News

Health Care

• The Catholic Health Association, representing some of the over 1000 Catholic hospitals in the US came out in support of the health care bill this week.  The group finds the bill to be a “good first step” towards a reform process and confirms that the abortion restrictions in the bill are strong.
• Catholics in Alliance and a host of other leading Catholics sent a letter to Congress outlining the pro-life aspects of the health care bill and urging support for final passage.
• NETWORK, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, released the text of a letter to Congress supporting healthcare legislation from organizations and communities representing tens of thousands of Catholic Sisters.
• The Boston Globe reports on how growing numbers of Catholic organizations and lawmakers are deciding to support the health care reform bill before the House.

Immigration

•  A Center for American Progress and Immigration Policy Center study suggests that comprehensive immigration reform could add 1.5 trillion dollars to US GDP over 10 years through increasing consumption and investment.

Education

•  Patrick Roche, an 80-year-old Boston grocer is donating 20 million dollars to a Boston College program that trains Catholic school teachers and administrators.  Mr. Roche joins a trend of wealthy Boston Catholics who are donating more to the city’s struggling parochial school system.
• National Catholic Reporter interviews the lesbian couple in Boulder, Colorado whose children were informed that they would be no longer welcome to attend their parish’s school. The school’s decision came as a surprise for many in their community, and the couple have taken their concerns to their parish priest and Archbishop.

The Catholic Church

• Pope Benedict XVI is planning to write a letter to address the increasing number of sexual abuse allegations against Catholic priests in Ireland, and his office says that the Pontiff will most likely address allegations from Germany and the Netherlands.  The forthcoming letters are intended to foster “repentance, healing and renewal” in church communities shaken by the scandals.
• On the heels of a decision to discontinue providing health benefits for the spouses of new employees to avoid conflict with the city's same-sex marriage law, Catholic Charities of Washington is asking new hires to sign letters confirming that they will not "violate the principles or tenets" of the church.

Opinion

Health Care

• E.J. Dionne advises Catholics to "listen to the nuns" on the health care reform bill.
• Professor Timothy Jost of Washing and Lee University School of Law, compares the House and Senate bills and finds not only that the wordings of the abortion provisions in both bills are effectively similar, but he also points out that the current Senate bill provides $25 million per year for assisting pregnant and parenting teens and women, grants which would offer women who decide not to get an abortion the support they need.
• David Gibson tracks the ongoing debate in the Catholic and political worlds over individual provisions of the Senate health care bill dealing with abortion coverage.
• Michael Sean Winters at America magazine weighs in on the same debate.
• Health care expert and Catholic T.R. Reid explains how providing universal health coverage leads to a reduction in the abortion rate.

Immigration

•  Rich Nathan argues in this editorial that we, as Americans, must “remember where [we] came from and act with justice and love toward the immigrant in [our] midst,” an imperative which entails reforming our broken immigration system in order to allow immigrants fair access to the naturalization process while cracking down on dishonest transportation and hiring, so that the “strangers in our midst” can be strangers no longer. 
• Fr. John Pedigo, in Washington, DC this week for a march in support of immigration reform, makes a similar faith-based case for change.

 Media

• Anthony Stevens-Arroyo defends the Catholic value of social justice against attacks from Glenn Beck. 

Catholic Church

• National Catholic Reporter compares Pope Benedict's handling of the clergy sex abuse crisis when he was Archbishop of Munich and now as Pontiff.

News

Health Care

• The Associated Press compares the House and Senate health reform bills and finds that neither allow federal funds to pay for abortion services.
• NPR's Morning Edition hosted a discussion on this same topic with Jesuit Fr. Tom Reese of the Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University.

Immigration

• Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman is threatening to veto a Republican-sponsored law that would provide prenatal care for pregnant, low-income women in the state. Heineman opposes the bill because it does not refuse service to undocumented pregnant women.

Poverty

• A proposal to extend the TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families) Emergency Fund to provide crucial assistance to those most in
  need during the recession was defeated in the Senate this week. Despite garnering 55 votes, a minority of Senators killed the bill on a budgetary point of order.

Worker's Rights

• Tennessee Senators Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander are refusing to allow the Senate to vote on an airline safety bill because they object to a separate provision about labor law. The bill closes a loophole that prevents employees at shipping company FedEx from organizing the same way their counterparts at UPS do.

Faith and Politics

• A profile of Obama's "spiritual cabinet," the seven people who most influence the President's faith life by Daniel Burke at Religion News Service.
• An NPR feature on Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the Secretariat for Pro-Life Activities at the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
• The Advisory Council to the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships made its recommendations this week. Watch council members discuss the report below:
  

Opinion

Health Care

• Politics Daily analyzes the abortion provisions in the Senate bill and concludes that the bill "does not pay for or promote abortion, and it will arguably reduce abortions as well as providing good, affordable health care to millions of women and children who now go without -- and suffer for it."

Immigration

• Andrea Nill at Wonk Room blog analyzes a conversation between anti-immigrant activist Roy Beck and conservative talk show host G. Gordon Liddy advocating for a national border fence modeled after the one in Israel.

Faith and Politics

• Fr. Jim Martin of America magazine explains why Glenn Beck's instructions to Christians to leave chuches that preach "social justice" implicates the entire Catholic Church.

Torture

• John Gehring makes the Catholic case against torture on the Just Words blog in response to new Washington Post op-ed writer Marc Theissen's assertion that Church teaching doesn't prohibit techniques like waterboarding.

The Washington Post has a new op-ed page writer drawing scrutiny for his hearty endorsement of “enhanced interrogation,” which translated from Orwellian into English means torture. Marc Thiessen, the second George W. Bush speechwriter on staff, is in good company with several other professional pontificators at the paper who have argued that a little roughing up of the enemy is morally justified and an effective way to gather intelligence.

What makes Thiessen’s views unique is the use of faith to burnish his position. A Roman Catholic, he argues that specific acts such as waterboarding are not prohibited by Catholic teaching in his book, Courting Disaster: How the CIA Kept America Safe and How Barack Obama is Inviting the Next Attack (subtle title, eh?)

At the very least, this level of rationalization takes a Houdini-like sleight of hand and at worst badly distorts church teaching for sinister ends. The Catechism of the Catholic Church condemns “torture which uses physical or moral violence to extract confessions.” The U.S. Catholic bishops’ political responsibility statement, Faithful Citizenship, unambiguously references torture (along with genocide, racism and the targeting of noncombatants in acts of terror or war) as something that can “never be justified.” In 1993, Pope John Paul II wrote in his encyclical Veritatis splendor that some acts “are always seriously wrong by reason of their object,” including “whatever violates the integrity of the human person, such as mutilation, physical and mental torture and attempts to coerce the spirit; whatever is offensive to human dignity.”

Thiessen’s suspect theology has earned criticism from Catholic progressives and conservatives, including First Things, the theocon Catholic journal that under the late Rev. Richard John Neuhaus strongly supported the invasion of Iraq. Paul Baumann, the editor of the Catholic magazine Commonweal, told the Beliefs columnist at the New York Times that the largely unified Catholic opposition to Thiessen “is a good indication of how erroneous his view is.”

Perhaps that will persuade EWTN, the global Catholic television station and arbiter of opinion, culture and spirituality for many conservative Catholics, to think twice before inviting Thiessen back on the air. In a recent interview, Thiessen claimed torture never occurred under the Bush administration and received an uncritical hearing from host Raymond Arroyo, whose commentary and exchanges with guests frequently sound like banter you would hear over cocktails at a Republican National Committee retreat.

Torture is morally wrong. It undermines our highest ideals and values as a nation. Many experts also cite evidence that abusive treatment is often not effective in collecting intelligence. Pundits are entitled to their own opinion and indeed get a paycheck for doing so. But those who spin the facts commit an even graver offense when they misuse faith to do it.

News

Immigration

• Arizona is close to passing a law that would criminalize the presence of undocumented immigrants and require police to inquire about citizenship status.
• A new report by the Immigration Policy Center summarizes the Obama administration’s first year progress meeting their stated immigration policy goals, finding them falling short in a few key areas.

Poverty

• The Obama administration has announced a new formula to calculate the national poverty rate. In lieu of replacing the current formula that has been in use since the 1960’s, the new proposal will supplement the existing metric with an alternative number that accounts for the wider range of economic costs poor families face.

The Catholic Church

• Salvadoran Church officials are sending signals that the Vatican may beatify the much revered Archbishop Oscar Romero on the upcoming 30th anniversary of his death. Romero was murdered at the altar for speaking out against human rights abuses in his country.
• USA Today profiles Jesuit writer and social commentator Fr. James Martin of America magazine.
• Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston is visiting Haiti to survey earthquake damage and help develop a plan to distribute the $35 million dollars raised in special collections in Catholic churches across the country.

Environment

• Climate science deniers have joined creationists in their long-standing effort to discredit school science curriculum for political ends.

Other

• According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, 2009 has seen a resurgence in extremist groups, particularly fueled by anti-government “Patriot” groups.

Opinion

Health Care

• The editorial board at the Christian Science Monitor sees the current debate over abortion coverage in the health reform bill as symptomatic of the absence of a true public discourse on common ground.
• Michael Sean Winters of America magazine analyzes conservative inconsistencies around health reform opponents' views on abortion funding and other issues.
• Bob Francis at the ELCA reflects on the strengths of the faith community in advocating for moral policies.

Politics

• Commonweal’s editors work through our country’s political paralysis and potential ways forward.