FPL did reporter outreach following the HHS contraception accommodation.
America’s Catholic bishops have criticized the White House’s mandate for insurers to provide free contraception coverage to employees, but plenty of other Catholic groups have endorsed the plan –some taking swipes at the bishops in the process.
“The Catholic bishops and their allies in the Republican Party are increasingly isolated,” James Salt, executive director of a liberal group called Catholics United, said in a statement over the weekend supporting the White House’s contraception rule.
“The bishops’ blanket opposition appears to the serve the interests of a political agenda, not the needs of the American people,” Salt continued, e-mailing his group’s support for the White House to tens of thousands of Catholics nationwide.
Another Washington-based Catholic operative, John Gehring, e-mailed reporters over the weekend to knock the bishops for criticizing President Barack Obama, even after his administration revised its contraception rule Friday to mandate that insurers – not Catholic institutions – pay for birth control coverage.
“You have to ask why the bishops can’t take yes for an answer,” wrote Gehring, who works with the progressive group Faith in Public Life.
On Wednesday, Gehring helped organize a call with reporters to discuss a congressional hearing this week at which some bishops are expected to testify against the contraception rule. “I believe everything my church teaches,” Nicholas Cafardi, a prominent Catholic lawyer, said on the call, voicing support for the birth control rule. ” I don’t consider this as a question of dogma, but of how we apply Catholic teaching in the real world.”
add a comment »
FPL provided media support for this event.
Every February, the National Prayer Breakfast brings thousands of dignitaries, diplomats, politicians and clergy to Washington, D.C., for one of the most high-profile and exclusive networking events in the country for power-brokers and the faithful.
For over 50 years, the breakfast has been organized by the Fellowship Foundation, a discreet but highly influential group, and has drawn every U.S. president since since Dwight D. Eisenhower, as well as famed humanitarians ranging from Bono to Mother Teresa. President Barack Obama has attended each year of his presidency, as he will this year.
But when leaders gather in the Washington Hilton ballroom on Thursday morning, they won’t be the only game in town. The National Prayer Breakfast is about to get “occupied” — sort of.
Just half a mile from the hotel, dozens or perhaps hundreds of a network of clergy and their supporters, part of “Occupy Faith” within the Occupy Wall Street movement, plan to converge for their own “People’s Prayer Breakfast.”
“We thought prayer shouldn’t be used for access to power or to move forward people’s agendas,” said Brian Merritt, an organizer of the alternative breakfast who is pastor of the city’s Palisades Community Church. “Prayer connects us to something greater than ourselves, but also moves us in action for those around us. It challenges us to confront others’ needs.”
So while dignitaries and the nation’s leaders munch on an elaborate meal — a ticket to the formal prayer breakfast has been $650 in past years — the free People’s breakfast will entertain a little over 200 people for coffee, danishes, meditation and prayer.
add a comment »
More than 40 Catholic leaders and theologians have issued an open letter to Catholic candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, warning them “to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail.”
The signers of the open letter, which was released Friday (Jan. 20), cited Gingrich’s repeated criticisms of Barack Obama as a “food stamp president” who encourages government dependency for the poor, especially for African-Americans.
They also criticized Santorum’s statement that he does not want “to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money.” Santorum later said he intended to use a word other than “black” but did not say what that word would have been.
add a comment »
A group of interfaith clergy plans to deliver a petition to Lowe’s headquarters in Mooresville today, asking the retailer to apologize for pulling ads from a TV show about Muslim Americans.
The coalition, which includes national activist and faith-based groups Faithful America, Change.org, CREDO, Sum of Us and Groundswell, are angered by Lowe’s Dec. 5 decision to stop advertising on the TLC show “All-American Muslim.”
The retailer, which had nearly $50 billion in sales last year, said it was responding to complaints from the religious group the Florida Family Association. The group had petitioned Lowe’s to stop advertising on “All-American Muslim,” which it said was propaganda that hid the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism.
add a comment »
The mood among many U.S. Roman Catholic bishops was captured in a recent speech by Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia. His talk, called “Catholics in the Next America,” painted a bleak picture of a nation increasingly intolerant of Christianity.
“The America emerging in the next several decades is likely to be much less friendly to Christian faith than anything in our country’s past,” Chaput told students last week at Assumption College, an Augustinian school in Worcester, Mass. “It’s not a question of when or if it might happen. It’s happening today.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops meets Monday in Baltimore for its national meeting feeling under siege: from a broader culture moving toward accepting gay marriage; a White House they often condemn as hostile to Catholic teaching; and state legislatures that church leaders say are chipping away at religious liberty.
Many Catholic academics, activists and parishioners say the bishops are overreacting. John Gehring of Faith in Public Life, an advocacy network for more liberal religious voters, has argued that in a pluralistic society, government officials can choose policies that differ from church teaching without prejudice being a factor.
“Some perspective is needed here,” Gehring, a Catholic, wrote on his organization’s blog.
add a comment »
