OSV Newsweekly

For more than a year, a serious legal showdown has been looming between religious nonprofit organizations and the Obama administration. The provocation for this showdown was a mandate from the Department of Health and Human Services requiring all companies and organizations to provide contraceptives, sterilizations and abortion-inducing drugs at no cost to their employees. 

The mandate exempted a very narrow class of religious organizations using a fourfold test: those that were dedicated to “inculcating” religious beliefs, those that hired and served primarily those who shared those beliefs, and those that also were included in a particular class of nonprofits according to IRS regulations. 

Read entire story.

As Americans wait to see what the Supreme Court does with President Barack Obama’s signature health care overhaul, few have a stronger interest in the outcome of this momentous test than the Catholic bishops. Their support for universal health coverage, their duty to defend the Church’s institutional interests, and their fear that the Church’s religious liberty rights are being compromised are all in play. more

Here’s a quote worth reflecting on — and doing something about — this week: “In the public square, I hate to tell you, the days of fat, balding Irish bishops are over.” 

Those are the (self-deprecating) words of Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. (He’s also a man known for his girth, shining pate and ancestral origins in the Emerald Isle.) more