Gingrich Rebukes 'Anti-Christian Bigotry'
Newt Gingrich called out the Obama Administration and news media for their “anti-Christian bias” in a debate on Saturday night. He also claimed that the Catholic Church is being slandered against because of its views on homosexuality.
“I just want to raise - since we’ve spent this much time on these issues - I just want to raise a point about the news media bias. You don’t hear the opposite question asked. Should the Catholic Church be forced to close its adoption services in Massachusetts because it won’t accept gay couples, which is exactly what the state has done?”
Gingrich was referencing an act in 2006, when Catholic Charities announced it would close its adoption agency in Boston after the passing of a state law prohibiting agencies from refusing to place children with gay couples. President Father J. Bryan Hehir stated, “We have encountered a dilemma we cannot resolve. In spite of much effort and analysis, Catholic Charities of Boston finds that it cannot reconcile the teaching of the Church, which guides our work, and the statutes and regulations of the commonwealth.”
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Gingrich continued, “Should the Catholic Church find itself discriminated against by the Obama administration on key delivery of services because of the bias and the bigotry of the administration? The bigotry question goes both ways. And there’s a lot more anti-Christian bigotry today than there is concerning the other side. And none of it gets covered by the news media.”
In Dec. 2011, the House of Representatives’ Committee on Oversight and Government Reform investigated “the process used by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement to award grants that fund many types of care and services.”
Under President George W. Bush, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops received a five-year grant to help victims of sex trafficking. When it was time to be renewed, though, the Obama Administration denied its request, instead awarding money to three other charities.
Representative Darrell Issa, the committee’s chairman, stated, “These actions appear to constitute an abuse of discretion and undermine the integrity of the process, while potentially violating the spirit, if not the letter, of federal laws and regulations that prohibit discrimination based on religious beliefs.”
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops formed a Committee on Religious Liberty last year. Chairman Bishop William Lori stated, “We seek protection by law and acceptance in our culture of intermediate institutions such as the family, churches and schools, which stand between the power of the government and the conscience of individuals, all while contributing immensely to the common good.”
Cardinal Donald Wuerl added, “We serve people all over this nation. What we don’t do is violate the conscience of all of us involved. There’s some things we won’t do, but that should be respected because it’s always been respected.”
Gingrich was raised Lutheran but wrote in the National Catholic Register, “Over the course of several years, I gradually became Catholic and then decided one day to accept the faith I had already come to embrace.”
In 2011, he told an audience in Columbus, Ohio, “In America, religious belief is being challenged by a cultural elite trying to create a secularized America, in which God is driven out of public life.”
