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WASHINGTON—The Vatican has approved the publication of the "Rite for the Blessing of a Child in the Womb," which will be printed in English and Spanish in a combined booklet and should be available for parishes by Mothers' Day. The U.S. bishops who collaborated on the development of the blessing welcomed the announcement of the recognitio, or approval, by the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments in Rome.

"I'm impressed with the beauty of this blessing for human life in the womb," said Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). "I can think of no better...

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Americans across the religious and non-religious spectrum alike have taken umbrage to the President’s demand that they pay for contraceptives and abortion pills for other Americans whether they like it or not. And as a result, they’re banding together to remind the nation that this affront to religious freedom is a fight created not by religious groups, but wholly by the Obama administration.

President Obama, for his part, claimed he would augment the mandate so as to “accommodate” those who wanted to opt-out on religious grounds. However, on the same day he published his discriminatory rule “without change.”   But even if some change materializes it will more or less be a fiction...

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A leading Catholic Cardinal says Catholic hospitals in the United States may close in just two years under the new mandate the Obama administration put in place forcing them to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions for their employees.

Cardinal Francis George of Chicago complains that the Catholic Church is being “despoiled of her institutions” as “freedom of conscience and of religion become a memory from a happier past.” He says the Obama administration is saying “the Catholic Church in the United States is being told she must ‘give up’ her health care institutions, her universities and many of her social service organizations.”

“So far in American hi...