HHS Contraception Mandate: Contact Your Senators Today!

The U.S. Senate is scheduled to vote on the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act tomorrow, March 1, 2012. This act would protect the religious freedom of Catholic organizations, by proctecting them from the contraception mandate that was recently imposed by the Department of Health and Human Services.

As you probably already know, this mandate is a big deal. It is a clear violation of the rights of religious liberty as found in the first amendment to the U.S. Constition. If it allowed to stand, it will impose large fines on Catholic hospitals, Catholic universities, Catholic media organizations, and other Catholic organizations who are unwilling to go against the Catholic faith by paying for contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilizations. Francis Cardinal George of Chicago has even said that Catholic hospitals and other Catholic organizations will be forced either to renounce their Catholic identity or to go out of business, if the mandate is not changed. Here is part of Cardinal George's recent column:

If you haven’t already purchased the Archdiocesan Directory for 2012, I would suggest you get one as a souvenir. On page L-3, there is a complete list of Catholic hospitals and health care institutions in Cook and Lake counties. Each entry represents much sacrifice on the part of medical personnel, administrators and religious sponsors. Each name signifies the love of Christ to people of all classes and races and religions. Two Lents from now, unless something changes, that page will be blank.

(Read the entire column here.)

I contacted both of my senators yesterday about my opposition to the HHS contraception mandate, and my support for the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act. If you are in the United States, have you contacted your senators yet? If not, please call their offices today. Just go to www.senate.gov and select your state to find your two senators. Or find out more from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops here or here (the second link is a PDF file).

And yes this is still a video blog, so finally, here are two videos on this topic:







(Videos found on LifeSiteNews.com.)

We Are Catholic

(Found on the Archdiocese of Washington blog in a post by Monsignor Charles Pope.)

Fr. Barron on Morality, Character, and Relationships

Scott Hahn discusses the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible

Scott Hahn discusses the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible on EWTN Bookmark with Doug Keck, in the following video. I have a copy of this study Bible (the entire New Testament, plus several of the individual books), and I find it very impressive and helpful. I need to find some more time to get back to reading it.



(Found at Ignatius Insight Scoop.)

Another Catholics Come Home Testimonial Ad

Catholics Come Home Testimonial Ad

I have posted a few ads from Catholics Come Home in the past. Here is another one, which features testimonials from people who came back to the Catholic Church after some time away from the Church:

Fr. Larry Richards on Confession

This talk seems to wander a bit among various topics, but in the end it comes back to the sacrament of Confession, which is an appropriate topic to begin the season of Lent:



I also highly recommend Fr. Richards' book Be a Man! for Catholic men.

Also, check out this video that I posted last year for a light-hearted take on Ash Wednesday.

Peter Kreeft on C. S. Lewis

Peter Kreeft discusses C. S. Lewis, Heaven, and joy:

Bishop Lori testifies before Congress: The parable of the kosher deli

Bishop William Lori is the bishop of the Diocese of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and he is also the chairman of the U.S. bishops' Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty. Bishop Lori testified yesterday before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, in regard to the HHS contraception mandate. In his testimony, Bishop Lori used a modern-day parable to illustrate how the contraception mandate violates religious liberty:



The full text of Bishop Lori's testimony can be read here.

UPDATE: The embedded video was working fine earlier today, but it has since stopped working. If it is still not working, you can try this link to view the video at Vimeo.com, or you can view the YouTube version of the video, which I am embedding below:

Interviews with Cardinal DiNardo and Roy Abraham Varghese

In this episode of Prepare the Way, Martha Fernández-Sardina interviews Daniel Cardinal DiNardo (Archbishop of Houston) and Roy Abraham Varghese. Topics covered include evangelization, prayer, and science and religion.

NETwork Against Malaria in Hoima, Uganda

If you would like to support this worthy cause, please visit the NETwork Against Malaria web site. And here is another video about this organization's work, that I posted last year.

Fr. Barron: The HHS Mandate is Anti-Catholic and Un-American

Fr. Barron lays out the disturbing agenda of modern secular liberalism with respect to religious institutions:



He correctly diagnoses the larger issue of the HHS contraception mandate -- namely that modern secular liberalism seeks to push religion out of the public square.

Fr. Barron comments further in this follow-up video:

Another Petition Protesting the HHS Contraception Mandate

From the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty:



Click here to view and sign the petition.

Peter Kreeft on Ecumenism and the Unity of the Church

HHS Contraception Mandate

NOTE: I have added some updates at the end of this post.

I have intended for a few weeks now to post some videos about the recent contraception mandate from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In the unlikely event that you haven't heard about this mandate, essentially the issue is as follows:

As part of the "Obamacare" health care law, the Department of Health and Human Services has defined contraception, sterilization, and even abortifacient "emergency contraception" as preventive care which must be covered in all employer-sponsored health plans. Most religious organizations are not exempt from this requirement, meaning that organizations such as Catholic universities, Catholic charities, and Catholic hospitals must choose either to pay for medicines and procedures which they believe are morally wrong, or stop providing health insurance coverage for their employees and pay a steep fine to the government.

Obviously, the first option (providing contraception) is not an option that a Catholic individual or a Catholic organization can follow without violating the teachings of the church. And the second option is clearly unjust, because it prevents Catholics and Catholic organizations from providing health care coverage to their employees, and penalizes them monetarily for not being willing to violate their consciences. This HHS mandate is a clear violation of the religious liberty of Catholics, or of anyone whose religion teaches that these medicines and procedures are morally wrong.

To read more about this mandate, I would recommend starting with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' web page on the HHS mandate, as well as the National Catholic Register for ongoing news coverage.

And of course, since this blog is focused on Catholic videos, I do have some videos on this issue. First, here is Archbishop and Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan of New York on CBS News:



Ave Maria University states that they will not comply with the contraception mandate:



And here is Fr. Barron's commentary on the contraception mandate, in which he replies to some commentators who favor the mandate:




Finally, there are several petitions that people can sign, including the following:

Online petition at StopHHS.com, courtesy of Ave Maria Radio
Online petition at whitehouse.gov
"Stop the Birth Control Mandate" petition
Becket Fund for Religious Liberty Petition


UPDATE 1: Here is one more video, from the Archdiocese of St. Louis, which I found on the Aggie Catholics blog:




UPDATE 2 (Feb. 11, 2012): Yesterday, President Obama offered an "accommodation," essentially saying that religious employers who provide health insurance to their employees must still purchase plans that provide free contraception, but the contraception will be paid for by the insurance company rather than by the employer. Of course this is merely a change in semantics, not a change in the actual situation. The insurance companies do not magically create money with which to pay for these "free" contraceptives; rather the contraceptives must be paid for with the premiums paid by their customers -- including religious employers. Thankfully, it does not appear that the Catholic bishops or many Catholic religious organizations are buying this. Here is the most recent statement from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and here is a video statement from Bishop Edward Slattery of Tulsa, Oklahoma:

Fr. Barron on Sexuality, Sacrifice, and Love

Fr. Barron on Biblical Family Values

Peter Kreeft on the Dominican Order and on Why to Be Catholic

In this video, Peter Kreeft discusses the Dominican order, as well as why he and others choose to be Catholic:



At the very end of the video, Dr. Kreeft mentions Magnificat, which is a very well-made and helpful prayer resource. You can learn more about Magnificat here.

And you can find more of Peter Kreeft's work, including articles and mp3 audio, and a list of his many books, at his website.

Footprints of God Pilgrimages with Steve and Janet Ray

Have you ever thought of making a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, to see the places where Jesus walked, taught, performed miracles, and even rose from the dead? Steve Ray, a Catholic convert and author, and his wife Janet have been leading pilgrimages to the Holy Land for quite a few years, and I have heard nothing but excellent feedback about these trips.

I have been wanting for several years to take my family on one of Steve and Janet's pilgrimages. Unfortunately it just isn't a realistic option right now considering the ages of our children and considering the cost for an entire family. But in case anyone reading this blog might be in a position to consider a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, I present the following video:



You can get more information on Steve and Janet's many upcoming pilgrimages at the Footprints of God Pilgrimages web site.

Also in keeping with the video theme of this blog, I should mention Steve Ray's excellent Footprints of God DVD series. In these DVDs, Steve teaches about salvation history while going on location (to Israel, Egypt, Rome, etc.) to show where the major events of salvation history actually occurred. I have several of these DVDs, and I highly recommend them. They aren't quite as professionally produced as Fr. Barron's Catholicism series, but they are well-made and definitely worth watching.

Patrick Madrid on Catholic Apologetics

Over the past few weeks, I have posted four episodes of Prepare the Way with Martha Fernández-Sardina, in which she interviews Patrick Madrid regarding several of his books. Here is an older episode of the same show, again with Patrick Madrid as the guest, this time on the subject of Catholic apologetics:



There is also a follow-up episode which continues this discussion, but I don't plan to post it here because it is more a discussion of how Patrick goes about his apostolate (e.g., details about Envoy Magazine and an upcoming Catholic conference), without much direct discussion of apologetics or of the Catholic faith in general. However, if you would like to see this follow-up episode, you can find it here.