House Democrats approved a landmark overhaul of the country’s health-care system late Sunday, as President Obama appeased anti-abortion Dems with an executive order promising that no federal funds will be used for abortion coverage. The emotional day lead to some ugly rhetoric: Rep. Bart Stupak, leader of the anti-abortion Dems, was called a “baby killer” on the House floor, and black lawmakers, including Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon, were spit on and called the “N” word. Rep. Barney Frank was hit with anti-gay slurs.
No word yet from the U.S. bishops on the Stupak compromise, but Catholic sisters at NETWORK are ecstatic about the bill’s passage, saying “this is a remarkable time in our nation’s history as we finally take concrete steps to bring health care to tens of millions of people” and crowing that “NETWORK helped make this happen!” The Catholic Health Association, too, applauded the bill, saying they are “confident the bill will not allow federal funding for abortion,” and will save millions of lives.
Catholics for Choice doesn’t like the bill because they think it restricts abortion coverage; Randall Terry, Dean Hudson and their conservative Catholic brethren don’t like it because they think it expands abortion coverage. Planned Parenthood doesn’t like the executive order, but is thankful that Stupak’s earlier abortion language didn’t make it in the final bill.
In non-health-care news, the AP looks at the legacy of the civil-rights era Born of Conviction statement, a document signed by white Methodist ministers in Mississippi that got most of them run out of town. Oddly, the story doesn’t say much about what the statement said.
Tiger Woods gave a couple of interviews on Sunday, his first since admitting to marital infidelities; he displayed his Buddhist bracelet “for protection and strength” and said his problems began when “I quit meditating, I quit being a Buddhist, and my life changed upside down.”
A Portland priest told parishioners on Sunday that he’s quitting the priesthood because he can’t abide by the celibacy requirement. A court in Illinois says evangelists have the right to hand out religious tracts at a festival hosted by a Catholic parish. A New York man has reproduced a famous Spanish cathedral with two million toothpicks (pic at top left).
Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday urged Catholics to refrain from judging sinners, but made no mention of the sex abuse scandal spreading across Europe. A Swiss abbot said the Vatican should start a registry of molester clergy. On Saturday, the Vatican published a letter from the pope to Irish victims of abuse which apologized for grave errors by the bishops in charge, but issued no punishment of those bishops nor any changes in church policy. Victims’ groups are not pleased.
Police arrested a Romanian man suspected of vandalizing the tombs of three Cyprus archbishops who led the island’s Greek Orthodox church in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
