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On January 20, the day before the South Carolina primary, the Washington Post published a long story about how political polarization in that state was reflected in—and sharpened by—South Carolinians’ choices of news providers.
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The Obama administration has rejected appeals to exempt religious-affiliated institutions, such as hospitals and universities, from the mandate issued by the Department of Health and Human Services requiring all health-insurance policies to include...
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Hadley Arkes
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One of Barack Obama's great attractions as a presidential candidate was his sensitivity to the feelings and intellectual concerns of religious believers. That is why it is so remarkable that he utterly botched the admittedly difficult question of...
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After the 2008 election of President Barack Obama, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops launched a well-financed campaign against the Freedom of Choice Act, a legislative initiative allegedly at the top of Obama’s to-do list. As the...
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Almost two years after being passed into law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—known to most of its enemies as “Obamacare”—remains a subject of great controversy. Some argue that, by allowing the federal government to require citizens...
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With regret and some trepidation, Commonweal and many other prolife Catholic commentators and organizations, including the Catholic Health Association, disagreed with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops about the health-care-reform bill that...
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The aftershocks of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ opposition to certain elements of recent health-care legislation are still being felt in the church months later.
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Physician-assisted suicide (PAS) and euthanasia have long been the redheaded stepchildren of the prolife movement. They are dutifully included in the litany of life-related issues, yet they have not attracted the sustained attention—or passion—that...
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Catholic social teaching, as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has tirelessly reminded our elected officials, has long regarded access to decent health care to be a basic human right, not just the privilege of the wealthy or those lucky enough...
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The concept of the common good, ancient in origin, would seem on the face of it an ideal foundation for health-care reform. We all get sick and depend on others to care for us, and many of us will need expensive treatments that are beyond the means...
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On May 20, 2010, the Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement supporting H.R. 5111, sponsored by Congressmen Joseph R. Pitts (R-Pa.) and Dan Lipinski (D-Ill.). H.R.
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When the German journalist Peter Sewald recently asked Pope Benedict XVI whether the Catholic Church was “opposed in principle to the use of condoms,” the pope replied that under some circumstances the use of a condom could be a “first step” toward...
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Any time the Obama administration touches issues related to the Roman Catholic Church, it seems to get itself caught in a rhetorical and moral crossfire that leaves all involved wounded and angry.
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The other night I took my kids to Ford’s Theatre in Washington, D.C., to see The Rivalry, a play by Norman Corwin written in 1958 to commemorate the centennial of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. As is usual when I drag them to something that sounds...
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Every nation needs an intelligent and constructive form of conservatism. The debate over the health-care bill, which mercifully came to a close on Sunday night, was not American conservatism's finest hour.
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My auto mechanic, Maynard, has a lesson to teach us about the unfortunate dispute between the U.S. bishops and the Catholic organizations that support the health-care law enacted last March.
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By the time you see this, the fate of the Democrats' health-care legislation will probably have been decided. The House of Representatives plans to vote on the Senate bill a few days after we go to press. Whatever the outcome, one thing is already...
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Compromise is not a dirty word in democratic politics, nor is the balancing of conflicting goods foreign to the church’s tradition of casuistic moral reasoning. So why do so many American bishops appear to spurn both in their prolife advocacy? Do...
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Not all religions have imposed moral precepts upon their adherents, but all those known as “world religions” have made such a firm connection between their practice and the practice of the moral virtues. Living a morally upright life is, in the...
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We’re still debating whether what we’re doing in Libya can rightly be described as war, though bombs dropped amid an “intervention” are just as deadly. But where’s the debate over whether it’s fair or accurate to assert that Republicans in Congress...
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If there’s an issue big enough to stall health-care reform, surely it’s abortion policy. Unlike other obstacles to reform (distrust of big government, new taxes, or anything that looks vaguely European), the abortion debate, like the debate over...
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Making health-care reform “abortion neutral” was never going to be easy. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) was the first to demonstrate that it was possible, practically and politically.
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It turns out there were core contradictions in the promises Barack Obama made to the country in 2008. They caught up with his party on Tuesday in Massachusetts.
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Over the New Year holiday, the attention of prolife activists was focused on beginning-of-life questions, as abortion and health-care reform took center stage in Washington, D.C. On New Year’s Eve, however, a troublesome development occurred...
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The Catholic bishops of the United States have historically been a strong voice in favor of health-care reform.
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For those who feared that Barack Obama did not have any Lyndon Johnson in him, the president's determination to press ahead and get health-care reform done in the face of Republican intransigence came as something of a relief.
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In a piece written for the Web site Public Discourse, Professor Helen Alvaré of George Mason University has responded to my article “Episcopal Oversight,” which appeared in the June 4 issue of Commonweal.
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Can a nation remain a superpower if its internal politics are incorrigibly stupid?
Start with taxes. In every other serious democracy, conservative political parties feel at least some obligation to match their tax policies with their spending plans...
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Ever heard the one about the guy who hated government until a deregulated Wall Street crashed, an oil spill devastated the Gulf of Mexico, a coal mine collapsed, and some good police work stopped a terrorist attack? Rarely has the news of the...
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Catholics who like the word “solidarity” are sometimes suspicious of the word “subsidiarity.” They worry it's a euphemism for privatization. Catholics who like the word “subsidiarity,” meanwhile, are often uneasy with the term “solidarity”—unless it...
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Sometimes, when talking to younger audiences, the theologian Lisa Sowle Cahill will describe herself as a “relic” of the distant and benighted era before the Second Vatican Council.
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A politically shrewd Senate Democratic staff member chatting about the future of health care negotiations stopped in midsentence late Tuesday afternoon as news flashed across his computer screen. "My God," he said. "Byron Dorgan is retiring."
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If President Barack Obama gets to sign a health-reform bill, as I believe he will, one reason may be Rep. Jay Inslee's difficult experience renovating his kitchen.
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Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli seems determined to use an attack on health-care reform to bring us back to the 1830s. Cuccinelli, to cheers from the Tea Party crowd, went to court this week to overturn the new law, which he says...
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Barack Obama's campaign promise of change did not include a pledge to transform American conservatism.
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Liberals may lament the administration’s failure to make progress on immigration and climate-change legislation in this congressional session, but it may be time to shift energies to protecting what has already been passed.
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It is commonly accepted that any entity that is part of the Catholic health-care ministry must offer its services in a manner consistent with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services [PDF] (ERDs), a publication of...
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As if our political system was not having enough trouble already, we now confront the possibility that a highly partisan judiciary will undo a modest health-care reform that is a first step toward resolving a slew of other difficulties.
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The stars may—just—be aligned to squeeze a national health-care bill out of Congress within the next month or two. Both houses have (barely) passed bills, and now they must cobble together a lowest-common-denominator consensus that can survive one...
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This year's elections may exacerbate the difference between our two political parties, but not in the way most people are talking about.
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Does it ever seem to you, when you spy those lonely cigarette smokers puffing away outside offices, or sip the crystalline air in a bar, that overnight we have awakened to a post-tobacco world?
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Now, two people will have to choose. The fate of the health care bill is largely in the hands of Barack Obama and Olympia Snowe.
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WASHINGTON--It was not the soaring rhetoric that is Barack Obama's signature, but he recently offered the sound bite that may define his presidency: "Don't bet against us."
There are reasons to believe that his confident words--they were about...
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Wow, what big and unexpected news! Reforming the health-care system is really hard, and Republicans want President Obama to fail. Imagine that.
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It now seems clear that political pressures have transformed President Barack Obama’s health-care reform plan into a health-insurance reform plan. Some commentators have protested that this transformation will result in a reform package too limited...
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WASHINGTON -- This is the paradox of the moment: President Barack Obama's speech on Afghanistan and his subsequent jobs summit underscored why it's essential to get a health care bill done quickly. The calendar of politics has an urgency that the...
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WASHINGTON -- Reaching agreement on a health care bill is harder in theory than it will be in practice.
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As we go to press, the fate of President Barack Obama’s health-care reform legislation remains unclear. So do the prospects for his presidency and for the nation’s politics and future.
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The word "partisanship" is typically accompanied by the word "mindless." That's not simply insulting to partisans; it's also untrue.
If we learn nothing else in 2010, can we please finally acknowledge that our partisan divisions are about authentic...
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Yes, we did.
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Toward the end of the health-care battle, a beleaguered Obama staff member sent me an e-mail that ended with the words: "Sisyphus was a sissy compared to what we've been through!"
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In an election, a solid "no" usually beats an uneasy "yes, but." That's the heart of the problem Democrats and President Barack Obama face this fall.
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Is the tea party one of the most successful scams in American political history?
Before you dismiss the question, note that word successful. Judge the tea party purely on the grounds of effectiveness and you have to admire how a very small group has...
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The Democratic Party is likely to receive a harsh rebuke in November’s midterm elections. Republicans will probably take control of the House of Representatives, while a loss of seven or eight Democratic Senate seats may bring even greater gridlock...
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Visit dotCommonweal to discuss the election results.
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The lame-duck session of Congress that kicks off this week will test whether Democrats have spines made of Play-Doh, and whether President Barack Obama has decided to pretend that capitulation is conciliation.
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President Barack Obama's call for "a more civil and honest public discourse" will get its first test much sooner than we expected.
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A great national debate is about to be played out in the Supreme Court. The question presented is whether we may all be required to buy insurance under the Obama health-care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act of 2010. Can...
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Less than a year after being passed into law, the Democrats’ health-care reform is under renewed attack on two fronts.
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With prospects quite good for a Democratic Congress and administration in 2009, the United States is on the brink of joining all other industrialized nations in ensuring the provision of some form of basic health care for all Americans.
