The contraception mandate uproar just keeps adding volume; the Obama administration seems to have made everyone in the Catholic world mad. Bishops wrote letters to be read from the pulpit over the weekend; Phoenix Bishop Thomas Olmsted is threatening civil disobedience, and everyone agrees the president threw his Catholic supporters under a bus. Sometime U.S. Catholic contributor, Lutheran minister, and church historian Martin Marty suggests a do-over, while The New York Times documents the struggles of women on Catholic college campuses to get a prescription for birth control pills–along with asking whether access to birth control reduces abortions. USC’s own Scott Alessi wonders if Catholics will answer the bishop’s call. I have a feeling we might hear something more about this from the administration before too long.
Looking abroad, the pope released two peace doves during the Angelus yesterday–which promptly flew back into the papal apartments, not convinced the world is all that open to peace. (Thank God B16 didn’t release them in Florida! Best wait until the GOP primary campaign leaves town.) The new translation of the Roman Missal arrived in New Delhi on Epiphany, but in at least one parish it doesn’t seem to have taken yet.
And in news that makes me truly happy, two Canadian teens have picked up where NASA has left off, sending the first Legonaut into space. Don’t miss the video.
