Abortion

Catching up on an item from Friday night, the three broadcast evening newscasts aired virtually nothing on January 23 about President Obama’s executive order permitting federal funding of abortions, overturning orders signed by President Bush in his first week in office back in 2001. Both CBS and NBC’s White House reporters squeezed in a single sentence about Obama’s action during stories about…

A liberal Catholic blogger who last November inveighed against "extremist" and "Pharasaic" bishops who have said they will deny Communion to pro-choice politicians is cited today by Dallas Morning News religion blogger Bruce Tomaso as an "abortion foe" who, surprise, surprise, has unkind words for the March for Life: Writing for a blog of America, the Jesuit magazine, Catholic author and "pro-…

A group that "celebrate[s] the inherent goodness of adolescent sexuality" and calls for clergy to "speak out against... coercive parental notification and consent for reproductive health services" has just released a study that concludes by calling on American theological seminaries to go over the birds and bees with their students. Yet in reporting on the study by the Religious Institute on…

The conservative movement lost a great intellectual voice on Thursday. The Reverend Richard John Neuhaus died due to complications from cancer at the age of 72. Neuhaus, a Catholic priest of the Archdiocese of New York, was a well-known pro-life advocate, and founded First Things in 1990, a periodical focused on advancing “a religiously informed public philosophy for the ordering of society.” We…

By now, many readers know the New York Times's definition of a "good Catholic."A good NYT Catholic doesn't necessarily need to go to Church very often. He or she focuses on the importance of alleviating poverty and other world problems, almost invariably through government handout programs and not individual or private charity. Despite the long standing of "just war" guidance, this person opposes…

...who pulled President-elect Obama's books from a Catholic school library? "Hey, at least he didn't burn them!" goes the punchline. Wocka, wocka, wocka!That was Dallas Morning News religion blogger Bruce Tomaso's take on a Missouri Catholic priest's decision to yank Obama's tomes from the shelves of St. John LaLande Catholic School's library (see screencap at right).Tomaso noted that Fr. Ron…

Updated at bottom of post (Jan. 7, 2009)CNN sided against the expansion of health care workers’ right to not participate in controversial medical procedures like abortion and in-vitro fertilization during a report on Friday’s Newsroom program by including only one pro-life voice amongst several statements and clips from pro-abortion groups. Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the chief medical correspondent for…

At the top of Friday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith teased a segment on the controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s decision to have pastor Rick Warren deliver the invocation at the inauguration: "Barack Obama angers gay rights groups by choosing Rick Warren to give his inaugural invocation." Later Smith brought on Dr. Robert Jeffress of the First Baptist Church of Dallas and David Corn of…

Barack Obama has selected Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at the president-elect's inauguration. Based on yesterday's New York Times story about this and other inauguration decisions, you would think that complaints about Warren's selection represent a mere tempest in a teapot. The Times devoted all of one sentence (bolded) to the controversy:Barack Obama has selected the Rev. Rick Warren,…

Though O.J. Simpson was sentenced for robbery and related crimes yesterday, thirteen years ago he walked on a double-murder charge. That might be an isolated case, but Gail Collins apparently believes there are tens of millions of murderers roaming free in America.  We call them by a different name: hunters.Collins made her inane hunting = murder analogy in her column today in the course of…

On Sunday’s Chris Matthews Show, host Matthews led the panel in a discussion over whether conservatives would choose to cooperate with the Obama administration in making "historic changes" to repair the economy, rather than stand in opposition to his programs. The premise of the discussion seemed to be that times are too serious for conservatives to dare dissent from Obama’s plans. At one point,…