Daily links, Mon., Jan. 23, 2012: Of mandates liturgical and contraceptive, from the land of bad ideas

The new HHS mandate continues to reverberate through the blogosphere [1]. Not too many responses to my blog on the topic, though. I'm wondering if contraception is the hill to make a "religious freedom" stand on.

From the land of dumb ideas comes an Australian proposal for a universal communion on the tongue mandate [2], which would definitely violate my religious freedom. Let's hope this one goes nowhere.

In other interesting news, Catholic Healhcare West, which was in the news over the controversial abortion in a Phoenix Catholic hospital, has disaffiliated itself from its Catholic identity [3]. Hard to think that the public disagreement with Bishop Olmstead of Phoenix didn't have something to do with it.

To end on a nicer note, via Vox Nova [4] I ran across a lovely essay by Emily Rapp [5] on caring for her child who has Tay-Sachs disease about how to parent a child whose life will be cut short by this disease.