Washington D.C., Feb 6, 2012 / 07:18 pm (CNA).- Professor Doug Kmiec, a Catholic supporter of Barack Obama in the 2008 election, has rebuked the president, saying he may withdraw his endorsement over the federal contraception coverage mandate.
 
“Where is the common good, sir, in not making room for the great Catholic traditions of education, health care, and meeting the needs of the least among us?” Kmiec asked the president in a letter he made public Feb. 6 through the website Catholic Online.

On the same day, the Washington, D.C. newspaper The Hill published excerpts of an e-mail from Kmiec saying he was “now unhappily without a candidate,” until he could “have an opportunity to speak with the president” about Health and Human Services' new rules on contraception coverage.

“This matter goes to the heart of who we are as a people,” Kmiec stated in his letter to the president, as he went on to ask why Obama would “put the cold calculus of politics above faith and freedom.”

The Pepperdine University professor, who served as U.S. ambassador to Malta from 2009 to 2011, suggested the president was forcing him to choose between “friendship” and his “duty to faith and country.”

“The Barack Obama I knew would never have asked me to make that choice,” he wrote.

On Jan. 20, Health and Human Services finalized rules on “preventive services,” which will take effect under the health care law signed by President Obama.

Over 160 U.S. Catholic bishops have spoken out against the mandate, which will require religious employers to cover contraception and sterilization. An exemption exists only for institutions that primarily work to “inculcate religious values” and mainly employ and serve members of their own faith.

In his e-mail to The Hill, Kmiec said he was left wondering, “Why exactly did we not walk down a path that would have led to common ground – namely, coverage without ethical objection?

“That’s what I need answered before deciding on 2012,” he wrote.

The former Maltese ambassador said he found it “most troubling to be tossed into this dilemma,” since he remains “very proud of the president’s success on the healthcare initiative” and other issues.

Both Kmiec's letter to the president, and his e-mail to The Hill, show a stronger opposition to the mandate than he had previously expressed in the run-up to the final rule.

During 2011, the former ambassador had called for a broader religious exemption, while simultaneously maintaining that even a universal mandate would not infringe on religious freedom.

In a Nov. 22 National Catholic Reporter column, he said there was “no violation of religious liberty when HHS announces a temporary or permanent regulation requiring all employers – religious or nonreligious, Catholic or not – to provide employees with an insurance benefit for artificial contraception.”

Religious freedom, Kmiec said in that essay, would only have been violated if the department had “demanded a religious employer to affirmatively endorse or require the use of artificial contraception or any other choice contrary to its own teaching.”

A vast majority of the U.S. bishops, however, have declared that the rule violates the Church's rights over its own ministries.

While Kmiec stopped short of explicitly reversing his past defense of the mandate, his rebuke of the president contained strong words on the topic of religious freedom.

Kmiec said the president's profession of faith at the Feb. 3 National Prayer Breakfast had “touched neither soul nor heart in the room,” coming just two weeks after his administration finalized the contraception rule over the objections of Catholics and others.

“In deciding against a reasonable accommodation of Catholic concerns in the implementation of the health care program, you lost sight of your own beliefs … The polite, but tepid applause this morning was a sign of concern that you have lost your way on this most essential topic.”

Kmiec warned the president that he had “already lost the votes” of many “people of independent mind.”

A self-described pro-life Catholic and Republican, Kmiec served as a constitutional legal counsel to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He caused controversy in 2008 by endorsing Barack Obama, arguing that his policies could reduce abortion without making it illegal.

Kmiec had previously worked as an adviser to Mitt Romney during his bid for the 2008 Republican nomination, until Romney's withdrawal from the race. In a February 2008 Slate column, Kmiec noted that Romney had spoken out “in defense of the best traditions of religious liberty” during his campaign.

Jackson, Miss., Feb 6, 2012 / 06:33 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A federal court’s dismissal “with prejudice” of a 2002 lawsuit by five U.S. state commissioners against the Holy See shows the Vatican had “nothing to do” with a multi-million dollar criminal scheme against insurance companies, the Holy See’s U.S. attorney Jeffrey Lena said.

The suit charged that the Holy See had engaged in criminal fraud and racketeering in violation of federal law.

The allegations against the Holy See “make good fodder for conspiracy theorists,” said Lena, who added that journalists who “enthusiastically” publicized the allegations should “write with equal vigor upon the cases’ demise.”

State insurance regulators sued the Holy See for $600 million in 2002 in connection with the actions of financier Martin Frankel.

Frankel and his co-conspirators allegedly acquired several insurance companies from 1991 to 1999 in Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas and illegally used the companies’ money for his own gain.

The Vatican was first approached by Frankel’s associates under the false pretense that Frankel, who used the pseudonym “David Rosse,” was a wealthy U.S. financier who wanted to donate millions of dollars to the Church to help the poor, Lena said in a Feb. 2 statement.

Frankel proposed the creation and funding of a charitable foundation in the Vatican, allegedly intending to use the foundation in an ongoing scheme to buy insurance companies and illegally exploit them.

“The Holy See categorically rejected the notion that ‘Rosse’ could ever create a Vatican foundation,” Lena said, citing a 1998 letter from then-Holy See Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano which said no such foundation could ever be created.

Frankel then created a false foundation in the British Virgin Islands named the St. Francis of Assisi Foundation to Serve and Help the Poor and Alleviate Suffering. He claimed the organization was affiliated with the Holy See and that John Paul II had personally authorized the funding.

According to Lena, the Vatican never received any money from Frankel.

“Through these machinations, the Holy See became the unwitting victim of Frankel’s fraud, which sought to trade on the Holy See’s name and reputation to continue to purchase and loot insurance companies,” the attorney commented.

Lena said the lawsuit was filed despite the fact that the Holy See never received money from Frankel.

The lawsuit was not dismissed because of a settlement agreement, he added. Rather, the insurance commissioners filed for dismissal of their own accord.

“As today’s dismissal with prejudice shows, the state insurance regulators’ decision to sue the Holy See for Frankel’s crimes was unsupported by the evidence,” said Lena, who reported that before the lawsuit was filed two government investigations concluded that state insurance regulators had allowed Frankel’s scheme to continue uninterrupted.

Lena suggested that state regulators sued the Holy See despite the findings of the U.S. Government Accounting Office and the Tennessee Comptroller that they bore “much of the blame” for allowing the scheme to continue.

Born in a wealthy family in 1562  at Tounucumada, Japan, the son of a military leader, Paul Miki felt a call to religious life from his youth. He became a Jesuit in 1580 after being educated at the Jesuit college at Anziquiama. He became a successful evangelist, and when the political climate became hostile to Christianity, he decided to continue his ministry and was soon arrested. On his way to martydom, he and other imprisoned Christians were marched 600 miles so that they could be abused by, and be a lesson to, their countrymen. However, they all sang the Te Deum as they marched to the place where they would be martyred. His last sermon was delivered from the cross: "The only reason for my being killed is that I have taught the doctrine of Christ. I thank God it is for this reason that I die. I believe that I am telling the truth before I die. I know you believe me and I want to say to you all once again: Ask Christ to help you become happy. I obey Christ. After Christ's example, I forgive my persecutors. I do not hate them. I ask God to have pity on all, and I hope my blood will fall on my fellow men as a fruitful rain". He died by being stabbed with a lance while crucified at Nagasaki, Japan. Paul Miki and his companions were canonized in  1862 by Pope Pius IX.

1 The life of man upon earth is a warfare, and his days are like the days of a hireling.2 As a servant longeth for the shade, as the hireling looketh for the end of his work;3 So I also have had empty months, and have numbered to myself wearisome nights.4 If I lie down to sleep, I shall say: When shall arise? and again I shall look for the evening, and shall be filled with sorrows even till darkness.6 My days have passed more swiftly than the web is cut by the weaver, and are consumed without any hope.7 Remember that my life is but wind, and my eyes shall not return to see good things.