You might check out an article in the Washington Times about Catholic colleges/universities and the rapidly warming issue of religious liberty, abortion, etc.
Here is the first part of the piece, which gives you an idea of the parameters of the issues and some of the players:
REILLY: No choice for Catholic colleges
Obama wants to force faith institutions to provide birth-control servicesSome pro-abortion advocates seem positively outraged that Catholic colleges would defend their constitutional liberty to teach and uphold Catholic values. In that, they reveal that God, reason and the rule of law are of little importance to their narrow agenda.
On Oct. 7, the president of Catholics for Choice, Jon O’Brien, publicly scolded his counterpart at the Catholic University of America (CUA) for interfering “in women’s capacity for moral decision making,” simply because the university wants the Obama administration to exempt Catholic colleges from morally offensive regulations.
Frances Kissling, founder of Catholics for Choice, also accused CUA of being “intolerant” and “politicizing some of the most sacred decisions people make about sexuality and reproduction.”
Why? Because in the warped view of the family-planning lobby, abortion rights and contraception are more “sacred” than the First Amendment right of Catholic institutions to be and act faithfully Catholic.
On Sept. 30, CUA president John Garvey called new Health and Human Services (HHS) regulations a “collective violation” of Catholic beliefs by the federal government. Despite the outcry from abortion proponents, Mr. Garvey has it exactly right. HHS has mandated that health insurance plans include coverage for sterilization, contraception and certain abortion-inducing drugs, even when offered by Catholic institutions, which consider such practices to be gravely immoral.
Although HHS does exempt some religious employers, attorneys advising the Cardinal Newman Society tell us that the “exemption” is so narrow that it likely would exclude religious charities, hospitals and colleges, which are not controlled directly by the church and which provide services such as education, medical treatment and food donations to non-Catholics as well as Catholics.
Mr. Garvey is not the only one defending his rights. Last month, 18 other Catholic colleges joined in an appeal to HHS coordinated by the Center for the Advancement of Catholic Higher Education, a division of the Cardinal Newman Society located at Mount St. Mary’s University in Emmitsburg, Md. Writing on their behalf, attorneys for the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) argued that “federal law simply prohibits the federal government from violating the religious and moral beliefs” of any individual or institution.
“No federal rule has defined being ‘religious’ as narrowly and discriminatorily as the [HHS] mandate appears to do, and no regulation has ever so directly proposed to violate plain statutory and constitutional religious freedoms,” wrote ADF’s Kevin Theriot and Matthew S. Bowman.
While Catholic college leaders are understandably concerned about the mandate’s impact on employee health insurance, they are especially offended that they would be forced to help facilitate sexual activity among students. By refusing to exempt student insurance plans, HHS is ensuring that even Catholic girls attending Catholic colleges will be tempted by cost-free sterilization and contraception.
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