“The topic is particularly germane to Rhode Island voters because their state is home to a facility that will help manufacture new nuclear-armed submarines,” according to a news release, making reference to Electric Boat. “In addition, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed serves as ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and Rep. James Langevin serves on the House Armed Services Committee.”

One of Wednesday’s speakers, Dr. Lisbeth Gronlund, co-director of the Global Security Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said, “As a long-standing member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Reed has an important role to play in ensuring that the U.S. spends its defense dollars wisely. Current plans to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build a whole new generation of nuclear weapons are not just a waste of money but would undermine U.S. security.”

Gronlund plans to speak about “what President Obama—and the next president—should do to reduce the odds that nuclear weapons are used again. She’ll discuss the administration’s plan to build a whole new generation of nuclear bombs, missiles and submarines, which will cost roughly $1 trillion in coming decades. She also will call on the president to remove land-based nuclear missiles from hair-trigger alert, which sets the stage for an accidental nuclear launch,” according to the news release.

The United States is the only nation to ever use a nuclear weapon. In August on 1945, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, effectively ending the war with Japan.

Dr. Stephen Colecchi, the director of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Office of International Justice and Peace, will also speak at the event in Providence on Wednesday night.

“The Catholic Church at its highest levels has supported nuclear disarmament as a moral imperative for decades,” Colecchi said, according to the news release. “Saint Pope John XXIII called for a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons in 1963.  Pope Benedict reminded us that in a nuclear war there would be ‘no victors, only victims.’ And Pope Francis has asserted that ‘spending on nuclear weapons squanders the wealth of nations.’”

Bishop Thomas Tobin will be at Wednesday’s event, but it’s unclear if he agrees with Catholic teachings on nuclear disarmament. In May, he expressed some level of support for foreign wars to NBC10.

“Of course I’m against wars, I don’t know anyone who is in favor of wars,” Tobin said. “I think it was St. John Paul who said war is always a defeat for humanity. It’s never good.” But, he added, “Sometimes there are prudential judgments.”

He continued, “The Catholic Church has a long tradition of talking about a ‘just war theory’. It is never to say someone is just in starting a war, but we certainly believe in the right of self defense. What would someone do to respond to the attacks of terrorism, of ISIS, the terrible persecution of Christians taking place in the Middle East, the attacks on our own country or in France or in Belgium? How do we respond to these violent terrorist attacks without having some means of self defense. That’s where I think someone providing legitimate armaments and self defense has a legitimate role to play. Again, no one is in favor of war.”

Tobin sidestepped weighing in on the the other issue the Catholic Church and the Union of Concerned Scientists agree on – climate change. After Pope Francis called upon Catholic churches to take a stand against climate change, Tobin said, ““The pope’s message deserves careful study and prudent discussion by Catholics and all those concerned about this issue.”

“The Bishops of the United States have supported the passage of comprehensive immigration reform in our nation for many years.  Until that finally happens, particular, ad-hoc issues such as providing drivers licenses for undocumented individuals will inevitably arise.

“I wish to express my support for the proposal to provide special, limited licenses for undocumented individuals in Rhode Island.  It seems to be a rather practical approach that will obtain information about individuals who are already driving in our State.  Additionally it will, in the long run, promote public safety. It is common sense legislation that will do much more good than harm.

“Our Holy Father Pope Francis has reminded us that he himself is the son of an immigrant family, and he has urged Americans to welcome immigrants into our midst.  “I am certain that, as so often in the past, these immigrants will enrich America and its Church,” the Holy Father said.

“As the current proposal is debated, I encourage all parties to discuss the issue in a reasonable and constructive way, and to work together to promote the common good of our community.”

Tobin’s stance puts him at odds with his right-wing talk radio fan John DePetro, and at odds with the Republican Party, of which Tobin is a member.

Tobin’s letter was read at State Rep Anastasia Williams‘ press conference held today at the State House.

Thousands of HealthSource RI subscribers lost medical coverage for abortion this year, and most had no idea this was happening.

Under new policies mandated by Governor Gina Raimondo, insurers must now offer one plan that does not cover abortion at every level in which they offer a plan that does. As a result of the Governor’s actions and a minor change in the law that allows insurers to re-enroll subscribers into new health plans if their previous plan no longer exists, 9,000 out of 32,000 families have lost this crucial coverage.

Raimondo made two decisions earlier this year that lead to this crisis. First, she settled the Doe v. Burwell lawsuit when she didn’t have to. Doe, who chose to remain anonymous because of his HIV+ status, claimed that he was unable, due to his religious beliefs, to contribute money to any health plan that covered abortion, and that his needs as an HIV+ man meant that waiting until 2017 for the one plan that does not cover abortion mandated under federal law was not practical.

Doe was represented in his lawsuit by the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) and supported by both RI Right to Life and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence. It was far from certain that Doe and the ADF would win the suit since HealthSource RI was operating fully in accordance with Federal law and accommodations had been offered to Doe.

But Raimondo caved, and caved hard. After settling a case she did not have to, she went further than existing federal law and submitted legislation mandating that insurers offer multiple plans that omit abortion coverage. Every insurer was forced to offer a plan at every tier of coverage. Federal law mandates that at least one plan on a state exchange offer no coverage for abortion. Raimondo insisted on what amounts to nine plans.

All insurers on the HealthSource RI exchange had to roll out new plans. Two insurers decided to modify existing plans as well, which meant that many health plan subscribers had to be moved to whichever new plans were deemed most similar to their old plan. Whether or not the new plan covered abortion was not a consideration.

According to the Providence Journal, “Out of HealthSource’s three insurers, two mapped subscribers into plans with limited abortion coverage — Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island and Neighborhood Health Plan of Rhode Island. United Healthcare did not.”

Now, 9,000 families are without abortion coverage, unless they change their enrollment by December 23. Many more people, when looking at the new plans on offer, may switch into plans that do not cover abortion – not because they are anti-choice, but because some of the anti-choice plans might appear to be cheaper.

Figuring out which plans are cheaper is a difficult, if not impossible task. There is the monthly fee to consider, but there are also differences among plans in terms of deductibles, medication costs and co-pays. Ultimate cost may depend more on usage than monthly contributions. Figuring out how much a family saves by choosing an abortion free plan may be an exercise in futility, even though the law requires such plans to be cheaper, if only by a few cents.

Nobody plans on having an abortion, so abortion coverage is often not a big consideration when choosing a healthcare plan. Those who may find themselves most at risk of discovering they are suddenly out of pocket for abortion expenses are young adults covered under their parent’s healthcare plan until age 26. Others at risk include couples who might want to have a baby, but encounter a crisis at a late stage. Costs associated with additional testing and termination of a nonviable late term pregnancy can be in the tens of thousands of dollars and require a hospital stay.

As a result, some families will face the kind of financial ruin that Obamacare was instituted to prevent.

This is the kind of information that may have been revealed had Raimondo introduced her legislation openly, as a bill submitted to the General Assembly to be debated and commented on by the public. Instead, the governor slipped these changes into the budget as an eleventh hour amendment and with as little fanfare as possible. It worked: the measure passed with little outcry.

Just before Governor Raimondo signed the budget into law, mandating the changes that have resulted in thousands losing abortion coverage, Barth Bracy, executive director of RI Right to Life, said, “Due to the complexity of Obamacare, and its implementation in Rhode Island, neither the media nor our opponents at Planned Parenthood and in the pro-abortion caucus of the General Assembly, yet appear to understand the extent of our victory.”

I guess now we do.

If Governor Raimondo is truly a pro-choice candidate, she has a strange way of showing it. No recent RI governor has been nearly as successful in stripping families of their reproductive rights.

• As I watched the demonstrations, I wondered if Bishop Tobin was aware that the videos presented to the public by the anti-choice group Center for Medical Progress, the videos that inspired these protests, are hoaxes made to fool gullible people? These videos are amateurishly edited lies, as any Google search will show. (See: Snopes, Wonkette, MediaMatters and LittleGreenFootballs) Could the Bishop have checked the Internet before continuing to spread false witness?

• I wondered if Rhode Island Catholics are aware that under the leadership of Bishop Tobin, the Providence Diocese has made a habit of teaming up with extremist anti-LGBTQ hate groups? The national sponsors of the “Day of Protest” against Planned Parenthood included:

–American Family Association is listed as a hate group with the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). For just a flavor of the sickening things this group has said, I’ll supply one quote from Bryan Fischer, director of issue analysis for government and public policy: “Homosexuality gave us Adolph Hitler, and homosexuals in the military gave us the Brown Shirts, the Nazi war machine and six million dead Jews.”

–Family Research Council is also listed as an anti-LGBTQ hate group by the SPLC, whose senior Fellow for Policy Studies, Peter Sprigg, said, against all evidence to the contrary, that, “We believe the evidence shows … that relative to the size of their population, homosexual men are more likely to engage in child sexual abuse than are heterosexual men.”

-Besides the SPLC identified hate groups, the Planned Parenthood protest event was also backed by Operation Rescue, which has been linked to violent anti-choice extremists.

-Saturday was not the first time Tobin has sided himself with extremist hate groups. In 2013, Tobin gave his blessing to FAPSMEG, an anti-marriage equality coalition that counted MassResistance, another certified SPLC hate group, among its members. MassResistance executive director Brian Camenker even came to RI to testify against marriage equality as part of the coalition.

Do Rhode Island Catholics really want to be allies with hate groups?

• Is the general public aware that the Catholic Church doesn’t simply oppose abortion, they also oppose most common forms of birth control such as condoms, birth control pills and IUDs? At least one group sponsoring the Planned Parenthood protests, the American Life League, (ALA) is opposed to “abortion under any circumstance” and “all forms of contraception, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia.” The ALA is “the largest Catholic grassroots pro-life organization in the United States.”

Now, this might be a fine way for believing Catholics to live, but the Church would see its beliefs imposed on everyone, through law. America, and specifically Rhode Island, was founded on very different principles. Here, we separate church and state.

• The Catholic Church in Rhode Island pays no taxes, yet exerts an out-sized influence on Rhode Island’s politics. At least three state legislators were outside Planned Parenthood with the protesters. I saw Representatives Raymond Hull, Robert Lancia and Justin Price. We should ask ourselves: How are laws shaped by Catholic theology fundamentally different from sharia law?

• Women’s rights to privacy, medical care and freedom of conscience are under attack across the country. The ugly manifestations of this are starting to be felt in Rhode island. Governor Gina Raimondo, who sought the endorsement of Planned Parenthood, has shown herself to be no champion of reproductive rights. Rhode Island has a proud tradition of standing against intolerance, fear and ignorance. When will we demand leadership that will stand against these pernicious attacks on our fundamental freedoms?

With this in mind, I hope you will join me in making a donation to Planned Parenthood.

Despite having more Roman Catholics than any other state in the country, no Pope has ever visited Rhode Island. In September Pope Francis will be the fourth Pope to visit the United States in what will be the tenth papal visit to our shores.

The first Pope to visit the United States, or even the Western Hemisphere, was Paul VI in 1965. He limited his visit to New York. He met with President Lyndon Johnson, spoke before the United Nations, held a mass at Yankee Stadium and visited the New York World’s Fair, cramming a lot into a 14 hour visit.

Pope John Paul II , 14 years later, made his first of seven visits to the United States. This Pope visited Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Washington, Des Moines, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Miami, Columbia, New Orleans, San Antonio, Phoenix, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit, Denver, Newark, Brooklyn, Baltimore and St. Louis over 20 years of visits.

Benedict XVI was the last Pope to visit the United States, arriving in Washington and visiting New York in 2008.

In Rhode Island, Catholics make up about 44 percent of the population, the highest in the nation. But if Rhode Island Catholics want to catch a glimpse of their spiritual leader, they need to travel to where he is. That’s why the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence is leading a pilgrimage of 400 faithful to Philadelphia, where the Pope is speaking before the World Meeting of Families.

Pope Francis, while being true to his predecessors on the subjects of reproductive rights and homosexuality, (he’s against both) has nonetheless upset conservative Catholics in the United States with his stance on the environment and capitalism (which he has compared to “the devil’s dung.”)

Quoted in Politico, Sam Clovis, a Catholic and political activist who’s run for US Senate and state treasurer in Iowa said, “In northwest Iowa, we are discussing this a great deal, and sometimes it’s hard for us to reconcile the pronouncements we read from the Holy Father with our conservative principles.”

Meanwhile, Republican Catholics running for president, such as Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and Rick Santorum are all trying to differentiate between what their Catholic faith compels them to believe and what are merely the opinions of Pope Francis. The same politicians who once said to Catholics in support of LGBTQ and reproductive rights that such positions were impossible to square with true Catholicism are now facing the same criticism themselves on the issues of economic and environmental justice.

Locally, we are seeing similar reactions to Pope Francis. Conservative Catholic blogger Justin Katz wrote a piece last month for the ProJo in which he asked, “What’s the deal with Pope Francis?” Katz is examining Catholic theology as a way of navigating the difficult questions Francis poses to conservative Catholics.

Bishop Thomas Tobin of the Providence Diocese has publicly proclaimed his disappointment with Pope Francis, saying “…he hasn’t, at least that I’m aware of, said much about unborn children, about abortion, and many people have noticed that.” Tobin, who publicly switched his political party affiliation from Democrat to Republican, has received a fair amount of criticism for this and other remarks about his boss.

Even Bernard Healey, the Catholic priest who lobbies the RI General Assembly on behalf of the Providence Catholic Diocese, has dinged Pope Francis, beginning testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 25th with a guilty smile, saying, “I would quote Pope Francis, who is widely quoted in the media. You probably missed this quote, they normally miss the ones that I agree with,” implying that he disagrees with much of what Pope Francis has been saying.

Nationally, 54 percent of Catholics support same-sex marriage. 66 percent think abortion is at least sometimes justified. 69 percent support contraception. Given such numbers, it seems the Catholic Church is out of step with American Catholics on the political left as well as the right.

Yet here in Rhode Island the Catholic Church exerts formidable political power. The governor, speaker of the House and Senate president are all at least nominally Catholic, as are many members of the General Assembly. Tobin has his own part time lobbyist working our part time legislature. Politically speaking, the Roman Catholic Church is a power player here in Rhode Island and that means that in order to understand our state, we have to understand the dynamics of political Catholicism.

And to do that, you have to understand the Pope.

Since Pope Francis isn’t coming to Rhode Island, RI Future is going to the Pope. To do that, we’re running a GoFundMe campaign to secure the $1000 I’ll need to cover train travel, food, lodging and other expenses. Over the course of five days, from September 23-27, I’ll be in Washington DC, New York City and Philadelphia, covering the Pope’s visit in my unique way.

This will be very different coverage. Readers of this blog know that I am an outspoken atheist, progressive and democratic socialist. I won’t just be covering the Pope, I’ll be covering the people I meet. There will be protesters, critics and supporters. I’ve never done anything like this before, so I expect my coverage to be unlike anything I’ve done before as well.

Consider donating, and let’s see what I can pull off.

Correction: After this piece was published I received the following communication from Carolyn Cronin, Director of Communications for the Diocese of Providence:

“The article you are referencing in your piece was an editorial in the RI Catholic newspaper.  Bishop Tobin is the publisher, but he does not write or review the editorials. It is a separate opinion of the paper. So to attribute those quotes to him are not accurate. I would appreciate the clarification.”

When I asked Cronin what Bishop Tobin’s views on payday lending are, I received this reply:

“The Bishop supports the traditional teaching of the Church, but has not made any specific statements about pending legislation. Father Healey represents the diocese on this and other issues at the Statehouse.”

The piece below has been modified to reflect the fact that the statements made in Rhode Island Catholic should not be attributed to Bishop Tobin.

I regret the error.

The Rhode Island Catholic newspaper came out against payday loans in an editorial.

After referring to such loans as “heresy” Rhode Island Catholic said, “Usury, the charging of extreme interest, is condemned by Catholic doctrine. Recently Pope Benedict XVI explicitly condemned usury in his encyclical letter Caritas in Veritate. St. John Paul II called usury ‘a scourge that is also a reality in our time and that has a stranglehold on many people’s lives.’”

“Rhode Islanders,” continued Rhode Island Catholic, “especially R.I. Catholics, should stand up against payday lending, the usury of our time. The extremely poor need protections from what appears their only option in a challenging economy. Extreme rates of interests, with little chance of payment in a timely fashion, are not the way to grow a healthy economy. Instead, the poor need regulations against financial charlatans who seek the economic ruin of those on the margins.”

That usurious lending is ideologically opposed in Catholic theology should come as no surprise to Speaker of the House Nicholas Mattiello, a lifelong Catholic, who continues to oppose reform.

“The case has not been made to me to terminate an industry in our state,” said Mattiello last month, “The arguments against payday lending tend to be ideological in nature.”

This would not be the first time that Mattiello has found himself politically at odds with his putative faith. A Providence Journal report, published shortly after his accession to speaker, says, “A Roman Catholic who for half his life had been a lector at Immaculate Conception Church, in Cranston, Mattiello opposed gay marriage. His view changed, he says, as society became more accepting and the issue became one of equality. Today, Mattiello says his vote to legalize gay marriage is one ‘that I am proud of,’ even though it cost him his lector position.”

Mattiello’s recent statement on payday loans is no different than the view he expressed back in March 2014, when he said, “Payday lending is a hot button issue, but the consumer likes the product. It’s an ideological approach. I will make my decisions based on evidence and how it actually impacts people and our economy. I’ve asked for evidence on that issue in the past in my position as House majority leader and I’ve been promised a dozen times over, and I’ve never gotten evidence on that.”

What evidence Mattiello is looking for is hard to imagine, given that year after year the House Finance Committee hears testimony from the AARP, the Economic Progress Institute, Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless, Rhode Island AFL-CIO and the Rhode Island Payday Lending Coalition. These groups present reams of evidence detailing the harmful effects of payday loans to both individuals the state’s economy.

To some, Mattiello’s willful ignorance about the plain evils of payday loans seems predicated on the special relationship he has with the payday loan industry’s paid lobbyist. According to RI Monthly, former Speaker of the House William Murphy, who is the paid lobbyist for the payday loan company Advance America Cash Advance Centers, is “like a brother” to Mattiello. “In 1994, Mattiello ushered at Murphy’s wedding.” In 2006 Murphy encouraged Mattiello to go into politics, starting him on his path to speaker of the house.

One of Speaker Mattiello’s favorite words is “outlier” in that he claims he doesn’t want Rhode Island to be one. “Rhode Island is one of only 13 states with an income tax on Social Security,” said Mattiello, “and I am tired of our state being an outlier.”

Sam Wroblewski, at WPRO, writes, “Mattiello said not assessing fees to out-of-state trucking operations makes Rhode Island an outlier in the northeast.”

One way that Rhode Island is an outlier that doesn’t seem to bother Mattiello is payday loans.

“Rhode Island payday loans are authorized to carry charges as high as 260% APR,” says the Economic Policy Institute, “Payday lenders can charge this rate in Rhode Island because in 2001, payday lenders received a special exemption from the state’s usury laws, making RI the only state in the Northeast to do so. The exemption enables licensed check cashers to make payday loans as at 260% rather than complying with the state’s small loan laws.”

Apparently, being an outlier is okay if one of your best friends is making $50,000 a year.

It seems clear that the day Nicholas Mattiello will allow a vote on the abolition or restructuring of payday lending laws here in Rhode Island is the day that Advance America decides to stop employing Mattiello’s friend Bill Murphy as a lobbyist. Until that day, the poor will continue to be exploited and money will continue to be sucked out of Rhode Island communities.

Catholic ideology be damned.