…of using abortion to oppose health care reform. There’s really no other way to read his essay in the new Newsweek. The relevant paragraphs pick up the story on the eve of passage of the Senate bill: On that Sunday, seven or eight of us pro-lifers sat with silver urns of coffee, yellow legal pads, […]

During her confirmation hearings to be solicitor general last year, Elena Kagan was asked by Arlen Specter to discuss a memo she wrote while clerking for Justice Thurgood Marshall in 1988.  Senator, thank you for raising that memo. I first looked at that memo, thought about that memo, for the first time in 20 years, […]

Winging his way to Portugal, the pope showed his Augustinian colors and embraced a view of the church as beset with sin and a penitential approach to the abuse crisis: In terms of what we today can discover in this message, attacks against the pope or the church don’t come just from outside the church. […]

It is a rare thing when one Catholic cardinal publicly attacks another. The most famous example occurred in the middle of the 11th century, when Humbert of Silva Candida bitterly criticized Peter Damian for claiming that bishops who had purchased their offices were still valid bishops. The saintly (later sainted) Damian was one of the […]

Michael Sean Winters reports on how those attending the NCR’s Washington Briefing yesterday received Sister Carol Keehan, CEO and President of the Catholic Health Association: The room rose as one. The applause was loud, not to say raucous, and it was sustained. That applause came from somewhere deep in the consciousness of the assembled Catholics, […]

Utah Sen. Bob Bennett, now fighting for his political life at the state GOP convention, is Mormon aristocracy–a grandson of Heber J. Grant, seventh president of the LDS Church. If he survives to fight another day–i.e. as one of two contestants in the upcoming primary–will it be because the Church has stuck in its oar? […]

I’m as ready as any red-blooded ex-journalist to wax hysterical about a good sex-cum-hypocrisy story, and the case of Dr. George Rekers is hard to beat. A leading family values crusader, co-founder of the Family Research Council, expert witness against permitting homosexuals to adopt–he is discovered to have traveled around Europe with a male prostitute […]

Over on First Thoughts, Joseph Bottum takes another swipe at the New York Times‘ ongoing coverage of the current Catholic crisis by cocking a snoot at Michael Luo’s review of the history of Cardinal William Levada’s handling of sexual abuse cases in yesterday’s paper. Nothing new there, saith Bottum. Just the Gray Lady intent on […]

If nothing else, Franklin Graham. Before doing his own little things outside the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill, he had this to say to Fox: The Muslims have their holidays that they celebrate at the Pentagon. They celebrated Ramadan. They have prayer services there. But for us Christians to have prayer services, and for them […]

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Asked the other day whether he would “support deportation of natural born American citizens that are the children of illegal aliens,” Rep. Duncan Duane Hunter (R-CA), a Baptist who represents the San Diego hinterland, said yes, he’d have to. We just can’t afford it anymore. That’s it. And we’re not being mean. We’re saying it […]

According to the latest WaPo/ABC poll, white evangelicals are evenly divided between the GOP and the Tea Party when asked which best represents “their own personal values.” This should put to rest any doubts that the Tea Party, with its exclusively economic public agenda, somehow is failing to appeal to social conservatives. Since this is […]

Can the Vatican heal itself of its Legionaries’ disease? The report by the investigating bishops has some very tough words on deceased founder Marcial Maciel Degollado (“a life devoid of scruple and of genuine religious sentiment”), along with pointed but unspecific language indicating that he had protectors who enabled him do his evil unmolested. No […]

Not that it’s going anywhere, but Rep. Jack Kingston’s call for congressional hearings into what he alleges is “clerical censorship” by the Pentagon could provide a useful little exercise in public education. Kingston claims to be “deeply concerned” by disinvitations of Family Research Council head Tony Perkins and evangelist Franklin Graham from places of honor […]

A propos the Broder–Douthat–Will-et al. judgment that Arizona legislators and their constituents aren’t to blame for trampling the Constitution and ratcheting up anti-immigrant prejudice because the real responsibility belongs to Washington for failing to provide adequate border control: Shall we similarly excuse the anti-Catholic bigotry of the Know-Nothings because Congress failed to halt Irish immigration […]