Free Republic

While the consensus view seems to be that the Supreme Court “punted” today by sending the Little Sisters of the Poor case back to the lower courts, I must respectfully dissent. Although the Court didn’t rule on the merits of the case, the Little Sisters won a significant victory — one that is likely (though not yet certain) to persist through the next administration.  First, the Supreme Court vacated the lower court ruling holding that the Little Sisters had to facilitate access to contraceptives and denied that the mandate substantially burdened their religion. Speaking as a person who’s argued a...

Pope Francis said Friday that Catholics should look to their own consciences more than Vatican rules to negotiate the complexities of sex, marriage and family life, demanding the church shift its emphasis from doctrine to mercy in confronting some of the thorniest issues facing the faithful. In a major church document entitled “The Joy of Love,” Francis made no explicit change in church doctrine and upheld church teaching on the lifelong bond of marriage between a man and a woman. But in selectively citing his predecessors and emphasizing his own teachings in strategically placed footnotes, Francis made innovative openings in...

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a group of cases challenging the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that non-profit employers offer health-care coverage that includes contraception, abortifacients, and sterilization. The challengers in the consolidated cases, captioned Zubik v. Burwell, include Little Sisters of the Poor, Priests for Life, and a variety of religious non-profits. Many of the arguments that have been put forth in support of the plaintiffs involve conscience rights. These are important arguments that certainly deserve attention. However, in the amicus brief I filed in on behalf of the Charlotte Lozier Institute, I emphasized public-health...

This is the kind of case the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia liked to sink his judicial teeth into -- whether the federal government can compel a religious entity like the Little Sisters of the Poor to violate their religious beliefs and acquiesce to the ObamaCare contraceptive coverage mandate. As LifeSite News reported on Wednesday’s hearing: This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a 175-year-old religious order of women who have vowed their lives to care for the elderly poor.

If you were totally avoiding the internet today, or if you live under a particularly pleasant and comfortable rock, maybe you don’t know that the federal government and a bunch of nuns are duking it out before the Supreme Court over birth control. More to the point, they’re fighting over the Little Sisters of the Poors’ refusal to subsidize contraception and abortion-causing drugs for their employees via their health insurance coverage, all of whom, by the way, are mandated by the President Obama’s signature eponymous government overreach law to purchase their own health insurance. Well, fair’s fair, right? I mean,...

The Pope and the Baby Killer In 2010, after I had lived in Italy about two years and had begun to understand the byzantine complexities of this country's politics, Emma Bonino decided to run for the office of governor of the region of Lazio. Once I found out what kind of person she was, I was seized with the urge to buy a crate of spray paint and go around Rome writing, "10,000 bambini assassinati non abbastanza per Emma 'la Bicicletta' Bonino," on all her posters. "10,000 murdered babies not enough for Emma 'the bicycle' Bonino." I thought of it...

Dear Pope Francis: I write this letter to you as a priest to the Bishop of Rome and as a son to a father. I write with a heavy heart, and I know that heaviness of heart is shared by many of my Catholic brethren both clergy and laity. I watched the early news one morning last week to find that one of the headlines proclaimed that in an interview on the flight from Mexico to Rome you indicated that the Church's teaching on contraception may be undergoing a change. As in the past, I went to the official translation...

From the canonist Ed Peter’s fine blog In The Light Of The Law. He doesn’t have a combox over there and doesn’t mind if we use his stuff here. DO, however, go over there to his place regularly. Emphases are from Peters, comments mine: Misunderstanding the (alleged) 'Congo contraception' caseEven by the standards of his reign, the presser Pope Francis conducted on his return flight from Mexico has provoked an unusual number of questions. [No kidding. You should see my inbox, too!] I wish to address only one of those here.Preliminarily, I note that the burden is not on the...

CONTRACEPTION So Fr Lombardi believes, apparently, that Papa Bergoglio was right: B Paul VI did permitt nuns in the Congo to guard themselves contraceptively against the consequences of rape. If there is evidence that Montini made some utterance to this effect, then we have a right to be told where it is so that we can go and look at it. That, surely, is why the Apostolic See publishes its Acta. If people are required to respect and obey a Magisterium, then Natural Justice requires that they should have the means to acquaint themselves with their obligations. Otherwise, why decimate...

In a February 8 interview with one of Italy's most prominent dailies, Corriere Della Serra, Pope Francis praised Italy's leading proponent of abortion - Emma Bonino -- as one of the nation's "forgotten greats," comparing her to great historical figures such as Konrad Adenauer and Robert Schuman. Knowing that his praise of her may be controversial, the Pope said that she offered the best advice to Italy on learning about Africa, and admitted she thinks differently from us. "True, but never mind," he said. "We have to look at people, at what they do." At 27, Bonino had an illegal...

In my previous column on this subject, I discussed how Pope Francis, in another of his freewheeling, offhand commentaries to the press at the back of the airplane, condoned the use of contraception -- both condoms and pills -- to avoid conception during the so-called Zika crisis. In other words, he condoned contraception for eugenic motives: to prevent conception on account of a birth defect that the virus might cause (microcephaly). In support of this astonishing suggestion, Francis cited the tale of how Paul VI supposedly "permitted nuns [in the Congo] to use contraceptives in cases of rape." Even if...

A few days ago, Pope Francis and his spokesman Federico Lombardi directly contradicted the traditional teaching of the Catholic Church on contraception, including directly contradicting the clear words of Pope Paul's 1968 encyclical Humanae vitae. Various "Catholic" individuals and groups quickly lined up to support Francis, including the often heterodox Filipino Catholic Bishops Conference. But a surprisingly large and strong set of Catholics--beyond the expected set of minority traditionalists--has now risen up to resist, as if Francis, after years of this this sort of thing, has now crossed an obvious line. Who knew that line would be you know where....

Washington D.C., February 23, 2016 (LifeSiteNews) – A Pennsylvania congressman is calling for a controversial contraceptive device to be pulled from the market pending safety studies, saying it is behind the deaths of more than 300 unborn children.Representative Mike Fitzpatrick said Wednesday that the Food and Drug Administration has ignored roughly 303 fetal deaths that were linked to the abortifacient sterilization device Essure.Fitzpatrick, along with the grassroots support group for victims of Essure complications, said the FDA's own data indicates that the device's "adverse event reports" for miscarriages, ectopic pregnancies, and stillborn deaths were feasibly misreported as simple injuries or...

Essure, a permanent form of birth control which involves inserting coils into a woman’s fallopian tubes, has been in the news since last year, and not for a good reason. Women have reported experiencing horrific, debilitating side effects. Now comes news of another issue with the device. Women have become pregnant despite the use of the device (no form of birth control – besides abstinence – is 100 percent effective), and it is being blamed for the deaths of already conceived children. Bayer and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have, according to some, downplayed the issue, but Representative Mike...

The other day Pope Francis, in the infamous post-Mexico airplane presser, said: Paolo VI – il grande! – in una situazione difficile, in Africa, ha permesso alle suore di usare gli anticoncezionali per i casi di violenza. … Paul VI – the great one! – in a difficult situation in Africa, permitted sisters to use contraceptives for cases of violenze. I’ve heard this before. I never believed it.Years ago on the COL Forum (which I ran) we had a discussion about this. One of the staffers tried to dig up the old files. In the meantime he – The Great...

I wanted to briefly mention a few observations of discussions about the Holy Father's latest plane interview. 1. Astoundingly, when Catholics raise concerns about Pope Francis suggestion to women that they can use birth control pills and condoms to prevent perfectly healthy babies from being conceived because of a remote chance of birth defects, I am still seeing Catholics claim the press is misinterpreting what is being said. I will not cite the dozens of examples, suffice it to say that the Father has accountability for his own words and actions. His contradiction of Humane Vitae was as clear as...

Many people think that Roman Catholics (and maybe a smattering of evangelical denominations) are retrograde neanderthals when it comes to allowance for contraception. Well, let's face it. Our Lord entrusted to the One True Church His infallible teachings. One of those teachings is that sexual activity is to be conducted by one biologically-born man and one biologically-born woman united in faithful matrimony and open to the generation of children. Any deviance from that constitutes grave matter for mortal sin. Until 1930, all protestant denominations adhered to that Christian teaching. But during that year, the Lambeth Conference (of the Anglican denomination)...

"There are times that lay Catholics have to step forward to say what we as priests cannot." These were the words spoken to me during a time in my life that I felt called as a Catholic to defend my Catholic Church from an assault from within. That time has come again this week. To do so is never easy. For nearly three years now Catholics have defended Pope Francis as being "taken out of context" or "misunderstood" by the media. We have watched and cringed at what has come out of the Vatican, been ignored by the Vatican, and...

Pope Francis hinted that the use of contraceptives may be morally acceptable as a response to the Zika epidemic, during an question-and-answer session on February 18. Speaking to reporters who accompanied him on his return flight to Rome, after a visit to Mexico, the Pope said that "avoiding pregnancy is not an absolute evil." While abortion cannot ever be justified, he suggested, avoiding pregnancy could be a "lesser evil" in light of the alleged dangers of birth defects. During an interview session that proved controversial even by the standards of this pontificate, the Pope said: * US presidential candidate Donald...

Another trip, another presser, another post.A priest friend wrote to me: I’m writing a new prayer for all of us … a “Nine Hour Pope Plane Ride Novena.” I will write now what I have written before.Again, when I am elected Pope, We shall take the name of Pius X-II (“Pius Decimus Secondus” – or maybe “Clement Ganganelli”), We shall not give interviews or press conferences.  We shall forbid the Lord Cardinals from speaking to the press without permission.  We shall disappear into the Apostolic Palace for lengths of time so long that the press will begin to speculate that We may have died.  Our...