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<\/a><\/p>\nFrom the National Catholic Register<\/em> yesterday, details of a March 29 memorandum addressing the problems with the HHS Mandate.<\/p>\n The U.S. bishops said that the government\u2019s latest recommendations on its federal contraception mandate fail to address religious-freedom concerns.<\/p>\n In a March 29 memo, they said the mandate \u201cstill forces us to act against our conscience and teaching\u201d and that the only real solution is to allow individuals and institutions to offer insurance plans that align with their moral convictions. In the memo, the bishops commented on the latest development in an ongoing controversy surrounding a federal mandate that will require employers to provide health insurance plans that cover contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, even if doing so violates their conscience.<\/p>\n The mandate, announced on Jan. 20, has come under fire from numerous groups and individuals for infringing upon the religious freedom of those who object to such coverage.<\/p>\n A new advance notice of proposed rulemaking published by the Obama administration on March 21 outlines various recommendations for different ways to implement the mandate as it will apply to religious organizations that oppose the required coverage.<\/p>\n The administration has requested public comment on the proposals until June 19. However, they said that their initial analysis suggests that they \u201care still faced with the same fundamental issues\u201d identified in their previous statement, \u201cUnited for Religious Freedom.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Go read the rest<\/a>. <\/p>\n Have you given the Administration your own personal feedback on the HHS Mandate yet? You have until mid-June. Go here to find the link<\/a>, and see what Joe Six-Pack wrote.<\/p>\n In my comment, I referenced Pope Paul VI\u2019s encyclical Humanae Vitae<\/em>. Joan Frawley Desmond writes in another NC Register piece today that the battle against the HHS Mandate is a call to dust the cobwebs off of Pope Paul VI\u2019s message, and proclaim the truth on artificial contraception unabashedly.<\/p>\n WASHINGTON \u2014 Could there possibly be a silver lining in the federal contraception-mandate controversy?<\/p>\n For all the institutional disruption, political spin and vitriol generated by the mandate\u2019s supporters, who have mischaracterized the bishops\u2019 stance as a \u201cwar on women,\u201d the crisis has yielded some unexpected fruits. Not only has it aroused the \u201csleeping giant\u201d of Catholicism in the United States, prompting an energetic defense of the free exercise of cherished institutions, it has provoked a fresh assessment of Church teaching on contraception.<\/p>\n \u201cThe main issue remains that of religious liberty. But this whole episode has provided a catechetical opportunity to speak about the Church\u2019s teaching on the sanctity of life in its origins,\u201d observed Archbishop-designate William Lori of Baltimore, the chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.<\/p>\n \u201cContraception has been touted as the best possible thing for women and society, while our experience over the past 40-plus years suggests the opposite.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere is a new opening,\u201d noted the outgoing bishop of Bridgeport, Conn. And while an increasingly toxic sexual culture has helped provoke a broader reassessment, young Catholics also have been inspired by Blessed John Paul II\u2019s theology of the body, which offers a deeply hopeful vision of human life and love amid a culture that has witnessed declining rates of marriage and a rise in non-marital births.<\/p>\n Not only are priests, in their Sunday homilies, offering a defense of Humanae Vitae, but the controversy has forced the media to provide a forum for Church teaching that has been ridiculed throughout the globe.<\/p>\n This week, Politico posted commentary by Lila Rose, the founder of the pro-life group Live Action. Rose affirmed the First Amendment rights of religious institutions to resist a federal mandate that forces them to cover health services that violate their moral teachings.<\/p>\n Then she countered partisan efforts to frame Catholic teaching as an attack on women\u2019s fundamental rights, rejecting the suggestion that American women uniformly sought increased access to contraception.<\/p>\n Speaking for a new generation that has adopted a more skeptical view of feminist ideology, she stated, \u201cWe are women for whom the idea of artificial birth control as \u2018preventive care\u2019 is deeply insulting.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t wish to take the country back in time; rather, we aspire to move it forward, beyond a time when women are treated as objects and pitted against their children and their religious institutions \u2014 and toward a time when truly emancipated women embrace their intrinsic dignity and, with it, their authentic womanhood,\u201d said Rose.<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Amen. That\u2019s what Gloria Purvis was saying on the video that went viral.<\/p>\n
\nNo matter what mechanisms are chosen to fund and administrate the mandate, religious individuals and institutions will be prohibited from providing health coverage that is \u201cconsistent with their values,\u201d the bishops explained.<\/p>\n
\nThe bishops acknowledged that the \u201ctentative and complex\u201d proposals are very detailed and \u201cdemand further study.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n