In its editorial endorsement of the Senate's health care reform bill, the National Catholic Reporter takes the USCCB to task for buying into the idea that, because the bill doesn't specifically forbid the community health care centers to be funded from performing abortions, it would therefore fund abortions.

...the bishops have to be clear that some of their talking points might lead honest observers to question their competence -- or worse. In the past week or so, much has been made of the bill's provision of $7 billion dollars to community health centers. The National Right to Life Committee chimed in that this money could go to pay for abortions at clinics run by Planned Parenthood. Back to Logic 101: All Planned Parenthood clinics may be clinics, but not all health care clinics are Planned Parenthood clinics. The community health centers in question do not, never have, and have no intention of performing abortions, and they are prohibited by statute from doing so. This is a red herring and it was profoundly disappointing to see the USCCB Web site give credence to it.

Bottom line: The current legislation is not "pro-abortion," and there is no, repeat no, federal funding of abortion in the bill.

More charitably, Tom Reese, S.J. portrays the bishops as fearing that "courts might force [the centers] to perform abortions." Which courts? Does anyone seriously think that the Supreme Court is about to declare unconstitutional a statute prohibiting certain clinics from performing abortions?

Far be it from me to accuse anyone of bad faith, but the community health care center argument looks like one of those horribles lawyers use when they are piling up arguments on behalf of a client. No one doubts that in this particular case the National Right to Life Committee is representing the Republican Party. The question is why the USCCB, which insists that it supports health care reform as enthusiastically as ever, is doing the same.

Charles Krauthammer thinks Obama is anti-Israel. Israelis disagree. Poor neocons.

John Allen has constructed a case that upon becoming pope, Benedict XVI had a species of conversion experience regarding sexual abuse by priests. Prior to that he "seemed just another Roman cardinal in denial." Or perhaps, just another sometime archbishop who swept charges under the rug. But all this changed when he assumed Peter's chair.

There is some considerable evidence for this, and Allen does a good job laying it out. But at the end of piece, the apologia pro vita pontificis comes to an end with a warning shot across the bow:

From the beginning, the "sex abuse crisis" has actually been an interlocking set of two problems: the abuse committed by some priests, and the administrative failures of some bishops who should have known better to deal with the problem.

In general, the impact of Benedict's "conversion" has been felt mostly on that first level -- the determination to punish abusers, to adopt stringent policies governing future cases, to reach out to victims and to apologize for the suffering they've endured. So far, Benedict has not adopted any new accountability mechanisms for bishops. Aside from a few instances such as Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston, few bishops have been asked, or instructed, to resign.

Aye, there's the rub: Zero tolerance for priests; maximum tolerance for bishops. Certainly, as In All Things' Austin Invereigh pointed out last month ("The Irish Bishops Don't Get It"), the misbehaving Irish bishops came away from their confab with Benedict happy as clams--all except Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin, who does get it, and who was so disgusted that he left town before the press conference.

As new pedophile scandals erupt worldwide (the latest in Brazil), tomorrow Benedict will sign his long-awaited Pastoral Letter to the Church in Ireland. "My hope, he said, "is that it will help in the process of repentance, healing and renewal." Not if it lets the bishops off the hook it won't.

Hear them roar.

The leaders of 60 orders of nuns have sent a letter to all members of Congress urging support of the Senate health care bill. Here's the punchline:

Congress must act. We are asking every member of our community to contact their congressional representatives this week. In this Lenten time, we have launched nationwide prayer vigils for health care reform. We are praying for those who currently lack health care. We are praying for the nearly 45,000 who will lose their lives this year if Congress fails to act. We are also praying for you and your fellow Members of Congress as you complete your work in the coming days. For us, this health care reform is a faith mandate for life and dignity of all of our people.

With respect to abortion, the letter says:

And despite false claims to the contrary, the Senate bill will not provide taxpayer funding for elective abortions. It will uphold longstanding conscience protections and it will make historic new investments - $250 million - in support of pregnant women. This is the REAL pro-life stance, and we as Catholics are all for it.

Take that, USCCB! Oh, yes, and the horse you rode in on, Archbishop Chaput! The latter, scourge of same-sex couples who would send their children to parochial schools, is in the public prints excoriating those, like the Catholic Hospital Association and Catholics United, who have dared endorse the Senate bill under the banner of Catholicism:

"Groups, trade associations and publications describing themselves as 'Catholic' or 'prolife' that endorse the Senate version -- whatever their intentions -- are doing a serious disservice to the nation and to the Church," he said.

Chaput accused these groups of "undermining the witness of the Catholic community; and ensuring the failure of genuine, ethical health-care reform."

"By their public actions, they create confusion at exactly the moment Catholics need to think clearly about the remaining issues in the health-care debate. They also provide the illusion of moral cover for an unethical piece of legislation," he added.

If there's ever been such a division over an issue of public policy within the Catholic church in America, I can't think of it.

Is it possible that one Catholic bishop has the guts to come out for HCR? Cf. this.

I've caught a moderate degree of flak from a few Mormons who believe I've misrepresented the position of their church regarding social justice. To restate my argument, it was that 1) the Mosaic Law, as enunciated in the Holiness Code of Leviticus, holds that the poor are to be provided for as a matter of public law, not individual charity; and 2) that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which saw itself as restoring both ancient Israel and the early Church, incorporated this aspect of the Mosaic Law into its own public law in the nineteenth century.

The late Dean May, an eminent Mormon historian, laid out the course of Mormon social welfare policy 20 years ago in a fine article: "Body and Soul: The Record of Mormon Religious Philanthropy," Church History, Vol. 57, No. 3 (Sep., 1988), pp. 322-336. Beginning with the Book of Mormon (4 Nephi 3), the LDS Church was imbued with the teaching that care of the poor was a collective responsibility. As May makes clear, this was from the outset a teaching focused not on all the poor but on the Mormon community itself. To that extent, Mormons were under less of an obligation to care for the stranger among them than were the ancient Israelites. But it was equally the case that, as members of the Church, they were obligated to provide for the poor, whether enthusiastically or begrudgingly. By my lights, that's a corporate commitment to social justice.

It is hard to imagine anyone who could be unmoved by the interview given to NCR's Thomas Fox yesterday by the two lesbian partners who have been told by the archdiocese of Denver that their two daughters can no longer attend a parish school. While it's not for me to say whether they are "good Catholics," they are without question devoted to their faith, eager for their daughters to be brought up in it, and anything but interested in making a public statement about the Church's stand on same-sex relationships.

What's clear from their account is that the school itself had no problem with their family, and that that probably went for the parish priest who oversees it as well. The problem had to do with the regime of Archbishop Charles Chaput. My guess is that someone in the parish let the archdiocese know that there was a lesbian couple in Boulder whose kids were attending Sacred Heart of Jesus elementary school, and the hammer came down.

Over at In All Things, Michael O'Loughlin is quite right to connect this story to a new policy of Catholic Charities in Washington requiring new employees to sign a statement to promise they will not "violate the principles or tenets" of the Church. Then there's the ongoing if stuttering effort to investigate women religious. Hammers are coming down all over.

For those who like such things, I'd recommend curling up on a rainy day with the Ninth Circuit's 2-1 decision in Newdow v. Rio Linda Union School District, which reverses a district court ruling that having public school children recite the Pledge of Allegiance with the phrase "under God" violates the First Amendment's prohibition of religious establishments. Writing for the majority, Judge Carlos T. Bea spends 57 pages doing an astonishing series of legal back flips to show that the phrase is all about patriotism and the Founders and limited government, as opposed to having a religious purpose. Whereupon Judge Stephen Reinhardt spends 136 pages giving the performance an F, with extreme prejudice.

What happens next, according to the Los Angeles Times, is an effort to get an en banc hearing from the entire Ninth Circuit and, failing that, an appeal to the Supreme Court. Whether the justices will go for it is an interesting question. They took Michael Newdow's first Pledge case, and then decided to punt rather than decide it on the merits--asserting that Newdow lacked standing to bring the case. That was back in June of 2004, and it certainly looked like a majority of the justices just didn't want to infect the election campaign with a huge symbolic "under God" fracas.

The real problem here is that it's very hard to make a case that having government officials (i.e. public school teachers) lead students every morning in a patriotic exercise that invokes God does not amount to a religious exercise--especially when you look at the legislative history of the insertion of the phrase into the Pledge in 1954. Yet the last thing sensible people should want is a Grand Public Cause resulting in a constitutional amendment establishing "under God" and who knows what else as religious exceptions to the First Amendment.

The Pledge is one long declarative sentence, the first half of which is inarguable ("I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America; and to the Republic for which it stands"); the second half, wishful or perhaps prayerful ("one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all"). Probably the best thing to pray for is that the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court decline to hear the case.

Expanding health coverage reduces abortions. That's what T.R. Reid argues in today's WaPo, and it's a powerful argument. Look at our peer countries in the developed world. All have universal health coverage and most include abortion in that coverage and all have lower rates of abortion than we do. Why? On the front end, women have access to contraceptive services; on the back end, they know there will be health coverage for them and their babies if they carry to term. So, says Reid:

For various reasons, then, expanding health-care coverage reduces the rate of abortion. All the other industrialized democracies figured that out years ago. The failure to recognize this plain statistical truth may explain why American churches have played such a small role in our national debate on health care. Searching for ways to limit abortions, our faith leaders have managed to overlook a proven approach that's on offer now: expanding health-care coverage.

The only thing wrong with that paragraph is that it assumes that the pro-life faith leaders he's talking about are focused on reducing the number of abortions. That's the same mistake, I'm afraid, that the Obamaite "common ground" folks also make. But what's become clear over the past year is that the pro-lifers who oppose HCR not merely as a pretext are concerned with principle and personal purity, not abortion reduction. That is to say, they want to push the principle of "no public funding for abortions" as far as they can because 1) it helps establish the idea that abortion is disapproved of by the government; and 2) it permits them to believe that none of "their" taxpayer dollars are going to pay for abortions.

They will no doubt claim that if their efforts bear fruit in the long run, abortion will be banned and the abortion rate will go down big time. In fact, however, there is little correlation between abortion rates and the legal status of abortion. The strong correlation is between abortion legality and abortion safety. Where abortion is legal, abortions are safe; where it's not, women die. What's important to recognize is that that's a price a lot of hard-line pro-lifers are prepared to pay.