It is worrying that so many members of Congress succumbed to lobbying by the United States Conference of Catholics Bishops, no matter how “forceful.” Health care reform will affect all Americans, Catholic and non-Catholic alike. Read More...

As the House of Representatives health care reform bill edges closer to a vote, anti-choice Democrats continue their threats to hijack the bill over abortion funding. These members—and their supporters—are the very constituency Democrats have been urged to placate on abortion-related issues. Read More...

The United States is embroiled in a debate over healthcare. Ideological divides over morality and money are front and center, and threatening to derail any real progress on what has become a major crisis. Read More...

Earlier this week, in his social encyclical Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict claimed that the church does not "interfere in any way in the politics of States." These words are especially pertinent for today's meeting between President Obama and the pope. Read More...

The Lancet rightly reflects on the global consensus that the Pope's comments on condoms were irresponsible and dangerous.

What is especially troubling about his comments is that when an influential religious leader such as Pope Benedict speaks, we sometimes see public health policies crafted around the beliefs of that faith group Read More...

A crucial addition to your evaluation of the pope’s comments is that Catholics the world over ignore the church and use condoms. However, it is tragic that while Catholics choose to ignore the Vatican, the Catholic hierarchy in the United States seeks to deny others that choice. Read More...

This week Governor Kathleen Sebelius appeared before two Senate Committees in hearings to determine whether she will become Secretary of Health and Human Services. In doing so, she garnered bipartisan support for her appointment. Many see her, as I do, as being superbly qualified to lead HHS in a time when the nation is facing a myriad of challenging health care issues in these troubling economic times. Read More...

I've tried to ignore the controversy over the University of Notre Dame's invitation to President Obama to give its commencement speech in May. I don't believe the effort to block his visit can succeed. For more than 30 years it's been a tradition for the renowned Catholic university to invite the new U.S. president to give the address and receive a doctorate from the law school. Nobody protested when George W. Bush visited, despite his ardent support for the death penalty, which the Catholic Church opposes. Read More...

Chris Hedges ("Are We Breeding Ourselves to Extinction?") and Betsy Hartmann ("Stop the Tired Overpopulation Hysteria") reprise an argument that has raged for decades. Hedges identifies "overpopulation" as the root cause of climate change and other environmental problems and calls for "vigorous population control." Hartmann dismisses population growth as a cause of environmental harm and reminds us of the shameful history of top-down population-control programs. Read More...

The nation's Catholic bishops have another sticky issue on their plates. President Obama has accepted an invitation to deliver the commencement address at the University of Notre Dame in May and to receive the customary honorary degree. It is quite a coup for the nation's most resonantly Catholic university. American Catholics and their bishops should be proud. Read More...

Like the majority of Catholics, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, President Obama's choice to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, seems to be able to reconcile her faith with her political beliefs, including her position on abortion Read More...

For those whose nostalgia for the Bush administration is unfulfilled by former Vice President Dick Cheney's snarling television appearance, there is a new window into the soul of the old regime. It is the brutally frank account of how political operatives and ideological helpmates of George W. Bush violated the law in their efforts to keep birth control away from American women -- particularly teenagers at the greatest risk of an unplanned and life-altering pregnancy.



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A federal judge ordered the Food and Drug Administration yesterday to reconsider its 2006 decision to deny girls younger than 18 access to the morning-after pill Plan B without a prescription. Read More...

Timing is everything, even for popes. Choosing his first visit to Africa wearing his pontifical hat as the occasion to denounce condoms as part of Aids prevention was less than inspired choreography for Pope Benedict XVI. He touched down in Cameroon to find himself in the eye of yet another international storm. Read More...

Hardly a week goes by these days without a group of religious progressives in Washington rolling out some major new policy or political initiative. Right before President Obama's official announcement of the nomination of Kathleen Sebelius for secretary of health and human services, a left-leaning organization called Catholics United launched a campaign to rally faith-based support for her, including a website called Catholics for Sebelius. Facing attacks from Christian right groups over her pro-choice stance, Catholics United argues that Sebelius reduced Kansas's abortion rate as governor and that she is personally antiabortion, though she backs abortion rights.
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Faced with a new federal policy that opens the door for more embryonic stem cell research, conservatives have geared up for a political battle at the national and state level that goes to the core of their beliefs about the sanctity of human life. Read More...

"These economic hard times are forcing people to make the tough decisions and ask scary questions of themselves," said Steve Trombley, Chief Executive Officer of Planned Parenthood of Illinois. "Should I pay the mortgage or put food on the table for my family?" ... "Can I pay for basic health care and necessary medication? Can I afford to have another child?" Read More...

The Roman Catholic Church stooped to a new low just in time for International Women’s Day. On Wednesday, March 4, 2009, at 10:00 a.m., a nine-year-old girl who was pregnant with twins had an abortion in Pernambuco, a state in the northeast of Brazil. The Archdiocese of Olinda and Recife was preparing to file a legal claim to stall or stop the abortion, but it was over before they were able to. Read More...

While lifting the Bush administration’s restrictions on federally financed human embryonic stem cell research, President Obama intends to avoid the thorniest question in the debate: whether taxpayer dollars should be used to experiment on embryos themselves, two senior administration officials said Sunday.
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President Obama on Thursday released his $3.55 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2010, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. According to the Chronicle, the proposal emphasizes the commitment to the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief and other global health programs. Read More...

Two prominent supporters of stem cell research said on Thursday they had reintroduced a Senate bill that would allow federal funding for human embryonic stem cell research, in anticipation of President Barack Obama's support for the work. Read More...

There is a buzzword humming on Capitol Hill and it is coming up in discussions from economic development and microfinance, to U.S. safety and security, to population growth and global health. This buzzword -- women -- is by no means new. But a fresh look at the fundamental role women play in the physical, social and economic health of nations is about to bring a welcome new approach to U.S. policies toward women in the developing world. Read More...

Every dollar spent on family planning saves taxpayers $4 dollars, according to a new report by the Guttmacher Institute. “The national family planning program is smart government at its best,” said Rachel Benson Gold, lead author of the study, Next Steps for America’s Family Planning Program. Read More...

Publicly funded family planning prevents nearly 2 million unintended pregnancies and more than 800,000 abortions in the United States each year, saving billions of dollars, according to new research intended to counter conservative objections to expanding the program. Read More...

Much has been made of the statement on abortion that Pope Benedict XVI issued earlier this week after meeting with Nancy Pelosi. But the Vatican's choice of words as they related to the Speaker of the House was quite predictable, given her pro-choice stance and her position as a high-ranking Catholic Democrat. The Holy Father simply made clear their differences on the issue and reminded the American politician of her responsibilities as a Catholic to protect life "at all stages of its development." Read More...

Pope Benedict XVI revoked the excommunication of an Holocaust-denying Bishop; Barack Obama nominated cabinet members that could not be confirmed or, like Republican Sen. Judd Gregg, had fundamental policy disagreements; and people who invested with Bernard Madoff's lost their money to a scam. Read More...

The U.S. Catholic Church's crusade against the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) has all the hallmarks of a well-oiled lobbying campaign. A national postcard campaign is flooding the White House and congressional offices with messages opposing FOCA, and the Catholic bishops have made defeating the abortion rights legislation a top priority. Read More...

The next time Roman Catholics who support abortion rights are told they should not receive communion, they can point to Nancy Pelosi. Read More...

Visiting US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi will have an audience with Pope Benedict XVI during her weeklong visit to Italy, a Vatican official said Monday. Read More...

Here in the nation’s capital, the fiscal stimulus package is the hottest game in town. The House voted recently to approve an $819 billion stimulus bill that was supported by President Obama and by almost all of his party’s members but was unanimously opposed by the Republican minority. Read More...

Earlier this week, in their response to vice presidential nominee Senator Joseph Biden’s recent comments about abortion, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops missed the mark on political discourse in the United States. Read More...

In their responses to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, Washington Archbishop Donald W. Wuerl and the US bishops commented on their interpretation of what Speaker Pelosi said, not what she actually said. Speaker Pelosi was correct in noting that Catholic teaching has changed over the years, even on the issue of when life begins. Read More...

Every election cycle, conservative Catholics such as Deal Hudson and Robert Novak seek to perpetuate the myth of the so-called monolithic “Catholic vote” claiming that this will be the election that Catholics swing heavily to one side. In reality, Catholic voters have been the classic swing vote in American presidential politics, changing from support for the Democratic candidate to the Republican and back again. Read More...

Spring 2008

We strive to be an expression of Catholicism as it is lived by ordinary people. We are part of the great majority of the faithful in the Catholic church who disagree with the dictates of the Vatican on matters related to sexuality, contraception and abortion. Read More...

Winter 2007-2008

Less than two months before Iowans would go to their caucuses, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a “faithful citizenship statement” urging Catholics to “use the values of their faith to shape their political choice.” While the statement didn’t tell Catholics which candidates to vote for (or against), it reminded them of the “necessity” to oppose abortion and euthanasia and the obligation to promote the common good. Read More...

Winter 2007-2008

The Catholic hierarchy has a long history of involving itself in debates over public policy. From advocating for the poor to opposing war and the death penalty, there is much good the church has done in this arena. However, in the area for which it is perhaps best known—debates over abortion, contraception and other “life issues”—the hierarchy’s advocacy has cost people their lives. Read More...