more than six years. I was glad that I stayed to fight the bull. Now I'm glad the fight is over.

Stupak represents Michigan's First Congressional District.

Pelosi Calls Bishops to Rally for Immigration

This article comes from EWTN News.

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Pelosi asks Catholic clergy for immigration help, praises sisters who undercut bishops

Speaking at a conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Catholic clergy to play “a very major role” in supporting immigration reform. However, she also praised the group of religious sisters whose endorsement of the health care reform bill undercut the U.S. bishops’ push for abortion funding restrictions.

Her remarks came Thursday on Capitol Hill at the Nation’s Catholic Community Conference sponsored by Trinity Washington University and the National Catholic Reporter.

"The cardinals, the archbishops, the bishops that come to me and say, 'We want you to pass immigration reform,' and I said, 'I want you to speak about it from the pulpit. I want you to instruct…',” Pelosi said, according to Fox News.

The House Speaker, who says she is Catholic, said that some people who oppose immigration reform are in the pews and the clergy “have to tell them that this is a manifestation of our living the Gospels.”

A Pelosi spokesman later issued a statement saying the Speaker “believes the faith community has played and will continue to play a role in our national debate.”

In other remarks at the conference, Speaker Pelosi discussed the recent health care reform legislation, claiming it respected “the dignity and worth of every person.”

"I thank so many of you who helped get that passed. Thank God for the nuns. Thank God for the nuns,” she commented, according to CNSNews.com.

The Speaker was referring to a March letter of support for the health care bill from NETWORK, a woman’s religious group which claimed at the time of its letter to have the support of 59,000 religious sisters.

Pelosi continued: “. . .Imagine, 15, 16 leaders of orders representing 59,000 orders -- and I didn’t realize it was Dominican, Benedictine and Franciscan, Notre Dame de L’Amour, Notre Dame School Sisters, every possible kind of name you can think of, there they were on the list. And they wrote to us saying, ‘We support this life-affirming legislation.’ We were so proud of them and they helped us do just that."

U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) spokeswoman Sr. Mary Ann Walsh in March said that the letter “grossly overstated” its numbers, was signed by “a few dozen people” and did not come “anywhere near representing 59,000 American sisters.

“The letter had 55 signatories, some individuals, some groups of three to five persons. One endorser signed twice,” she added. “There are 793 religious communities in the United States.”

The U.S. bishops opposed the health care bill on the grounds that it lacked statutory restrictions on abortion funding, among other reasons.

Scholar: US Bishops "Succumbed" to Political Temptation on Health Care

This article comes from the Jesuit magazine America.
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Cul-de-Sac Catholicism

Nicholas P. Cafardi

In the second temptation of Jesus in the desert, the devil offered Jesus political power. Jesus turned him down. The American bishops—or rather their leadership and staff—succumbed. How heady it must have felt for those staffers from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops who were present in the room with Rep. Bart Stupak when he was negotiating with Speaker Nancy Pelosi over the anti-abortion language in the House health care reform bill.

But what the lords of this world give, they can take away. How bitter it must have been for these same staffers when Congressman Stupak worked out a reasonable compromise with the administration—an executive order clarifying the anti-abortion language of the Senate bill—so that the Congressman, acting as a pro-life Catholic layman, with a fully-informed conscience, could vote for the Senate version of the health care reform bill.

The Catholic Church has always been a strong supporter of universal health care, ever since Pope John XXIII included it in his list of basic human rights in his encyclical, Pacem in Terris. Yet when the United States finally adopted near (not complete) universal coverage, the bishops of the United States found themselves opposed to it for reasons that were, at best, hard to decipher.

The bishops’ arguments against the Senate bill seemed to come down to suspicions that:

1. The Senate bill did not incorporate the exact language of the Hyde amendment as the House bill did, but it did make Hyde’s restrictions applicable by reference to Hyde. Therefore reject the Senate bill, the bishops said, because if the Hyde amendment is ever not renewed by Congress, then the Senate bill lacks specific protections against federal health care dollars being used to fund abortions. In this doomsday scenario, the bishops ignored the obvious: A congress with enough votes to reject the Hyde amendment would also have enough votes to put abortion coverage into any existing federal health care legislation.

2. The bill funds Community Health Centers that receive federal dollars, and these centers could start doing abortions. Therefore reject the Senate bill, the bishops said. But CHCs have never done abortions. Their sole role is to see that poor people have access to basic primary health care, not specialized operations. And they are prohibited from performing abortions by federal regulation, and the Hyde Amendment, which does not allow any federal dollars, including those provided to Community Health Centers, to be used for abortions. When President George W. Bush doubled federal support for Community Health Centers during his Administration, by opening 1200 new or expanded service sites between 2002 and 2006, the bishops raised no concerns about abortion funding.

3. The Senate bill requires that one insurance plan per state include abortion coverage, and if this should happen to be the best plan, Catholics who want optimal coverage will have to join and subsidize abortions with their premiums. Therefore reject the Senate bill, the bishops said. But under the terms of the bill abortion coverage in any plan is to be paid for with separate premium dollars, not general premium dollars. And these dollars have to be segregated, just as federal grants to Catholic social service agencies have to be segregated so that the government is paying only for neutral charitable services and not for religious activities. If segregation of funds works there, why not here? And the idea that the “best” plan, the one that all the Catholics will want to buy, will be the one plan that includes abortion coverage is hardly a given.

Political Distortions

The bishops were not fighting the real Senate bill. They were fighting a distortion of the bill. Where did these distortions come from? Not from the bishops or their staff—although they were complicit in repeating them. Rather, they came from the far-right groups with whom the bishops in their pursuit of political power found themselves aligned. But unlike the bishops, who truly wished to get the best health care bill possible, their allies wanted no health care bill at all. They wanted, as they have often repeated, to see President Obama fail.

Proof of this alliance? One telling example: a week before the final debate in the House the bishops’ staff wrote a press release disputing a pro-life analysis by Professor of Law Timothy Jost that supported the Senate bill. This release was posted on the Web site of the National Right to Life Committee a full-day before it showed up on the bishops’ own Web site and even before it was given to the press. So who wrote it? Was it the NRLC, which is funded, in part, by the Republican National Committee? The NRLC is one of Obama’s most vehement critics. Why are our bishops cooperating with these political operatives?

Neither political party is perfect. They each have their own agendas and each will always act in their own, not the church’s, best interests, and each will seek to use the church if they can. That is what partisanship is all about. But our bishops cannot afford to seem partisan. The perception of political partisanship on the part of the bishops is destructive of their credibility.

On complex political issues like the dense language of the Senate health care reform bill, our bishops are not experts, nor, truth to tell, are their staffs—at least not in comparison to the wizards on Capitol Hill. Instead of getting involved in the technicalities of the legislative language, which is not a matter of dogma or theology, the bishops would have been better served to state what they authoritatively could: No Catholic could support a legislative extension of abortion in the guise of health care. Then let the lay people do what they do best: work out the details.

The bishops must leave the political answers, the how of solving political problems, even when those problems have a moral component, to the informed consciences of the laity. Political strategy is not a question of faith. How odd that in the final analysis, the bishops found themselves on the opposite side of their own standard-bearer, Congressman Stupak, when he voted for the Senate version, backed up by a clarifying executive order. There could hardly be a more pro-life member of Congress. But the bishops, again going where they have no expertise, attacked President Obama’s executive order as ineffective.

But executive orders are law, and in the history of our country they have had breath-taking effects. Harry Truman desegregated the armed forces with an executive order. Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson used executive orders to end segregation in the schools and discrimination in federal programs. George W. Bush used an executive order to limit the lines of embryonic stem cells available for federally-funded research. No bishop ever said any of these were ineffective. Congressman Stupak himself, in response to the bishops’ criticism of his compromise, pointedly said he had heard no Catholic bishop argue that Bush’s executive resolution to prohibit federal funding for some embryonic stem cell research was not enough. Rather, all he heard from the bishops on that issue, he said, was praise for President Bush.

There was no praise for President Obama and his executive resolution stating that no federal funds allocated under the health care reform bill could be used for abortions. Could that be the real problem? Have our bishops become so partisan that they cannot accept anything that President Obama does because he is unrelentingly accused of being “the most pro-abortion president” America has ever elected? Are they unwilling to cooperate with the Democratic Party does because it is constantly caricatured as the “party of death”? How much longer can they cling to these illusions when the health care reform law includes provisions such as life affirming “Support for Pregnant Women’s Act/“Pregnant Women’s Support Act,” which funds $250 million of support for vulnerable pregnant women and alternatives to abortion?

So the bishops found themselves opposed to a law that would provide health care insurance to 30 million uninsured Americans, vastly improve health care insurance coverage for the rest of us, and prevent annually an estimated 45,000 deaths from a lack of adequate health care. And why? For the amorphous anxiety that the health care reform bill might perhaps somewhere, somehow, someday underwrite someone’s abortion? How, in any rational sense of justice, does that uncertainty outweigh the pro-life certainties of this law?

I am saddened that our sacred pastors, men whom I truly admire, allowed themselves to be led into a partisan cul-de-sac that they found impossible to exit. I know that they are wise enough to work their way out of this dead-end eventually, but meanwhile the damage to their credibility in being truly pro-life, and not merely pro-life for partisan purposes, is immense.

Nicholas P. Cafardi is dean emeritus and professor of law at Duquesne University School of Law.

Stupak Rebukes Bishops for Hypocrisy

This article comes from The Daily Caller.
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Stupak says Catholic bishops and pro-life groups hypocrites for condemning health-care vote

By Jon Ward - 03/23/10

Rep. Bart Stupak, the Michigan Democrat whose support for President Obama’s health bill ensured it was passed into law Sunday, on Tuesday accused the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and pro-life groups of “hypocrisy” for condemning the executive order that sealed the deal.

“The [National] Right to Life and the bishops, in 2007 when George Bush signed the executive order on embryonic stem cell research, they all applauded the executive order,” Stupak said in an interview with The Daily Caller.

“The Democratic Congress passed [a bill] saying we’ll do embryonic stem cell research. Bush vetoed it in 2007. That same day he issued an executive order saying we will not do it, and all these groups applauded that he protected life,” Stupak said.

“So now President Obama’s going to sign an executive order protecting life and everyone’s condemning it. The hypocrisy is great,” he said.

Obama will sign the order at the White House on Wednesday, the White House announced Tuesday night. Stupak and 12 other pro-life Democrats who voted for the health bill are invited to the signing ceremony.

Stupak also said he suspected groups such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Right to Life, and others were actually “just using the life issue to try to bring down health-care reform.”

“I question, did they want to protect the sanctity of life, or did they want to defeat health care?” he said.

Stupak said that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had enough votes to pass the health bill without him and the bloc of six or seven votes he brought with him, and that she released some vulnerable Democrats from voting for the bill after he agreed to support it.

The pro-life groups said their criticism had to do specifically with Obama’s executive order, which they say can do nothing to override provisions in the health bill.

“We haven’t said anything to suggest we think executive orders are never of value,” said Douglas Johnson, NRLC’s legislative director, in a phone interview.

Johnson said that Bush’s 2007 executive order, which followed his veto of legislation that would have expanded embryonic stem cell research, did not contravene existing law, but instead supported it, making it more “airtight.”

In addition, Bush’s 2001 executive order banning the use of most embryonic stem cell research simply undid authorization that had been put in place by federal regulations, not legislative action.

The problem with Obama’s executive order, Johnson said, it is “it basically just recites what’s in the Senate bill.”

The Senate bill funnels billions of dollars outside the regular “stream” of the annual Health and Human Services appropriations bill – which is the only appropriation subject to strict anti-abortion restrictions under the Hyde Amendment – without specifying that these monies also come under Hyde-type limitations.

NRLC called the Senate bill that passed the House on Sunday “the most abortion-expansive piece of legislation ever to reach the floor of the House of Representatives,” in a letter to Stupak and other pro-life House Democrats last week, before the vote.

The Conference of Bishops, in a statement issued Tuesday, said that “the statute appropriates billions of dollars in new funding without explicitly prohibiting the use of these funds for abortion, and it provides federal subsidies for health plans covering elective abortions.”

The statement added that “we do not understand how an Executive Order, no matter how well intentioned, can substitute for statutory provisions.”

Johnson agreed, stating that while Obama’s executive order “does assert that community health centers can’t use the funds for abortion, we think that likely we be unenforceable if challenged.”

Stupak told The Daily Caller that the president’s order does nothing to change the law as it’s written.

“You can’t. It’s the next best thing,” he said.

It was that or nothing, he insisted, saying he knew for a fact that Pelosi released certain House Democrats from voting for the bill after he and his bloc of six or seven votes swung into the yes column.

“A number of them came up and thanked me … said, ‘Thanks for getting us off the hook,’” Stupak said. “I’ve been around here long enough to know that the speaker, Democrats or Republican, always carries a few votes in their pocket.”

“So I had a choice: to come up empty-handed and a bill passes with language that I totally disagree with, or I do the next best thing.”

However, Pelosi told a group of liberal columnists during an interview Tuesday that she did not let any Democrats off the hook from voting for the bill.

“I never give passes,” she said, according to David Corn, of Mother Jones magazine.

Stupak said he was exploring different solutions for more than a week, and that he abandoned the use of a concurrent resolution – which would have amended the Senate bill if it passed the House and Senate before the president signed the legislation – after he could not raise enough support for it among Senate Republicans.

The executive order idea was first raised by White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, Stupak said.

“He said, ‘Will you take a sense of the House resolution?’ I said, ‘No I don’t like those.’”

“What about executive order?” Emanuel said.

“I don’t know about that. Let me see if I can research it more,” Stupak said.

The first draft of an executive order that was “described” to him, Stupak said, “didn’t do the job.”

So on Saturday, as Obama spoke to the House Democrats at the Capitol, Stupak was in his office, drafting the language himself, he said.

On Sunday, after brunch with Rep. Mike Doyle, Pennsylvania Democrat, House Democratic Caucus Chairman John Larson, Connecticut Democrat, and a few others, he and the other pro-life Democrats went to the Capitol to read the final rough draft of the order.

At 4 p.m., Stupak appeared with five other pro-life Democrats to announce he would support the health bill. The bill passed with three votes to spare, 219-to-212.

Doyle, Stupak said, “was the go between, and he kept encouraging us to talk it out.”

“It’s easier if you can keep the dialogue going, you can usually reach a consensus. And Doyle never gave up on it,” he said.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/03/23/stupak-says-catholic-bishops-pro-life-groups-tried-to-use-abortion-to-defeat-health-bill/#ixzz0j7d2ffCp

US Bishops Lose Health Care, Turn to Immigration

Having lost their greatest battle to date (the mighty health care conflict) the US bishops are now turning their energy toward the next item on their agenda: the naturalization of all illegal immigrants.

Watch as this story develops over the next several months. It will certainly be the central focus of the Catholic hierarchy in America for the rest of 2010.

This article can be found at Zenit. See also this story at the Catholic News Service, this blog post at In All Things, and this absolutely incredible letter from Pax Christi USA and other pro-immigration groups to President Obama asking him to suspend immigration enforcement for the remainder of 2010.

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Cardinal Joins Immigration Reform Marchers

Los Angeles Prelate Says Future of Country Is at Stake

WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 22, 2010 (Zenit.org).- The political climate in Washington D.C. on Sunday was overwhelmingly marked by the health care reform battle. But thousands of advocates fighting another cause also descended on the capital: those calling for immigration reform.

Cardinal Roger Mahony, the archbishop of Los Angeles, said in Friday's edition of the Washington Post that immigration reform is "right and just." He explained that he would be one of the reform advocates in Washington on Sunday.

"Public questions of how immigrants impact our economy and culture are appropriate and should be considered by our elected officials," Cardinal Mahony wrote. "To date, these concerns have dominated our national immigration debate, but we should already know the answer. Our history has shown that immigrants have helped build this diverse nation into the greatest democracy and superpower in the world.

"The ultimate and determinative question for our country, much less discussed, is whether we should embrace or reject the immigrant heritage that has served us so well."

Disturbing

The 74-year-old cardinal suggested that the "trend is disturbing" with the current immigration system.

He noted that "enforcement-only policies" pursued for two decades have not stopped illegal entry into the United States. Instead, in the last 10 years the nation spent more than $100 billion on enforcement and in the same period, the number of undocumented people in the United States rose from 7 million to 11 million.

He said the legal immigration system is "outmoded and inadequate to our future labor needs, especially when the economy recovers."

And the "family-based immigration system, which has helped immigrant families remain together and thrive for decades, is unworkable and now keeps families apart," the cardinal observed.

Proposing the cases of two young people hurt by the immigration system, Cardinal Mahony said, "Perhaps most troubling in all of this is how our immigration system has lessened us as a nation and stained our national character."
The prelate proposed that the rally in Washington "is not only about changing our national immigration laws, but about the future of our country. It is not as much about immigrants as about us, the American citizenry, and the type of society we want future generations to inherit."

"We can return to our tradition as a nation of immigrants and welcome and invest in them," Cardinal Mahony reflected, "or we can continue to turn inward to the detriment of our own interests."

Health Care Bill Passed: US Catholics at Odds

President Obama's health care bill has finally passed.

Pro-life Catholics are angry to say the least, but it appears that their anger is focused mostly on "turncoat" Catholics who supported and voted for the bill. Bart Stupak--for months a gallant hero for militant Catholicism--has suddenly become a candidate for unceremonious lynching in the streets of D.C. His "yes" vote for "Obamacare" is viewed the same way as Benedict Arnold's defection to the British.

It will be interesting to see how this event separates those US Catholics who are fiercely loyal to the Vatican and those who claim Catholicism while maintaining a weak attachment to Roman dogma.

This article comes from the Catholic News Agency. Also see the National Catholic Register, the Catholic News Service, Catholic Online, LifeSiteNews, and InsideCatholic among others. The Catholic blogosphere has been absolutely aflame all day.
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Pro-abortion lobbies 'incensed' at Stupak deal to pass health care

Washington D.C., Mar 21, 2010 / 10:03 pm (CNA).- Leading pro-abortion groups such as the National Organization of Women (NOW), Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America have harshly criticized President Obama’s decision to issue an executive order to reassure pro-life Democrats that there would be no federal funding for abortion.

The executive order was published by the White House minutes before Congressman Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) announced that he and his bloc of pro-life Democrats would be providing the missing votes to allow the health care bill to pass Sunday evening by a 219-212 margin.

During his press conference, Stupak noted there were only 45 votes in the Senate for his language. “We would all love to have a statute that would be stronger. We can’t get sixty votes in the Senate. The reality is we can’t do it.”

“This bill was going to go through,” Stupak said, saying he believed backers of the Senate bill had enough House votes before he and his pro-life colleagues decided to support the legislation.

To protect the sanctity of life, Stupak said, his coalition went for the “best enforceable” option and settled for the President’s executive order.

The order reads: “it is necessary to establish an adequate enforcement mechanism to ensure that Federal funds are not used for abortion services (except in cases of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered), consistent with a longstanding Federal statutory restriction that is commonly known as the Hyde Amendment.”

The executive order requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to draw up in six months’ time a set of guidelines which states must follow to ensure that federal funds don’t pay for abortion coverage. Any such coverage under the state insurance exchanges to be created would have to be paid for by the person insured.

Before the executive order was announced, NOW, NARAL and Planned Parenthood had felt comfortable with the language of the Senate bill.

Paradoxically, the language also received the support of Catholic organizations such as the Catholic Health Association (CHA) and NETWORK, the latter being a group of some 60 dissenting Catholics, mostly sisters from older religious congregations. They claimed it was sufficiently “pro-life.”

However, Stupak’s successful pressuring of the president to promise an executive order drew a harsh reaction from the leading pro-abortion groups on Sunday afternoon.

“We are incensed by Obama’s executive order designed to appease a handful of anti-choice Democrats who have held up health care reform in an effort to restrict women's access to abortion,” said NOW President Terry O'Neill in a statement emailed to reporters.

“Contrary to language in the draft of the executive order and repeated assertions in the news, the Hyde Amendment is not settled law -- it is an illegitimate tack-on to an annual must-pass appropriations bill. NOW has a longstanding objection to Hyde and, in fact, was looking forward to working with this president and Congress to bring an end to these restrictions. We see now that we have our work cut out for us far beyond what we ever anticipated. The message we have received today is that it is acceptable to negotiate health care on the backs of women, and we couldn't disagree more,” O’Neill said.

Following suit, Cecile Richards, President of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, issued a statement regretting that “a pro-choice president of a pro-choice nation was forced to sign an Executive Order that further codifies the proposed anti-choice language in the health care reform bill.”

Nevertheless, Richards rejoiced at the fact that the president's executive order did not include what she called “the complete and total ban on private health insurance coverage for abortion that Congressman Bart Stupak had insisted upon.”

Pro-Obama groups such as Catholics United and Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good have also objected to the abortion funding restrictions on subsidized health insurance plans.

“So while we regret that this proposed Executive Order has given the imprimatur of the president to Senator Nelson's language, we are grateful that it does not include the Stupak abortion ban,” Richards continued.

Catholics United has agreed with Planned Parenthood’s argument that Stupak’s restrictions went “too far,” but that language was backed by the U.S. bishops and other pro-life groups.

In its statement on the executive order, NARAL said “on a day when Americans are expected to see passage of legislation that will make health care more affordable for more than 30 million citizens, it is deeply disappointing that Bart Stupak and other anti-choice politicians would demand the restatement of the Hyde Amendment, a discriminatory law that blocks low-income women from receiving full reproductive-health care. Today's action is a stark reminder of why we must repeal this unfair and insulting policy. Achieving this goal means increasing the number of lawmakers in Congress who share our pro-choice values. Otherwise, we will continue to see women's reproductive rights used as a bargaining chip.”

During the press conference announcing his last hour support for the bill, Stupak said: “the statutory language, we’d love to have it. But we can’t get it through the Senate. And we’re not giving up. If there was something we missed, we’re coming back with legislative fixes. These right-to-life Democrats, who really carried the right-to-life ball throughout this whole debate, we will continue to do that. We will work with our colleagues to get the job done.”

Stupak’s leadership has been praised by several media commentators as a turning point in the Democratic Party.

Commentator and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan said on MSNBC that the executive order looks like “a tremendous victory” for Stupak and other pro-life leaders.

“For Democrats to have strong pro-life contingent, which fights inside that party, and then comes out with a victory, I think helps the party because Democrats are known as a pro-choice party,” he explained.

Another MSNBC commentator remarked that Stupak's actions present a “very high profile” and a “new sound” for pro-life Democrats.

Nevertheless, according to Richard Doerflinger, Stupak’s deal will be useless in defending life.

“The statutory mandate construed by the courts would override any executive order or regulation … Only a change in the law enacted by Congress, not an executive order, can begin to address this very serious problem in the legislation."

Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser announced that the organization had been planning to honor Rep. Stupak at its third annual Campaign for Life Gala on Wednesday for “his efforts to keep abortion-funding out of health care reform.”

“We will no longer be doing so. By accepting this deal from the most pro-abortion President in American history, Stupak has not only failed to stand strong for unborn children, but also for his constituents and pro-life voters across the country,” Dannenfelser charged. “Courts could and have a history of trumping executive orders.”

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins said that “by offering an executive order as a so-called solution, President Obama is finally admitting there is a problem with a bill that will force taxpayers to pay for elective abortions for the first time in over three decades. However, there is no way that an executive order will protect the unborn or prevent the greatest expansion of elective abortion since Roe v. Wade.”

"President Obama and the Democratic leadership know that such a plan, due to legal precedent, will be worth little in the long run. Court rulings in cases such as Commerce of U.S. v Reich and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld make it very clear that such an executive order likely wouldn't survive," Perkins added.

Tensions Among US Catholics Over Health Care

This article comes from the Catholic News Agency.

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Archbishop Chaput denounces false 'Catholic witness' in health care support

Denver, Colo., Mar 19, 2010 / 01:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In a First Things column on Friday, Archbishop Chaput of Denver commented on how certain “Catholic” groups are working to undermine the U.S. bishops' stance on health care reform. Should the morally deficient Senate version of health care reform be passed into law against the will of the American people, he said, the dissenting “Catholic” voices will be among those responsible.

“On March 18, the advocacy group Catholics United, which worried so earnestly about Republican faith partisans controlling Catholic thought in the last election, rolled out an attack-ad campaign against Democratic Congressman Bart Stupak in his home state,” began Archbishop Chaput.

“Why?” he asked. “Because Stupak insists – along with the U.S. bishops and every major national prolife group – that the Senate version of the reform bill now being forced ahead by congressional leaders and the White House fails to exclude abortion and its public funding from the legislation.”

On that same day, the prelate continued, writer E.J. Dionne of the Washington Post “claimed that the president of the U.S. bishops’ conference, Cardinal Francis George, had distorted the views of the Catholic Health Association, which voiced support of the legislation last week.” According the archbishop, Dionne then warned of a “moral opprobrium that would rightly fall” on the bishops if they succeeded in preventing the health care bill from passing.

“Dionne’s column came just days after Network, a Catholic 'social justice' lobby founded by women religious, also broke ranks with the bishops and endorsed the fatally flawed Senate version of health-care reform,” he added.

In consideration of the examples given by these three Catholic groups, said Archbishop Chaput, “what lessons can we draw...?”

“First, the captivity of some Catholics to the agenda of current congressional leaders and the White House proves that faith partisans are not a monopoly of the political right, and that some Catholics have an almost frantic unwillingness to see the abortion issue for what it is – a foundational matter of social justice and human rights.”

“It can’t be avoided in developing our public policies without debasing the whole nature of Christian social teaching. No rights are safe when the right to life is not,” he stressed.

“Second,” the archbishop continued, “people who claim to be Catholic and then publicly undercut the teaching and leadership of their bishops spread confusion, cause grave damage to the believing community and give the illusion of moral cover to a version of health care 'reform' that is not simply bad, but dangerous.”

“Third, for supporters of health care reform at any cost, facts don’t seem to matter when a coveted goal seems within reach. The American bishops have repeatedly shown their support for good healthcare reform. They’ve worked tirelessly and honestly for more than seven months to help craft acceptable legislation.”

“But they’ve also shown – and posted readily on the web – how and why the current Senate version of reform fails in at least three vital areas: abortion and its public funding; conscience protections for medical professionals and institutions; and the inclusion of immigrants,” he underscored.

“Congressional leaders have no one to blame but themselves for the opposition they’ve had to face. And this makes the arguments of columnists like Dionne – whose March 18 article was little more than a mixture of emotion and disinformation – all the more baseless.”

“Blaming the bishops is a cheap and useful way to divert attention from one’s own embarrassing partisanship,” he charged.

Archbishop Chaput concluded his remarks on Friday by saying that “If the defective Senate version of health-care reform pushed by congressional leaders passes into law – against the will of the American people and burdened by serious moral problems in its content – we’ll have 'Catholic' voices partly to thank for it. And to hold responsible.”

Nancy Pelosi Pokes Catholic Bishops

I think it is safe to say that Nancy Pelosi will be receiving a letter from her bishop very soon explaining why she is no longer allowed to be a Roman Catholic--if she hasn't already.

This comes from Townhall.com. Read this opinion piece from Catholic Online for a sample of anti-Pelosi sentiment.
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Bishops: Illegal Immigrants Should Get Health Care

Here is the bishops' latest call for universal health-care for illegal immigrants.

To even contemplate such a move in the midst of America's biggest economic crisis in a century is not just stupid, it is downright seditious.

It comes from the "Guest Voices" column of the Washington Post.

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Health care for life and for all

By Bishop William F. Murphy, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo and Bishop John Wester

For decades, the United States Catholic bishops have actively supported universal health care. The Catholic Church teaches that health care is a basic human right, essential for human life and dignity. Our community of faith provides health care to millions, purchases health care for tens of thousands and addresses the failings of our health care system in our parishes, emergency rooms and shelters. This is why we as bishops continue to insist that health care reform which truly protects the life, dignity, consciences and health of all is a moral imperative and urgent national priority.

(Read more about Catholic moral teaching at Patheos.com.)

We are convinced that the Senate legislation presented to the House of Representatives on a "take it or leave it" basis sadly fails this test and ought to be opposed in its current form. Why do we take this position, when we have a long record of support for health care reform? This judgment is based on a set of moral principles and legislative criteria that can be found on our Web site. But more simply, our essential priorities can be summarized in two sentences:

1. Health care reform must protect life and conscience, not threaten them. The Senate bill extends abortion coverage, allows federal funds to pay for elective abortions and denies adequate conscience protection to individuals and institutions. Needed health care reform must keep in place the longstanding and widely supported federal policy that neither elective abortion nor plans which include elective abortion can be paid for with federal funds. Simply put, health care reform ought to continue to apply both parts of the Hyde amendment, no more and no less. The House adopted this policy by a large bipartisan majority, establishing the same protections that govern Medicaid, SCHIP, the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program and other federal health programs. Despite claims to the contrary, the status quo prohibits the federal government from funding or facilitating plans that include elective abortion. The Senate bill violates this prohibition by providing subsidies to purchase such plans. The House bill provides that no one has to pay for other people's abortions, while the Senate bill does not. While the Senate provides for one plan without abortion coverage in each exchange, those who select another plan in an exchange to better meet the special needs of their family will be required to pay a separate monthly fee into a fund exclusively for abortions. This new federal requirement is an attempt to circumvent the Hyde amendment. It is a far more direct imposition on the consciences of those who do not wish to pay for the destruction of unborn human life than anything currently in federal law.

It is not those who require that the Hyde Amendment be fully applied who are obstructing reform, since this is the law of the land and the will of the American people. Rather, those who would expand federal participation in abortion, require people to pay for other people's abortions, and refuse to incorporate essential conscience protections (both within and beyond the abortion context) are threatening genuine reform. With conscience protection as with abortion funding, the goal is to preserve the status quo.

2. Universal coverage should be truly universal. People should never be denied coverage because they can't afford it, because of where they live or work, or because of where they come from and when they got here. The Senate bill would not only continue current law that denies legal immigrants access to Medicaid for five years, but also prohibit undocumented immigrants from buying insurance for their families in the exchanges using their own money. These provisions could leave immigrants and their families worse off, and at the same time it would also hurt the public health of our nation by making hospital emergency rooms the doctors' offices of the uninsured.

Now, after a year of divisive political combat, members of the House are told that they can advance health care reform only by adopting the Senate legislation as is, including these fundamental flaws. The House Democratic leadership is ignoring the pleas of pro-life and Hispanic members of their caucus. Apparently they will not even try to address the serious problems on abortion funding, conscience protection and fair treatment of immigrants. On the other hand, Republicans pledge to do all they can to defeat the legislation by threatening to object to any improvements in the Senate bill, further complicating the process. The White House, admirably concerned for the many millions without insurance and for those who cannot purchase it, seems willing to accept even a bill which leaves immigrants worse off and undermines the President's pledge to retain existing protections on abortion funding and freedom of conscience.

We are bishops, not politicians, policy experts or legislative tacticians. We are also pastors, teachers, and citizens. At this point of decision, we cannot compromise on basic moral principles. We can only urge -- and hope and pray -- that the House of Representatives will find the will and the means to adopt health care reform that protects the life, dignity, conscience and health of all. The legislation the House adopted, while not perfect, came closer to meeting these criteria. The Senate legislation simply does not meet them. This is why we are compelled to urge members of the House to oppose the Senate bill unless and until these fundamental flaws are remedied. Then it would be possible for Congress to advance health care reform that reflects a true commitment to life and dignity for all.

We urge our people to let their representatives know that we want Hyde Amendment protections for the unborn, conscience protections for individuals and institutions and openness to the legitimate claims of immigrants.

Bishop William F. Murphy is bishop of the Diocese of Rockville Centre, New York and chair of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development. Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston is chair of the USCCB Committee on Pro-life Activities. Bishop John Wester of Salt Lake City is chair of the USCCB Committee on Migration.