The Bishops and the Mandate: Principled Witness vs. Politics as Usual
America’s Catholic bishops have overstepped: so say the editors of the Jesuit America magazine. Sure, they grant, the bishops were right to protest when President Obama required Catholic institutions...
View ArticleA Guiding Principle Revealed
When the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced recently that it would require all private employers to provide free contraception to their employees, the Obama administration no doubt...
View ArticleConfusion About Discrimination
Last week, “Vandy Catholic”—a Catholic student group at Vanderbilt University—reluctantly decided to leave campus rather than affirm its compliance with the University’s new “nondiscrimination” policy,...
View ArticleIs Conscience Partisan? A Look at the Clinton, Moynihan, and Kennedy Records
On March 1, the U.S. Senate voted 51 to 48 to table the “Respect for Rights of Conscience Act,” introduced by Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE) and Senator Roy Blunt (R-MO) to protect conscience rights in...
View ArticleWhat’s Behind the HHS Mandate?
What do the University of Notre Dame, EWTN, and the Archdiocese of New York have in common? More than you probably think. Each is a Catholic institution, of course. Each is also suing the Obama...
View ArticleTaking (Conscience) Rights Seriously
Recently Catholics stood up in a united protest against the Department of Health and Human Services’ mandate that requires employers to provide insurance coverage for contraception, sterilization, and...
View ArticleFranciscan, Ave Maria, and Obamacare
Two Catholic universities, Franciscan University of Steubenville and Ave Maria University, recently announced that they will drop their student health-care plans for the coming year. The schools also...
View ArticleReligious Freedom: Use It or Lose It
Do we assume America is a free country? Do we assume religious freedom is guaranteed in America? Most of us learned this in school and have taken it for granted ever since. In other countries people...
View ArticleAt the Door of the Temple: Religious Freedom and the New Orthodoxy
When I was consecrated a bishop in 2005, I was not fretting about religious freedom in Scotland or in the United Kingdom. Yet just six and a half years later, I can say with a concerned and fearful...
View ArticleHHS Mandate: Unjust (as well as Illegal)
In addition to being illegal by violating the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (see Ed Whelan’s posts at National Review Online about this starting here), the Health and Human Services contraception...
View ArticleWhat’s at Stake at the Bakery: How Property Rights Got Sexy
Even property law is sexy now. It is perhaps a measure of how thoroughly sexualized our culture has become that a subject that has caused countless first-year law students to nod off during 8:00 AM...
View ArticleIf a Company Can Be African American, Can’t It Be Religious?
Did you know that a for-profit corporation can be African American? Actually, a court recently ruled that a corporation can be an African American person under federal law. This legal declaration did...
View ArticleSupreme Court to Obama Administration: You Don’t Have to Agree with Religious...
Yesterday’s ruling from the US Supreme Court on the HHS mandate was a win for families and freedom against coercive force and fines. In his opinion for the Court, Justice Samuel Alito made a number of...
View ArticleAfter Hobby Lobby, the Struggle for Religious Freedom Continues
Yesterday at Public Discourse, Ryan Anderson cogently reviewed the reasoning and impact of Monday’s Supreme Court decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. The Court ruled that the Religious Freedom...
View ArticleProtecting the Religious Liberty of Adoption and Foster Care Providers
In any given year, hundreds of thousands of children spend time in the US foster care system, a quarter of them seeking adoption into a loving family. Yet many of these children bounce from home to...
View ArticleWhat Reason Can Know and What Government Should Legislate: A Rejoinder to Arkes
Professor Arkes and I disagree about a lot of things, even about what he has said in writing. He insists that I have misunderstood his views in various ways, and of course he is the final authority on...
View ArticleThe Oldest Trick in the Book Reviewer’s Book: On Misreading Conscience and...
The ad hominem attack is the oldest trick in the debater’s manual. When you can’t—or for whatever reason won’t—engage your opponent’s actual arguments, you try to discredit him personally. Perhaps you...
View ArticleThe Shopkeeper’s Dilemma and Cooperation with Evil
Russell Nieli and Jeffery J. Ventrella have been arguing here at Public Discourse about how shopkeepers, such as bakers or photographers, should respond to antidiscrimination laws that require them to...
View ArticleThe Perils of Political Propaganda: Mass Hysteria over Indiana
As you may have heard, the State of Indiana just passed a Religious Freedom Bill. It’s based on a similar federal statute that was passed in 1993 and signed into law by then-President Bill Clinton, and...
View ArticleJustice Scalia’s Worst Opinion
Today marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of a constitutional disaster. Justice Antonin Scalia’s majority opinion for the Court in Employment Division v. Smith has proven to be one of the most...
View Article