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In 2012 Bishops Join Fight to Repackage Discrimination as ‘Religious Freedom’

Wed, 01/04/2012 - 13:29 — Dave Culver
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  • Don’t be surprised if the “religious freedom” argument finds its way into conservative arguments about “big government” in 2012. It’s not just for the religious right anymore.
  • Protest against Cardinal George Gay Rights-KKK Comparison planned
  • Catholic bishops assault health and religious freedom

Sarah Posner, Religion Dispatches

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Archbishop Timothy Dolan spreads incense.

Four days before Christmas, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops paid for a full-page advertisement in the Washington (DC) Post, co-signed by dozens of leaders of Catholic institutions. But the ad offered no holiday cheer. Instead, it aggressively highlighted the Bishops’ pointed confrontation with the Obama administration: either amend a regulation requiring employer health insurance plans to provide contraception without a co-pay, or stand accused of religious discrimination.


The Bishops’ opposition to the Department of Health and Human Services rule—which they describe as mandating “preventive services” (scare quotes in original)—was to date the most public salvo from their Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty. That effort was launched last June because, in USCCB president Timothy Dolan’s ominous words, “never before have we faced this kind of challenge to our ability to engage in the public square as people of faith and as a service provider. If we do not act now, the consequence will be grave.” At the Bishops’ annual meeting in Baltimore this past November, Dolan took his charges into conspiratorial territory, telling reporters that “well-financed, well-oiled sectors” were attempting to “push religion back into the sacristy.”

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Related:

Protest against Cardinal George Gay Rights-KKK Comparison planned, Kate Sosin, Windy City (Chicago, IL) Times

  • George has reiterated his controversial re marks (that compared the gay liberation movement to the Ku Klux Klan) twice since the initial comment.
  • LGBT Activists To Protest Cardinal George Over KKK Comparison

Catholic bishops assault health and religious freedom, Scott Dibble, Minneapolis (MN) Star Tribune

  • Official Catholic positions say that abortion is impermissible even in cases of rape and incest; that stem cell research to help cure and treat debilitating illnesses is unacceptable, and that all artificial contraception and sterilization methods, including birth-control pills, vasectomies and condoms, are a violation.
  • The Catholic bishops' efforts blatantly undermine religious freedom in our country.
     

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