Browsing articles tagged with " Rick Santorum"
CHANTILLY, Va. — “Truth exists; the Incarnation happened.”
Those words formed the motto of Warren Carroll, the late founder of Christendom College, and stood at the heart of celebrations surrounding the lay-run Catholic college’s 35th anniversary earlier this month.
More than 300 hundred donors, alumni and VIPs gathered April 6 for Christendom’s 35th anniversary gala at the Westfields Marriott Hotel in Chantilly, Va., to celebrate the college’s legacy of providing Catholic education since 1977 and raise funds for student financial aid.
“This is so important to us, as we do not accept and will not accept any federal aid when it comes to the support for our students and our program at Christendom,” Christendom’s president, Timothy O’Donnell, said in his remarks. “We’re now in a position of strengthening our cash reserves to help meet our future challenges,” he said.
The Register learned from John Ciskanik, vice president for advancement, that Christendom had surpassed its Annual Fund goal for this fiscal year and its goal for student financial aid by raising approximately $200,000 from the gala.
Touching Tributes
Bishop Paul Loverde of the Diocese of Arlington, Va., which includes Christendom in its territory, was honored that evening. O’Donnell presented Bishop Loverde with a bust of Blessed John Paul II to celebrate the 25th anniversary of his ordination to the episcopate.
In his remarks, O’Donnell recognized former GOP presidential candidate and Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and his wife, Karen, who were in attendance, “for the heroic, prophetic defense of life, the truth of our Catholic faith” and for their “great witness in the public square,” both in the last presidential election and throughout their lives.
Also publicly recognized among the guests that evening was Anne Carroll, the wife of Christendom’s founder and first president until 1985: Warren Carroll started Christendom in response to the Second Vatican Council’s exhortation to the laity to promote the Church’s saving mission.
Although the college takes its motto — “Restore All Things in Christ” — from Pope St. Pius X, Carroll said the “watchwords of Christendom College” could be summed up as “Truth exists; the Incarnation happened.” The words are inscribed on Carroll’s tombstone, which rests on the college’s campus, overlooking the Shenandoah River.
Christendom has enjoyed strong personal connections with both Blessed John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI, and that tradition appears to continue with the current papacy. The college’s chaplain, Father Donald Planty, read a message delivered on behalf of Pope Francis both congratulating the college on its 35th anniversary and imparting his apostolic blessing.
“His Holiness Pope Francis sends his cordial greetings to the entire academic community with prayers that this commemoration will foster a renewed commitment to the ideals of Christian faith and academic excellence which inspired the college’s foundation.”
The gala’s mistress of ceremonies, actress and original Mouseketeer Sherry Alberoni, regaled the mostly black-tie audience with her humor and later chimed in that, while Pope Francis was a pope of many firsts, he also had the distinction of being the Church’s “266th conservative pope.”
Students for the New Evangelization
But Christendom’s role in forming students for the New Evangelization was on the minds of many that night.
Bishop Loverde told the Register at the gala that he believed Christendom’s influence would have a multiplying effect by preparing young people to give an authentic witness to those they meet in society.
“What the world needs are committed believers in the Lord Jesus, Catholics who live their faith,” he said. “The mission and goals of Christendom are to form young people in such a way that they will go forth to be these dynamic, articulate, faith-filled Catholics who will bring to the wider society truth and charity — the world is thirsty for both.”
Alumnus Frank O’Reilly, from the Class of 1983, recounted to the Register some of the experiences of being a student in Christendom’s early days.
“It was wonderful,” he said. “Back then, there were about 50 of us, so it was a very intimate community. I suppose that’s one reason why Dr. Carroll wanted to keep the college relatively small.”
O’Reilly said the college always had a “family atmosphere,” which has taken on new meaning, with many alumni now sending their own children to Christendom for their education.
But O’Reilly said the words of Father Cornelius O’Brien, one of the college’s first chaplains, hit home for him. The chaplain commented on why every student had a mission to evangelize.
“He said you have to be like the leaven in the dough. But you can’t ever be leaven in the dough if you stay on the shelf,” O’Reilly said.
Since its founding, Christendom says it has formed more than 2,640 alumni, including 300 alumnus-to-alumna marriages, 63 priests and 43 religious brothers and sisters.
Christendom Today
Today Christendom’s main campus in Front Royal, Va., teaches 400 undergraduate students; there is a semester-long Rome program and an additional campus in nearby Alexandria, which houses its Notre Dame Graduate School. In July, Christendom is also inaugurating the month-long St. Columcille Institute, an annual program in Ireland to explore Catholic theology, history and literature.
This past spring break, the college sent 19% of its student body, 66 students, to work with Catholic missions in Guatemala, Peru, Jamaica and the Bronx, N.Y.
“We’ve had 35 years of sending people forth, but I think in many, many ways there remains so much more to be done,” Timothy O’Donnell told the Register. “I think the spirit that is within Christendom has deepened with the passing of time.”
Daily Mass, Rosary, Eucharistic adoration and confession form much of the tapestry of the college’s spiritual life. And Christendom also requires all professors to take an “Oath of Fidelity” to the magisterium, even though the Church requires only theology professors to profess the mandatum once.
The college also now broadcasts Catholic programming in the Shenandoah Valley area as a member of the EWTN Catholic Radio Network (ETWN is the parent company of the Register).
“I’m hoping that what started out as a small candle, like the light at the Easter vigil, will be passed on by heart speaking to heart,” O’Donnell said. “As it gets darker and darker in the culture, I hope that light shines brighter through the darkness.”
Register correspondent Peter Jesserer Smith writes from Rochester, New York.
He is a 2009 graduate of Christendom College.
Editor’s Note: Eboo Patel is founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core. His new book is called “Sacred Ground: Pluralism, Prejudice and the Promise of America.”
By Eboo Patel, Special to CNN
Paul Ryan has set off joyous cheers in the land of conservatives largely because of his fiscal views but also because of his Catholic faith.
He is just the most recent member of his church – think House Speaker John Boehner, Republican runner-ups Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, and Supreme Court justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia – to be viewed as a flag-bearer for the conservative cause, a movement whose foot soldiers are largely evangelical Protestants.
The dynamic of evangelicals cheering for Catholics is one of the most stunning shifts in American political history. Just 50 years ago, evangelicals were ringing the alarm about the rising prominence of Catholics in American politics, not falling in line behind them.
“Our freedom, our religious freedom, is at stake if we elect a member of the Roman Catholic order as president of the United States,” Norman Vincent Peale told a conference of evangelical leaders in September 1960.
Materials handed out at the Peale conference claimed ‘Universal Roman Catholicism’ was both a religion and a political force whose doctrines were ultimately incompatible with the American ideals of freedom, equality and democracy.
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And the conference’s keynote address alleged that Catholics practiced “mental reservation,” which allowed them to lie about their intentions in order to gain power. And when they succeeded, they would make second-class citizens of everyone else.
Replace “Roman Catholic” with “Muslim” and “Church hierarchy” with “caliphate” in those pronouncements and today we are witnessing a similar energy directed against a different faith community using largely the same categories.
In today’s parlance, Kennedy was part of a stealth jihad meant to replace the U.S. Constitution with sharia law and practicing taqqiyya to mask this dawa offensive.
As they believed about Catholicism then, many evangelicals now view the very nature of Islam as incompatible with American values. Evangelicals rate Muslims lower on a “‘favoribility” scale than any other religious group, according to “American Grace,” a book by scholars Robert Putnam and David Campbell.
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Evangelical churches are favorite venues for Islamophobic speakers and prominent evangelical leaders like Franklin Graham regularly call Islam a threat to America.
It is easy to draw a straight line between the evangelical anti-Catholic prejudice of previous generations and the Islamophobia of today, essentially saying that “evangelicals have to hate someone.”
But that’s too cynical a take for me. The more interesting – and certainly more hopeful – storyline is the one about change.
Evangelical attitudes changed markedly towards Catholics in the past generation, and they are changing towards Muslims now.
Without doubt, the evangelical shift on Catholics can be partially explained by the two religion traditions finding common cause on political issues like abortion. But in “American Grace,” Putnam and Campbell point to what they believe is a more important reason.
Over the course of the past fifty years, more evangelicals got to meet Catholics and the warmth in those personal relationships became generalized towards the larger community. If your Pal Al is Catholic and a good guy, then by extension Catholics as a group and Catholicism as a religion have some good qualities.
This is precisely the dynamic taking place between evangelicals and Muslims, a story for me best illustrated by a Dallas-based pastor named Bob Roberts. Bob grew up in the 1960s in East Texas and remembers the Pope regularly being referred to as “the Great Whore of Babylon” in his father’s Southern Baptist church.
He absorbed the anti-Catholic prejudice along with everyone else. But when he went on service trips to Southeast Asia as an adult, he discovered that the people doing the most intense, committed development work were inevitably Catholic. At first he admired them from afar. Then he got to know some up close, and they turned out to be not so bad.
After September 11, 2001, the anti-Muslim feeling was open and intense in Bob’s community. Truth be told, Bob felt it himself.
But he was self-aware enough to recognize the similarity between the irrational prejudice he absorbed about Catholics growing up and what he saw happening toward Muslims now.
So he did the same thing with Muslims that he’d done with Catholics: get to know them personally through common projects. Bob has traveled everywhere from Afghanistan to Gaza to do interfaith service projects with Muslims.
And now he is bringing fellow evangelicals along and involving the members of his Dallas mega-church in local interfaith projects. He’s speaking to young evangelical leaders about the importance of building relationships with Muslims as a Christian practice.
I know because in the midst of the opposition to the so-called Ground Zero mosque a couple years ago, a young pastor came to my office and asked me to guest preach about Islam at his evangelical church. He told me that Bob had sent him.
This is how communities change. Evangelicals make up 40% of America – when they change, America changes.
Maybe in 50 years, there will be no surprise when the loudest cheerleaders for Muslim presidential candidates and Supreme Court justices are evangelical Christians.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Eboo Patel.
CHESAPEAKE, VA (Catholic Online) – Next Wednesday, August 1, 2012, I intend to eat a Chick-fil-A sandwich and participate in the National Day of Appreciation for Chick-fil-A. I hope you join me and thousands of others in responding to the invitation of former Senator Rick Santorum, former Governor Mike Huckabee and Rev. Billy Graham and do the same.
I have long admired Chick-fil-A. It was founded over thirty years ago by an evangelical protestant Christian named Truett Cathy. His son Dan now runs the family owned and family values based company which now operates 1600 stores. It has become a $4 billion dollar a year enterprise. You can read about this good family and their genuine and living Christian faith here. You might also find their work in philanthropy of interest. Read about it here.
The restaurants do not open on Sunday in order to honor the Lord’s Day and allow their employees to do the same. They have resisted efforts to change not only this policy but other pressures to compromise on their core convictions. The founders offer us all an example of moral coherence as Christians. They apply the great principles of their faith to their business practices. They do not fall prey to the separation between faith and life which can so quickly creep into the life of Christians.
Now, Chick-fil-A is under a ferocious assault precisely because their President publicly affirmed their company support for true marriage and the family and society founded upon it. Dan Cathy expressed his deeply held religious convictions to the Baptist Press and literally – all hell broke loose among some new Cultural Revolutionaries.
Among the most vocal opponents was Carlos Maza of “Equality Matters”, a homosexual equivalency activist group. He told the Washington Post that Dan Cathy’s position in defense of marriage, along with the contributions made by his family’s foundation to pro-life and pro-family groups, “solidifies Chick-fil-A as being closely aligned with some of the most vicious anti-gay voices in the country.” That is nonsense. To defend marriage does not equate to being “anti-gay”.
This orchestrated effort against Chick fil-A is an example of viewpoint discrimination parading as a concern for equality. It has now been embraced by two elected officials in Chicago. Chicago alderman Joe Moreno threatens to block the building of a Chick-fil-A restaurant in his City. He has received support from Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The Mayor told the Press “Chick-fil-A values are not Chicago values.” This kind of government action is unconstitutional and should be challenged in Court.
I was saddened to see that the Mayor of my birthplace, Boston, Massachusetts, Mayor Thomas Menino, sent a letter to the CEO of Chick-fil-A in which he wrote “there is no place for discrimination on Boston’s Freedom Trail and no place for your company alongside it.” Just who is discriminating Mr. Mayor? So much for your claimed liberalism and regard for free speech; you are engaging in viewpoint censorship!
I am honored to stand with Governor Huckabee, Senator Santorum and others in eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich on Wednesday August 1, 2012. I ask the readers of Catholic Online to do join along. We are in good company and making an act of solidarity together for marriage and for free speech.
Rev Billy Graham released a statement on Thursday in which he said, “I applaud the courage of Cathy and Chick-fil-A to take a bold stand for the biblical definition of marriage between a man and woman in a culture that has grown openly hostile to the Christian faith and its followers.” I can only add a Catholic Hooray for Chick-fil-A to this good man’s observation.
Unlike former Governor Huckabee and my friend former Senator Rick Santorum, I will not use the term “traditional marriage”. I believe making a distinction between so called “traditional” Marriage and other feigned “marriages” is a mistake. Marriage is what it is, period. The very phrase “gay marriage” or “homosexual marriage” is an oxymoron.
True marriage is the preeminent and the most fundamental of all human social institutions. It is a relationship defined by nature itself and protected by the natural law that binds all men and women. It finds its foundation in the order of creation. Civil institutions do not create marriage nor can they create a “right” to marry for those who are incapable of marriage.
To limit marriage to heterosexual couples is not discriminatory now, nor has it ever been. Homosexual couples cannot bring into existence what marriage intends by its very definition. To now “confer” the benefits that have been conferred in the past only to stable married couples and families to homosexual paramours is bad public …
On Tuesday, Daily Beast columnist Andrew Sullivan examined how former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith would influence his foreign policy preferences. In that post, Sullivan questions how America’s role in the world is viewed through “a Mormon president’s eyes,” given Mormonism’s theological view of the United States as divinely inspired. But Sullivan’s piece is incongruous when viewed alongside a post he wrote excoriating former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum for his attack on President John F. Kennedy’s interpretation of his, and Sullivan’s, Catholic faith.
RELATED: Tearful Andrew Sullivan Praises Obama: ‘Father-Figure’ Saying ‘I’m Fully A Part Of This Family’
Sullivan performs a thorough examination of a 1987 statement by then-Mormon president Ezra Taft Benson who wrote “We, the blessed beneficiaries of the Constitution, face difficult days in America, “a land which is choice above all other lands” (Sullivan’s italics).
Any view of America as an exceptional nation has been known to make foreign policy analysts uncomfortable — and Sullivan is an accomplished analyst of America’s international affairs. That Benson adds a religious component to that already maximalist view of American exceptionalism is especially troubling for those mistrustful of anything but a secular view of governance and foreign relations.
In Sullivan’s post, “Did Jesus Foresee the Constitution” he sees Mormonism compounding the unforeseen and morally ambiguous scenarios Romney would face as president.
“For Mormons, the Constitution was a necessary great prologue for the real endeavor: the restoration of the Gospel, i.e. the triumph of Mormonism over other forms of Christianity,” Sullivan writes.
He says that Mormonism is “the perfect form of Christianity for Christianist nationalist politics,” because it establishes a theology around the settlement of America and the creation of the U.S. Constitution. Sullivan sees the potential in a Mormon president for a warped worldview based entirely on a theological understanding of America’s place in the world.
I raise this because such an understanding of America’s unique and divine status among nations has profound foreign policy implications. It means that America alone has divine permission to do what it wants in the wider world, that America is subject to different standards than everyone else (because we alone are divinely blessed), and that geopolitics is about the global supremacy of the modern world’s first divine nation (even if Iran and Israel might differ on which country is divinely blessed).
Sullivan writes that he would be more comfortable with a Mormon candidate that “adheres to a separation of church and state,” like former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman or Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV). Romney, however, does not meet with Sullivan’s expectations of what a properly restrained Mormon leader should be.
Does Romney believe that America is uniquely divine among nations? How would that affect his decisions as president? Does he believe that the Constitution is also divine and a “necessary prologue” for the triumph of the LDS Church in America and across the world? Would he therefore appoint Justices who share that view? Or if the original Constitution is divine, and the Amendments are not, as Garry Wills asks, what status do the Amendments have in a Mormon president’s eyes?
Romney, who gave a controversial speech attempting to dispel misperceptions about his faith in 2007, has never given any indication that he views the U.S. as “subject to different standards than everyone else,” as Sullivan attests Mormons are prone to do.
“The consequence of our common humanity is our responsibility to one another, to our fellow Americans foremost, but also to every child of God,” reads a portion of the transcript from Romney’s “Faith in America” speech. “It is an obligation which is fulfilled by Americans every day, here and across the globe, without regard to creed or race or nationality.”
“America took nothing from that Century’s terrible wars –- no land from Germany or Japan or Korea; no treasure; no oath of fealty,” Romney continued. “America’s resolve in the defense of liberty has been tested time and again. It has not been found wanting, nor must it ever be. America must never falter in holding high the banner of freedom.”
Romney would be the first Mormon president. John F. Kennedy, the last president to break such a religious barrier, spent much of the 1960 campaign attempting to dispel notions among voters that he would be more beholden to Rome and the Holy See than to the American people as a Catholic.
Sullivan, a Catholic himself, recently wrote a glowing review of Kennedy’s interpretation of faith and politics when he came under attack from former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Sullivan astutely dismantled Santorum’s deeply troubling review of Kennedy’s similarly famous speech on his religion to a nervous electorate.
Kennedy was a Catholic of another era, unafraid of modernity, interested in other paths to God, publicly humble and cheerful, privately devout and deeply connected to others of all faiths and none. Santorum is of a different kind: authoritarian, deeply suspicious of freedom when it leads to disobedience of the Papacy’s diktats, and publicly embracing a religious identity as his core political one.
Sullivan continued to praise Kennedy’s secular understanding of how faith influences his views on policy:
Kennedy’s conscience was informed by his faith; how could it not be? But what Kennedy asserted was that his public pronouncements would be defended by non-sectarian reason, devoid of explicit religious content. Moral content – yes. Religious content – no.
Sullivan is spot-on here, but this piece sounds an odd note of dissonance when it is compared to his post on Mormonism from today. Romney has given no indication that his faith has influenced his policy proscriptions relating to domestic or international issues.
Of course, Sullivan’s political leanings are revealed later in his post on Santorum. Sullivan concludes in that post that his opposition to the former Pennsylvania senator, and Gov. Romney for that matter, are based—at least in part—on his personal politics and not solely on their interpretation of religion and government.
For now we can see in plain view the religious fanaticism that has destroyed one of the major parties in this country, a destruction that is perilous for any workable politics. It must be defeated – and not by electing a plastic liar and panderer like Romney. But by nominating Santorum and defeating him by such a margin that this theo-political Frankenstein, which threatens both genuine faith and civil politics, is dispatched once and for all.
Sullivan is often clever and insightful. His post on Mormonism, however, lacks the measured forethought that characterized his post on Santorum’s attack on Kennedy. Unless there is a clarification forthcoming, it is hard not to view Sullivan’s post as an indication that he views certain religions as inherently more compatible with the American tradition of secular governance than others.
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This is just part 1 of the eventual 1000 ways the Dems and their lapdogs in the media are going to try and twist Romney’s religion into something that would disqualify him for the presidency in the eyes of the voters. How would his mormonism affects his foreign policy strategy as president? Well probably the same way Obama’s religion affects his policy decisions, i.e. it won’t.
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FYI: there’s a typo in the first paragraph. You spelled “blatantly hypocritical” i-n-c-o-n-g-r-u-o-u-s.
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Probably not as much as Barry’s Black Liberation Theology.
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Sully is Obama’s butler. No need to read – or write – and more of these.
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C’mon Noah – Don’t waste space on Sullivan. He’s a Trig Truther.
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You have to understand that it took a Mormon candidate and attacks on the Mormon faith for Republicans to back off from the Obama is a Muslim, Obama went to a racist church, Obama is an atheist attacks. Not saying that attacking Romney’s religion is right but in politics it appears as if 2 wrong do make a right.
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It would seem that the majority of rants on his faith have come from the right wing during the primary, but don’t let that facts get in the way of a good story line.
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Sullivan creates a binary in his piece and his writing in general between “christian” and “christianist.” Noah clearly alludes to this binary by quoting Sullivan’s acceptance of Huntsman and Reid against his lingering questions of Romney and the apparent “christianist” tendencies of the party he represents.
His position may be wrong… but it is hardly incongruent or muddled. He clearly encourages public officials to accept a modest, humble, pluralistic and prudential public faith and discourages a forceful, sectarian, dogmatic public faith.
So, it is not that case that “Sullivan’s post [is] an indication that he views certain religions as inherently more compatible with the American tradition of secular governance than others.” Noah’s own article notes that he accepts the public faith of Huntsman and Reid. The crucial argument is laid out in this paragraph:
I wish we had a Mormon candidate in a party that adheres to a separation of church and state and of politics and religion (like Reid or Huntsman in a different universe). Then we could regard that faith as utterly irrelevant to a candidate’s capacity for running the country. But when the GOP affirmatively declares that there is no such thing as a secular decision, that there is no place and no decision and no policy which is not subject to religious and theological influence … it seems to me that wehave to examine how a candidate’s faith affects their politics – by the GOP’s own reasoning.
Sullivan is NOT saying Mormons need not apply, he’s saying a particular brand of religiously inflected politician need not apply and he is questioning whether Romney fits that mould.
It is, to my thinking, a legitimate question. I find I don’t agree with Sullivan’s presumed conclusion… but I don’t think his questioning is out of bounds, nor do I find his reasoning muddled.
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As opposed to giving time to clowns like Trumpet?
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Mitt is Trumpet’s butler. Go write that, sport.
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How about not wasting time on either of them?
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Butts, why are you both talking out of them?
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It’s as if those who suddenly find themselves supporting Romney to derail Obama have amnesia and forgot what was said during the contentious GOP primary season! http://nbcnews.to/L0BLw2
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A poll was done on this and it was found that more Dems than Repubs would NOT vote for a Mormon based on religion. Don’t let the facts get you YOUR way.
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What this story reveals is that we should understand candidates for president more for the personal or individual beliefs rather than their institutional beliefs. A near unanimity of our presidents have been Protestants often of the same sect but their attitudes of the role of the United States in the world have certainly varied. Some have asserted, often brazenly, U.S. power to further imperial capitalism. Others have wanted the U.S. to have a more modest role as reluctant peacekeeper, thinking national security is tied to global peace.
Sullivan notes that Mormons themselves come in all stripes, all the way from the political left to the right. Candidates for prez, like all people, must be taken on a case-by-case basis. It is ludicrous to believe that policy will be set in Salt Lake City more than it will be set in Washington, D.C.
Mormonism and Scientology and maybe a few Protestant sects (and I believe the First Church of Elvis in Graceland) are religions uniquely founded in the United States, and so there is a suspicion that followers of these religions tend to see the United States standing above everyone else instead of among everyone else. It is the responsibility of the voter to peer into those who would be president and make sure they understand that all people of all beliefs deserve dignity and respect…throughout the globe.
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As usual with liberals, they like your religion/belief system when your policies mirror their own, but when you decide to go against the grain, the liberals just hate your guts. Same goes with the clueless Sullivan. Talking from one side of his mouth one minute, then talking from another side at another moment.
Folks should take his incompetent analysis with a grain of salt.
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Who is Andrew Sullivan?
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Who is Trumpet? And yes, a Trig Truther is by far worse than a birther.
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Exactly! Look at this lard-a$$. Hope he’s getting enough to eat! What has he done? And to your point, who is he?
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In what world is Andrew Sullivan “an accomplished analyst of America’s international affairs?” My cat knows more about the world than Sullivan merely by the fact it doesn’t layer it with nonsense.
And is “dissonance” a polite word for utter hypocrisy? Why is anyone surprised a liberal would do a 180? They don’t argue from a fundamental logical position they start from but from a world view that is already set in stone based on self-contradictory political correctness. Liberals blow like a weather vane and their idea of justice really amounts to whatever they happen to be pointing to at the time.
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We’re you worried about how Obama’s foreign policy would be affected by coming from 20 years in a racist cult?
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You lie!! Sullivan never once said outright that Trig was not Sarah’s kid. Palin told a fantastic story of his birth that borders on preposterous and Sullivan wanted her to back up this story and Palin never did or couldn’t.
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Very hard to tell. Hypocrite comes to mind. I totally hate that line of attack. He’s Catholic, so shall we review various statements by Popes and try to attribute that to Catholic candidates, as he does with Benson? In fact, with Kennedy, he rejects that. To believe that God is an inspiration to the founding of America, or has a Hand in its progress, is hardly a new concept, voiced routinely from pulpits everywhere for over 200 years, and a sentiment held by our founding Pilgrims. Washington praying at Valley Forge? What does that say about his leadership from Sullivan’s perspective?
“Unless there is a clarification forthcoming, it is hard not to view Sullivan’s post as an indication that he views certain religions as inherently more compatible with the American tradition of secular governance than others.”
Precisely.
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Sullivan covered events as they happened during Iran’s green rev in 09 better than any news org or blog. Can’t take that away from the guy.
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+1
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27% Dems to 20% Republicans. So, while true re Dems not voting for a Mormon, most Mormons in politics align with the GOP. Harry Reid is more of an execption than a rule.
Therefore, 1 in 5 Republicans effectively won’t vote for one of their own party.
Thus, when you look at it from a voting angle, there is still a relevant amount of presumed bias on the GOP side for Mormons.
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How does Andrew’s steroid use and semen ingestion impact his judgement?
In 2008, a controversy erupted
between Pastor John Hagee of the 19,000-member Cornerstone
Evangelical Church
in San Antonio, Texas, and William Donohue, the head of the
Catholic League for Civil and Religious Rights. Hagee had made claims about
Catholicism spawning a theology of hate toward Jews. Donahue said that these
remarks were insulting to Catholicism. The
spat was patched up (at least temporarily). But there has been a history of harsh words
between Protestant and Catholic officials. It goes all the way back to Martin
Luther’s excommunication (1521.) Look back over 2,500 years of Western History. Before verbal spats, there were riots,
occasionally deadly. Before that, extreme violence: there were massacres, persecutions,
expulsions, inquisitions, and wars between religions. The young Mormon Church
was violently expelled from eastern states where it was founded. But once it
got control of Utah,
its members were prominently involved in at least one massacre of non-Mormons
(Mountain Meadows, 1857.) In May 1844, there was a riot in Philadelphia over whether only the Protestant
Bible, or also the Catholic Bible, could be read in public schools. Thirteen
people were killed. Even today, sporadic war between religious groups,
frequently evangelical Christians versus Muslims, goes on literally around the
world along the Tenth Parallel north of the equator (see the book The Tenth Parallel.) Here in the U.S.
controversy occasionally erupts about the practice of some Mormons baptizing
the dead. Some people of other faiths object that it’s “attempted soul
stealing.” Recently Maureen Dowd, (New
York Times, “Is Elvis a Mormon?” 3.18.12) noted that Romney admitted to
Newsweek in 2007 that he had engaged in that practice. He said he had done this
sometime in the past, but not recently. Romney is a bishop of the Mormon Church.
Rick Santorum claimed that President Barack Obama’s agenda is ” about ”
some phony theology” not a theology based on the Bible…” Now that he’s out of
the race, some evangelical pastors are urging support for Ron Paul.
Why are religious differences
such durable sources of division among humans?
A religion is a group of humans, larger than a cult, which has a church,
a creed, and a code of morals. The creed is the dogma, sentences such as “I
believe in one God”" etc. Or is it three Gods in one? Sentences of dogma do not
claim anything that could be checked by observation with our senses. And
history reveals that they are not subject to major revision or withdrawal from
within the religion. The same non-verifiability is true of non-behavior
implying claims about another person’s pure states of mind, e.g., beliefs.
There is no way, e.g., to verify or falsify claims that “X is not a Christian”
or “X is a Christian,” in his mind, in his secret heart of hearts. Unless of
course, the claimant is a mind reader!
Religions emerged before nations. But their sheer size, in number of
adherents and territory of prevalence, is so large that their church leaders must contend with others for domination
of people, their labor, and resources to support their church personnel (land,
water, crops, craft goods, trade, and temple offerings, i.e., pre-taxes.) That
conflict is the source of their nation — like characteristics. It further sustains
all forms of intolerance: bigotry, racism, sexism, nativism and hyper
patriotism.
Religions are inherently
political. They are proto-nations, nascent governments. Their personnel
(whatever called) direct, judge and police their member’s behavior.
Proselytizing, seeking converts, sometimes by Evangelism, spreading their “good
news,” is their form of expansion. It may appear to relatives and friends of
converts, if not as alienation of affection, at least like relational
aggression, a deliberate weakening of social ties. The Supreme Court’s decision
enabling “Good News” clubs to allow “child evangelists” to recruit other
children in school buildings may seem especially aggressive. Explicit nations
continue this expansionary trend by economic and military means, now called
“imperialism.” Like nations, religions
have had coercing forces, often explicit armies. Dominionism is Evangelism’s
“Great Commission, its’ “imperialism. Rule over all people is its’ Manifest
Destiny. Martyrdom is honored among Dominionists as is extreme valor in a
national military cause. After all, it is refusal to switch loyalties, even
under torture or death threat. “Onward Christian (Jewish, Muslim, etc.)
Soldiers!” Prohibitions on masturbation
and homophobia: well, they won’t produce cannon fodder, will they?
Creeds function like pledges of
allegiance. That’s a reason the most powerful atheist writers and science-based
debaters can’t faze religious witnesses by challenging them with any facts.
They may affect audience members, but it’s really at cross purposes to answer
“I believe in”" with “Your belief is false, and here’s why”" In western societies (European),
disagreements in creeds between religions often arose out of exegesis, interpretations
of basically “the same” scripture.
But no factual inquiry can progress to settlement. When such
disagreements became acute, schism, persecutions, inquisitions, even wars have
occurred. Church rulers arrogated to their own authority not only dogma, but
notions they develop about how congregants should behave, such as the 613
commandments of the Torah. These often go far beyond what creeds explicitly
imply. Many of these in all religions eventually appear to laity as
inconvenient, restrictive, irrational, exploitative of money, without survival
value, anti-scientific, and sometimes even harmful. How inconvenient and restrictive are some of
these religious dictates? Here’s an example: “Sickness is the Will of God, to
be treated only by prayer.” Another is:
“No one should ever have or perform an abortion under any circumstances.” For a
scientifically-minded person, to cite a fact, such as that 50% — 70% of
fertilized eggs never implant,” is simply not relevant to contradicting people
who hold such a religious allegiance. A recent paper by Joe Keohane, titled
“How Facts Backfire,” available online, summarizes political behavior research
which shows that once people believe a political falsehood, after presenting
them with contradicting facts, they continue to believe the falsehood and do so
more vigorously! Thus in a secular
democracy, all one can do is persuade less committed minds, beat the dogmatists
at the polls, have reality – based candidates elected and make law that hacks
out compromise like Roe v. Wade.
Dictionaries define “bigotry” as
a stubborn devotion to a church, or creed, and intolerance of any that differs.
The word itself may even have originated in emphatic religious swearing, “By
God!” Similar devotion to and intolerance of other races, nations, or sexual
orientations gets other names: racism, jingoism, nativism, homophobia,
etc. Partisans, even extreme, just take
the part of some cause. Bigotry is more virulent. Bigotry deforms one’s
intellectual character and damages one’s potential moral character. Bigots have
trouble with reality. They commit to un-provable dogma, and so can’t
acknowledge some facts. Bigotry stupefies people, substituting their strong
emotions for reason and reality. Thus it impairs capacity for citizenship in a
tolerant civil democracy. Bigots pridefully think: “I’m theologically
correct; others are perverse in belief and morals, e.g., they sanction outright
murder!” [meaning abortion.]
Statistics prove that middle
income and poorer Americans have done significantly better in income gains over
4-year periods of Democratic majorities than over periods of Republican
majorities. However, Republicans have learned to promise tax cuts that provide
the middle class and poorer people some increase in the first year of
Republican administrations. Also, since the Democratic Party passed the civil
rights bill, the southern states turned from mostly Democratic to mostly
Republican in voting patterns. These factors, in addition to the money power
behind Republican candidates, have enabled Republicans to maintain rough parity
with the Democrats in national Presidential elections (See Unequal Democracy,
Larry Bartels, and Winner Take All Politics, Joseph Hacker and Paul Pierson.)
This near equality in voting strength is why bigotry may play a large role in
defeat of any Republican candidate in 2012. People who claim others are “not real
Christians,” have “phony theologies” or demonstrate irrelevantly at funerals
like the homophobic Westboro Baptists, or burn Korans, as well as Mormon dead
soul baptizers, are ” playing the religion card.” In motivating violent behavior, the religion
card may trump even the race card. Our founders wisely wrote, “No religious
Test shall ever be required as a qualification to any Office or public Trust
under the United States”
(Constitution, Art. 6 Sec. 3.) For presidential candidates to make such
theological, or mind-reader claims, publicly sets a divisive example. It opens
the lid of Pandora’s Box to a past fetid with insults and, earlier, riots, mass
murder, inquisitorial torture, and genuine war.
It’s possible that some of the
remarks of candidates were meant for other purposes than to win nominations.
American politics is also bad theater “entertainment.” Masses of Americans freely
contribute small sums of money to candidates, failing to realize that many
small donations add up to a lot of influence, even money power. A lucrative
career may await anyone, like Santorum, who gains such support. The career is
that of being an avatar for the contributors’ religious — political views. Look
at the salaries of Fox newscasters, or better, the contracts of “hatertainers”
Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh. But since it’s divisive, bigotry ought to divide
people and be politically vincible. Maybe many Mormons won’t come out and vote,
if Republicans eventually nominate two non-Mormons. Perhaps many Catholics
won’t vote for Republicans, if no Catholic like Santorum gets either
nomination. Possibly a lot of Evangelicals will be unmotivated to vote by a
ticket with a Mormon like “flip flopper” Romney at the top and a Catholic like
Santorum for Vice President. We’ll see.
Originally published in Vol. 2 No. 8 of the Erie
Reader on 5/1/12
Rick Santorum has ended his campaign for the GOP presidential nomination. This is an historic moment. Santorum’s was possibly the most religiously-based presidential campaign, not only in this election cycle, but perhaps in American history.
Santorum’s vision of the presidency, as gleaned from his many statements on faith and policy, was more of a Christian “theologian-in-chief” than a political leader of the most religiously diverse nation in the world.
U.S. Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum speaks to supporters at Savre Lanes in Menasha, Wisconsin in this April 2, 2012 file photograph. Santorum will announce that he is going to drop out of the presidential race, two sources familiar with the decision told Reuters on April 10, 2012. REUTERS/Darren Hauck (UNITED STATES – Tags: ELECTIONS POLITICS)
(DARREN HAUCK – REUTERS)
The Santorum run was an historic candidacy because his often off-the-cuff remarks would reveal what is at stake for American democracy when ‘faith in the public square’ shifts and becomes more like ‘one faith should dominate the public square.’
The best framing for this analysis is, of course, Santorum’s comment that he “almost threw up” after reading John F. Kennedy’s historic 1960 address on separation of church and state. The very visceral quality of Santorum’s reaction, its literal ‘from the gut’ reaction, is most revealing. The idea that his conservative Catholic faith could remain private, and not dictate what he would do as President in running the government of a religiously and non-religiously pluralistic society, was literally anathema to Santorum.
Kennedy’s famous statement showed exactly how he thought his Catholic faith should neither dictate, or he as a Catholic be dictated to by Catholic religious authorities, and how his presidency of the whole nation meant religious and non-religious neutrality. He so famously said, “I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.”
Santorum introduced not only revulsion for the separation of church and state into this presidential campaign, but within the church arena, theological differences. Santorum strikingly attacked the “theology” that he presumed undergirded the president’s views and described them as one “not based on the Bible.” Obama’s agenda, Santorum told tea party supporters, is “about some phony ideal. Some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology.” But later Santorum affirmed that he thought President Obama was a Christian. Thus, Santorum brought up a Christian theological difference as a campaign issue. Theological differences between one faith and another are indeed divisive, but perhaps even more divisive is criticizing the theology of a member of one’s own faith in the political square. Neither is appropriate.
Santorum’s popularity with the Protestant evangelical “base,” mostly accounted for his success during the primaries. Santorum’s attraction for this group illustrates that there is a segment of the conservative American religious public who believe that separation of church and state is wrong as codified in the first amendment. Many in this group seem to believe that a particular type of Christianity should “be established,” that is, not just have a voice in our public debates, but be decisive in our political administration. That’s establishment by any name.
There is enormous risk to our democracy if someone elected to the presidency of the United States thinks the job is to be “theologian-in-chief,” not “commander-in-chief” and political leader of a religiously pluralistic America. In the United States, our freedom of religion depends, without question, on freedom from tyranny of one religion over another.
Santorum’s candidacy for the GOP presidential nomination has ended, but I do not believe this is the last we have seen of someone running to be “theologian-in-chief.”
Malawi’s president reportedly dead
Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika has died after a heart attack, doctors who treated him said Friday, as the troubled and impoverished southern African nation awaited official word of Mutharika’s death and who would succeed him.
The doctors, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the 78-year-old died Thursday, and his body was then flown to South Africa, apparently to buy time for politicians who may be squabbling over the succession.
Tearful Chavez pleads for his life
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez wiped away tears as he pleaded for life in his fight against an undisclosed cancer at a Catholic Mass in his home state of Barinas.
Chavez, speaking Thursday at the Mass held for his health and broadcast on state television, said cancer is a “real threat” that takes many lives and that he has faith that he will win the fight against the disease.
Chavez returned Wednesday from Cuba, where he underwent radiation therapy.
Launch by N. Korea apparently on track
North Korea may have moved the first stage of a rocket to a launch stand, indicating it is on schedule for a controversial mid-April launch, according to analysis of satellite images.
The rocket isn’t visible at the Tongchang-ri site, but an analysis by the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies says evidence suggests the first stage may be in the launch stand’s closed gantry, a support frame, ahead of the launch planned for April 12-16.
Santorum’s daughter back in hospital
The ill daughter of Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum has been taken to the hospital.
Santorum’s campaign said Friday that 3-year-old Bella had been returned to the hospital. She has the rare genetic condition Trisomy 18 and was hospitalized earlier this year.
Bella’s condition typically proves fatal.
Ex-teacher arrested over sexual contact
A former California teacher who made headlines when he left his job and family to move in with an 18-year-old student was arrested Friday for previously having sexual contact with another teen, police said.
Christopher Hooker, 41, was arrested on one count of oral copulation with a minor. Police said it stems from his 1998 relationship with a 17-year-old student from Davis High School, where he once taught.
Plotter sentenced, renounces terrorism
A Maryland man who once said he wanted to wage jihad against the United States renounced terrorism Friday as he was sentenced to 25 years for plotting to bomb a military recruiting center near Baltimore.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine Manuelian told U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz that Antonio Martinez maintains the mindset that led him to place what he believed was a bomb in front of the recruiting center in 2010. However, Martinez said in a lengthy apology that he knew little of Islam when he was arrested and “all I had was a religious zeal.”
From wire reports
Here at “On Faith,” the Post’s Lisa Miller recently wrote that Rick Santorum could be called a “cafeteria Catholic,” someone who “cherry-picks” which teachings of the faith he wants to follow and which he doesn’t. He might even be “not all that Catholic,” says Miller. But what are Miller’s examples of Santorum’s alleged “cherry picking,” and do they really represent deviations from “rules and doctrines” of the Catholic faith, as she puts it?
Republican presidential candidate, former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum speaks to supporters and caucus voters during a campaign stop March 17, 2012 at Westminster Christian Academy in Town and Country, Missouri.
(Whitney Curtis – GETTY IMAGES)
First, the death penalty. Miller cites a 2005 statement of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, arguing for an end to the death penalty in the United States. As a senator, Santorum did not work to end the death penalty; quite the contrary. But what does the authoritative Catechism of the Catholic Church say on the subject? “The traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.”
While the Catechism goes on to urge public authorities to consider the need for the death penalty in many societies as “rare” if not “non-existent,” it does not impose an obligation on citizens or public officials of the Catholic faith to abolish capital punishment outright. The question of the death penalty’s use is a prudential one, which Catholic teaching leaves up to the judgment of those invested with public authority—the laymen who hold office and the voters who choose them. In short, there is no Catholic “rule or doctrine” calling for the complete abolition of the death penalty. And the position staked out by the U.S. bishops does not change that fact.
Second, Miller mentions “torture.” She rightly notes the church’s unequivocal position against torture, but she tendentiously asserts that Santorum is in favor of it. She acknowledges—only implicitly to dismiss as obviously wrong—Santorum’s view that our government’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” against captured enemy terrorists was not torture. Miller’s link to a news article elsewhere does not establish that she is right and Santorum is wrong about what constitutes torture. She has only identified a disagreement about a practice, not a “deviation” on Santorum’s part from what his church teaches. Miller’s Post colleague Marc Thiessen (also a Catholic) has written an entire book (“Courting Disaster”) responsibly making the case that the Bush administration had no policy amounting to “torture.” I recommend it to her.
Her third item is our policy toward Iran. Here Santorum is presented as ready to “threaten Iran with bombs,” whereas a committee of the bishops led by Bishop Richard Pates of Des Moines recently counseled restraint. This seems to be a wholly manufactured difference between Santorum and leading prelates in his church. Even “preventive war” (taking steps to attack first against an imminent aggressor) is not ruled out by anything the church has ever authoritatively taught, nor even by the letter of Bishop Pates that Miller cites. As in the case of the death penalty, Catholic recognition that we live in a fallen world, where public authorities have a duty to protect innocent life, leads to the conclusion that deadly force can be morally employed, even preemptively. Also like the question of the death penalty, questions of war and peace are preeminently political judgments for the laymen invested with responsibility for the nation’s defense. The church has principles to offer, not policies, much less decisions in individual cases.
Finally, Miller mentions immigration. Though she writes that “only on this issue has Santorum explicitly distanced himself from the church,” it is perhaps her weakest example, because the church authoritatively teaches practically nothing about this subject. The U.S. bishops, Miller says, “support immigration reform that includes a way for illegal aliens to earn citizenship.” True enough. But Santorum, she writes, “wants to build a fence between the United States and Mexico” and on his Web site, she says, he “conflates immigrants with ‘drug cartels, violent criminals and terrorists.’” Score that as, respectively, a half-truth and a falsehood. Santorum’s site says “secure the border first,” but that isn’t the whole of his policy.
And as for his alleged “conflation” of “immigrants” with criminals and terrorists, try to find it yourself on that Web page. You can’t. What Santorum does say is that the Obama administration has given us an “exposed border and a nation vulnerable to drug cartels, violent criminals, and terrorists.” This is arguably so. But nowhere does Santorum say that “immigrants” generally or even “illegal immigrants” are part of that problem. Who’s doing the conflating here?
But let’s come back to Santorum vs. the bishops on this one. At most the bishops may be said to be speaking pastorally on this subject, but not authoritatively. Their views are worthy of respectful engagement, but they do not demand obedience. It is no test of anyone’s faithful Catholicism to inquire whether they agree with the bishops about immigration.
Miller seemed moved to write this critique of Santorum by the fact that conservative Catholics can sometimes be heard to call their liberal brethren “cafeteria Catholics.” But in the case of many (not all) liberal Catholics, there really are serious deviations from “rules and doctrines” taught by the faith. The teachings against abortion and contraception are unequivocal and authoritative. Ditto for the teachings on the priesthood of celibate men, and on the preservation of marriage as between one man and one woman. The bishops defend these doctrines as pillars of the Church’s teaching, and when they speak it is the church we hear. On these questions, it is our brethren on the left who are not “all that Catholic” if they are at odds with the bishops.
But the case is different for the principles that govern the use of the death penalty, the use of military force, or policymaking on immigration. The bishops are rightly revered as the shepherds of the faith, but they know that they lack the authority to “loose and bind” the voters and public officials of the Catholic faith on these questions. Individually and collectively, the bishops’ views (even the pope’s view) on these matters are instances where they speak for themselves, in a great ongoing conversation among Catholics. They know they cannot, and so they do not, speak ex cathedra on questions as intricate as immigration policy.
Ironically, Miller’s standard for Santorum’s Catholicism is just the kind of test John F. Kennedy insisted was wrong for his fellow Americans to apply. The complaint about Kennedy in 1960, in some Protestant circles, was that he would, as president, do the bidding of Rome or of the American bishops, sacrificing his judgment (and his constitutional responsibilities as president) to religious authority. According to Miller, Rick Santorum can only be a completely good Catholic if he lets the bishops make immigration policy, remake our criminal justice system, and determine whether we can attack Iran. Luckily for Santorum, she is wrong.
Matthew J. Franck is Director of the William E. and Carol G. Simon Center on Religion and the Constitution at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton, New Jersey, Lecturer in Politics at Princeton University, and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Radford University.
Politicians may want to abstain from talking about religion, a new poll showed.
The Pew Research Center found that 38% of Americans questioned in a recent survey felt that lawmakers and campaigning politicians bring up their faith too often.
That was the highest percentage for that answer in the annual Pew religion-in-politics poll, which was first launched in 2001, when just 12% failed to give their blessing to faith-based political chatter.
But the poll, released Wednesday, also revealed that 30% of Americans believe there is not enough talk about religion in the political arena.
The results could signal that some of the Republican presidential candidates this year are taking an unholy risk in the campaign battles over government-mandated birth control, gay marriage and funding for Planned Parenthood.
Rick Santorum, whose Catholic faith represents the backbone of his political ideology, has courted religious conservative voters — and won key victories in the Deep South as a result. He’s argued on the stump that religion ought to play a much larger role in the public square.
Newt Gingrich often trumpets his faith, too. The twice-divorced former House Speaker credits his conversion to Catholicism with turning around his messy personal life.
Front-runner Mitt Romney is a Mormon, who has often spoken generally about his faith without getting into specifics — an approach likely intended to not alienate the Christian voters he would need to win the party’s nomination.
Romney’s supporters are more likely than Santorum’s to say there’s too much expression of faith by political leaders, the poll found. Some 55% of the ex-Pennsylvania senator’s backers indicated they believe there is too little talk about faith and prayer by lawmakers, compared to just 24% among Romney supporters.
The survey found “some important signs of public uneasiness with the mixing of religion and politics,” Greg Smith, a senior researcher at the Pew Forum, told the Daily News.
The survey was conducted between March 7 and March 11, a month after the Obama administration directed some religious institutions to cover contraceptive services in their employees’ health care plans.
The move provoked furious opposition from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and sparked an unsuccessful effort by Senate Republicans to overturn it.
But the Obama Administration later softened its stance, determining that insurance companies would pay for the coverage and not religious employers.
Politicians may want to abstain from talking about religion, a new poll showed.
The Pew Research Center found that 38% of Americans questioned in a recent survey felt that lawmakers and campaigning politicians bring up their faith too often.
That was the highest percentage for that answer in the annual Pew religion-in-politics poll, which was first launched in 2001, when just 12% failed to give their blessing to faith-based political chatter.
But the poll, released Wednesday, also revealed that 30% of Americans believe there is not enough talk about religion in the political arena.
The results could signal that some of the Republican presidential candidates this year are taking an unholy risk in the campaign battles over government-mandated birth control, gay marriage and funding for Planned Parenthood.
Rick Santorum, whose Catholic faith represents the backbone of his political ideology, has courted religious conservative voters — and won key victories in the Deep South as a result. He’s argued on the stump that religion ought to play a much larger role in the public square.
Newt Gingrich often trumpets his faith, too. The twice-divorced former House Speaker credits his conversion to Catholicism with turning around his messy personal life.
Front-runner Mitt Romney is a Mormon, who has often spoken generally about his faith without getting into specifics — an approach likely intended to not alienate the Christian voters he would need to win the party’s nomination.
Romney’s supporters are more likely than Santorum’s to say there’s too much expression of faith by political leaders, the poll found. Some 55% of the ex-Pennsylvania senator’s backers indicated they believe there is too little talk about faith and prayer by lawmakers, compared to just 24% among Romney supporters.
The survey found “some important signs of public uneasiness with the mixing of religion and politics,” Greg Smith, a senior researcher at the Pew Forum, told the Daily News.
The survey was conducted between March 7 and March 11, a month after the Obama administration directed some religious institutions to cover contraceptive services in their employees’ health care plans.
The move provoked furious opposition from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and sparked an unsuccessful effort by Senate Republicans to overturn it.
But the Obama Administration later softened its stance, determining that insurance companies would pay for the coverage and not religious employers.
