Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is scheduled to deliver the concluding benediction at the Republican National Convention next week, after Mitt Romney\u2019s acceptance speech.<\/p>\n
The Eternal Word Television Network leaked word of Dolan\u2019s appearance last night in a press release about Romney\u2019s exclusive appearance, to be aired tonight, on the program \u201cThe World Over.\u201d<\/p>\n
The news \u2014 both its substance and the venue in which it was conveyed \u2014 make clear three things: that Romney intends to make the Bishops\u2019 bogus arguments about religious liberty infringements a centerpiece of his campaign\u2019s faith outreach; that any efforts the Obama administration made to placate the Bishops\u2019 unattainable demands on insurance coverage for contraception were a fool\u2019s errand; and that the USCCB has unequivocally attached itself at the hip to the Republican Party.<\/p>\n
EWTN, the Catholic television network founded by the nun Mother Angelica in 1981, and which recently acquired the National Catholic Register (\u201cAmerica\u2019s most complete and faithful Catholic news source\u201d), sued the Obama administration in February, charging the contraception mandate violated its First Amendment rights. Michael Warsaw, the network\u2019s president, decreed it a \u201cmoment when EWTN, as a Catholic organization, has to step up and say that enough is enough.\u201d In its support of the Bishops\u2019 \u201cfortnight for freedom\u201d earlier this summer, the network quoted \u2014 on the same page! \u2014 Sir Thomas More just before his beheading and the Rev. Martin Luther King. That was all alongside network head Warsaw asserting, \u201cthese are rights not given to us by governments. They are rights given to us by God.\u201d<\/p>\n