Tag: catholic

Nicole Mosher, executive director of Durango-based nonprofit immigrant-aid organization Compañeros, is weighing how to keep her organization running effectively in light of the surprising news that the anti-poverty Catholic organization that supplies half of Companeros’ annual budget would likely end that support due to Compañeros’ indirect association with gay-rights group One Colorado.

This past Friday, a judge ruled in favor of the Obama administration in a legal challenge filed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops over the religious group’s loss of federal funding.

Despite the Catholic Church’s efforts to frame the federal government’s decision requiring health insurers to cover birth control as a matter of “religious freedom,” a new poll shows that almost 70 percent of the Americans believe the decision was a “matter of women’s health, not religious freedom.”

The Hill is reporting that Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., has introduced a bill that would roll back a recent decision by the Obama administration to require that insurance providers — with the exception of religious employers — cover birth control as a preventive service. Rubio is among a small group of legislators that receives money from a Catholic group that has been opposed to the mandate for some time.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is announcing that it will continue fighting a mandate for health insurers to cover birth control without co-payments.

Catholic leaders issued a letter Friday to GOP presidential candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, themselves Catholics, urging them “to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail.”

According to a recent Kaiser Health Tracking Poll conducted by Public Opinion and Survey Research Program, 66 percent of Americans agree with the federal government’s recent decision to include birth control in its list of preventative services.

Despite the overwhelming acceptance of birth control among Catholics, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church continues to ask U.S. lawmakers to restrict access to contraceptive services.

At its June meeting last week, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops announced it was ramping up a campaign against same-sex marriage. Bishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of the Subcommittee for the Defense of Marriage said the Roman Catholic church would push back in the war of “language,” which he said same-sex marriage proponents were winning with words like “hate” and “equality.” The church is planning a video campaign in both English and Spanish, and its efforts have already been felt in states like Minnesota where the church was successful in getting an anti-gay marriage amendment on the ballot.