While acknowledging HHS mandates (i.e., those forcing employers to cover contraceptives and abortifacient "contraceptives"), the New York Times tells us that the White House is SUPPOSEDLY considering an expansion of the religious exemption. As per Russell Shaw, a contemporary persecution of Christians has begun, but it is unlikely "to become a bloody one....It will be a tight-lipped campaign of secularist inspiration in which the coercive power of the state is brought to bear on church-related institutions to act against conscience or go out of business."

All Catholics need to take a serious look at our "Catholic" health care systems. As per health care law expert, Professor Leonard J. Nelson, III, "compliance with the ERDs [The USCCB's Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services] has been uneven when it comes to contraception and sterilization. Typically, obstetrician-gynecologists practicing in Catholic hospitals and physician office buildings owned by Catholic hospitals provide prescriptions for contraceptives to their patients" (p. 53). Professor Nelson goes on to discuss how some Catholic health "systems have entered into arrangements to provide services such as direct sterilizations and abortion referrals....The existence of such arrangements increases the risk of scandal and could embolden those who favor a mandate requiring all hospitals...to provide a full range of [so-called] reproductive services" (p. 102).

There are six Catholic hospitals operating within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia:

• Holy Redeemer


• Mercy Fitzgerald (part of the Mercy Health System, which is part of Catholic Health East)


• Mercy Philadelphia (part of the Mercy Health System, which is part of Catholic Health East)


• Mercy Suburban (part of the Mercy Health System, which is part of Catholic Health East)


• Nazareth (part of the Mercy Health System, which is part of Catholic Health East)


• St. Mary Medical Center (part of Catholic Health East )

Of physicians listed in the Philadelphia Catholic hospitals' online directories, I am only able to find one gynecologist or ob/gyn specialist who is also to be found among NFP-only medical professionals in Pennsylvania (Note: I would be delighted to learn that I overlooked someone.). Of physicians listed in the Philadelphia Catholic hospitals' online directories, I am able to find at least one abortionist!

As per Professor Nelson, "any argument in favor of exemption from laws requiring a hospital to provide these services may be substantially undermined by the fact that the Catholic hospital is already, in some fashion, involved in either providing those services...or involved in partnerships with entities providing such services" (pp. 132, 137).

With regard to Our Savior and our need to speak uncomfortable truths, Elizabeth Scalia recently reminded us: "Being himself All Truth, dishonesty in the guise of niceness could not serve Him."

This past Wednesday marked the 33rd anniversary of the U.S. Bishops Pastoral Statement on People with Disabilities:

• 1. The same Jesus who heard the cry for recognition from the people with disabilities of Judea and Samaria 2,000 years ago calls us, His followers, to embrace our responsibility to our own disabled brothers and sisters in the United States....
  
  4. Concern for people with disabilities was one of the prominent notes of Jesus’ earthly ministry. When asked by John’s disciples, 'Are you He who is to come or do we look for another?' Jesus responded with words recalling the prophecies of Isaiah 'Go back and report to John what you hear and see; the blind recover their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, dead men are raised to life, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them.' (Mt. 11:3-5)....
  
  8....We see defense of the right to life of persons with disabilities as a matter of particular urgency, ...because the presence of handicapping conditions is not infrequently used as a rationale for abortion. Moreover, those babies with severe disabilities who are permitted to be born are sometimes denied ordinary and usual medical procedures.
  
  9. All too often, abortion and postnatal neglect are promoted by arguing that the infant will survive only to suffer a life of pain and deprivation. We find this reasoning appalling....

Jeanne d'Arc

As per l'Enyclopedia Catholique,

• "Born at Domremy in Champagne, probably on 6 January, 1412; died at Rouen, 30 May, 1431....Jacques d'Arc, Joan's father [No wiseguys, her father was NOT Noah d'Arc!], was a small peasant farmer....It was at the age of thirteen and a half, in the summer of 1425, that Joan first became conscious of that manifestation...which she afterwards came to call her 'voices' or her 'counsel'....by May, 1428, she no longer doubted that she was bidden to go to the help of the king, and the voices became insistent....From the beginning a strong party at the court...opposed her as a crazy visionary, but a secret sign, communicated to her by her voices, which she made known to Charles, led the king, somewhat half-heartedly, to believe in her mission....it is now most commonly believed that this 'secret of the king' was a doubt Charles had conceived of the legitimacy of his birth, and which Joan had been supernaturally authorized to set at rest....
  
  "before Joan could be employed in military operations she was sent to Poitiers to be examined by a numerous committee of learned bishops and doctors. The examination was of the most searching and formal character....All that we know is that her ardent faith, simplicity, and honesty made a favourable impression. The theologians found nothing heretical in her claims to supernatural guidance, and, without pronouncing upon the reality of her mission, they thought that she might be safely employed and further tested.
  
  "perhaps the most interesting fact connected with this early stage of her mission is a letter of one Sire de Rotslaer written from Lyons on 22 April, 1429, which was delivered at Brussels and duly registered, as the manuscript to this day attests, before any of the events referred to received their fulfilment. The Maid, he reports, said 'that she would save Orléans and would compel the English to raise the siege, that she herself in a battle before Orléans would be wounded by a shaft but would not die of it, and that the King, in the course of the coming summer, would be crowned at Reims, together with other things which the King keeps secret.'
  
  "Before entering upon her campaign, Joan summoned the King of England to withdraw his troops from French soil. The English commanders were furious at the audacity of the demand, but Joan by a rapid movement entered Orléans on 30 April. Her presence there at once worked wonders....on Sunday, 17 July, 1429, Charles VII was solemnly crowned, the Maid standing by with her standard....
  
  "[Moving ahead, Joan was to later be taken prisoner.]. No words can adequately describe the disgraceful ingratitude and apathy of Charles and his advisers in leaving the Maid to her fate....There can be no doubt that the English, partly because they feared their prisoner with a superstitious terror, partly because they were ashamed of the dread which she inspired, were determined at all costs to take her life. They could not put her to death for having beaten them, but they could get her sentenced as a witch and a heretic....
  
  "On 29 May a court of thirty-seven judges decided unanimously that the Maid must be treated as a relapsed heretic, and this sentence was actually carried out the next day (30 May, 1431)....Her demeanour at the stake was such as to move even her bitter enemies to tears. She asked for a cross, which, after she had embraced it, was held up before her while she called continuously upon the name of Jesus. 'Until the last,' said Manchon, the recorder at the trial, 'she declared that her voices came from God and had not deceived her'....
  
  "Twenty-four years later a revision of her trial, the procès de réhabilitation, was opened at Paris with the consent of the Holy See....an appellate court constituted by the pope, after long inquiry and examination of witnesses, reversed and annulled the sentence pronounced by a local tribunal under Cauchon's presidency. The illegality of the former proceedings was made clear, and it speaks well for the sincerity of this new inquiry that it could not be made without inflicting some degree of reproach upon both the King of France and the Church at large, seeing that so great an injustice had been done and had so long been suffered to continue unredressed.... St. Joan was canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV."

With regard to the 1999 film, Joan of Arc, the USCCB says that it gives "a muddled account....depicting Joan as a national rather than religious heroine whose faith in her saintly voices registers little dramatic conviction." By contrast, the 1928 silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, has been very favorably cited by the Vatican!

Jeanne d'Arc

As per l'Enyclopedia Catholique,

• "Born at Domremy in Champagne, probably on 6 January, 1412; died at Rouen, 30 May, 1431....Jacques d'Arc, Joan's father [No wiseguys, her father was NOT Noah d'Arc!], was a small peasant farmer....It was at the age of thirteen and a half, in the summer of 1425, that Joan first became conscious of that manifestation...which she afterwards came to call her 'voices' or her 'counsel'....by May, 1428, she no longer doubted that she was bidden to go to the help of the king, and the voices became insistent....From the beginning a strong party at the court...opposed her as a crazy visionary, but a secret sign, communicated to her by her voices, which she made known to Charles, led the king, somewhat half-heartedly, to believe in her mission....it is now most commonly believed that this 'secret of the king' was a doubt Charles had conceived of the legitimacy of his birth, and which Joan had been supernaturally authorized to set at rest....
  
  "before Joan could be employed in military operations she was sent to Poitiers to be examined by a numerous committee of learned bishops and doctors. The examination was of the most searching and formal character....All that we know is that her ardent faith, simplicity, and honesty made a favourable impression. The theologians found nothing heretical in her claims to supernatural guidance, and, without pronouncing upon the reality of her mission, they thought that she might be safely employed and further tested.
  
  "perhaps the most interesting fact connected with this early stage of her mission is a letter of one Sire de Rotslaer written from Lyons on 22 April, 1429, which was delivered at Brussels and duly registered, as the manuscript to this day attests, before any of the events referred to received their fulfilment. The Maid, he reports, said 'that she would save Orléans and would compel the English to raise the siege, that she herself in a battle before Orléans would be wounded by a shaft but would not die of it, and that the King, in the course of the coming summer, would be crowned at Reims, together with other things which the King keeps secret.'
  
  "Before entering upon her campaign, Joan summoned the King of England to withdraw his troops from French soil. The English commanders were furious at the audacity of the demand, but Joan by a rapid movement entered Orléans on 30 April. Her presence there at once worked wonders....on Sunday, 17 July, 1429, Charles VII was solemnly crowned, the Maid standing by with her standard....
  
  "[Moving ahead, Joan was to later be taken prisoner.]. No words can adequately describe the disgraceful ingratitude and apathy of Charles and his advisers in leaving the Maid to her fate....There can be no doubt that the English, partly because they feared their prisoner with a superstitious terror, partly because they were ashamed of the dread which she inspired, were determined at all costs to take her life. They could not put her to death for having beaten them, but they could get her sentenced as a witch and a heretic....
  
  "On 29 May a court of thirty-seven judges decided unanimously that the Maid must be treated as a relapsed heretic, and this sentence was actually carried out the next day (30 May, 1431)....Her demeanour at the stake was such as to move even her bitter enemies to tears. She asked for a cross, which, after she had embraced it, was held up before her while she called continuously upon the name of Jesus. 'Until the last,' said Manchon, the recorder at the trial, 'she declared that her voices came from God and had not deceived her'....
  
  "Twenty-four years later a revision of her trial, the procès de réhabilitation, was opened at Paris with the consent of the Holy See....an appellate court constituted by the pope, after long inquiry and examination of witnesses, reversed and annulled the sentence pronounced by a local tribunal under Cauchon's presidency. The illegality of the former proceedings was made clear, and it speaks well for the sincerity of this new inquiry that it could not be made without inflicting some degree of reproach upon both the King of France and the Church at large, seeing that so great an injustice had been done and had so long been suffered to continue unredressed.... St. Joan was canonized in 1920 by Pope Benedict XV."

With regard to the 1999 film, Joan of Arc, the USCCB says that it gives "a muddled account....depicting Joan as a national rather than religious heroine whose faith in her saintly voices registers little dramatic conviction." By contrast, the 1928 silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, has been very favorably cited by the Vatican!