With the Catholic Church up on arms over the proposed mandate to hospitals regarding contraception, Bill O’Reilly spent a second tonight parsing out the problems the Church has with the policy. To discuss the current disagreements between the Obama administration and the Catholic Church, O’Reilly set up a full-clergy panel with Fox News’ Father Jonathan Morris and Executive Director of the Religious Institute Debra Haffner that began in a friendly tone, but ended with Rev. Haffner calling for the Catholic Church to “deal with its own sexuality problems,” which led to O’Reilly calling her “way off base.”

On Tuesday’s Morning Joe, hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski continued to tackle the controversial birth control mandate that has many religious groups and institutions — such as the Catholic Church — speaking out against it.

On Monday, the Morning Joe crew had something of a personal discussion on the White House’s new birth control mandate, which holds that most employers would have to include contraceptives in their health insurance coverage, regardless of whether that employer happens to be a religious institution. The Catholic Church in particular has been vocal about its opposition to the mandate.

Rick Santorum got into a testy exchange with Boston’s WBZ political analyst Jon Keller, who asked the Republican hopeful about his views on the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.

Before his death last week, writer Christopher Hitchens sat down for a final interview with fellow atheist Richard Dawkins for British publication New Statesman. Obviously, their skepticism about faith came up frequently in the conversation, but they also touched upon a variety of other subjects that Hitchens took on over his life.

Last week we drew attention to a reasonably absurd debate hosted by Megyn Kelly regarding a fan-created Doritos™ advertisement and whether it was blasphemous. Last night, Stephen Colbert pointed out that Doritos™ never intended for this advertisement to air, and thanked Ms. Kelly for airing the ad, giving Catholics the opportunity for outrage.

Miami’s most famous former Catholic priest, Fr. Alberto Cutié, is blasting the Church, saying there are gay priests at “all levels” and that the Church would never be able to function without them.

Cutié, who was forced out of the Diocese of Miami after photos surfaced showing the priest kissing his then girlfriend (they’re now married with a baby daughter), has now written a book, Dilemma: A Priest’s Struggle with Faith and Love, which was released today.

Beloved munchie product Doritos has declared war on the Catholic Church– or so some devotees are interpreting their latest commercial, which depicts priests substituting the crispy corn snack for the Eucharist, and giving a sort of Doritos Communion. The ad, produced for the Super Bowl, didn’t quite make the cut, but that doesn’t mean it’s not riling up the faithful.

The Vatican has announced that French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy was not allowed to join her husband, French Prime Minister Nicholas Sarkozy, on his trip to visit Pope Benedict XVI. Shortly before Mr. Sarkozy’s departure to see the Roman Catholic leader, the French ambassador received a note from the Vatican that icily read, “Carla Sarkozy is not welcome in the Vatican.”

Last week, I marveled at the stunning pattern of collective denial that allows the Catholic church to continue to exist in its present form, despite a record of willfully harming children that now traces all the way to Pope Benedict XVI.

Today, I came across the latest example of this, as Newsweek has published an infuriating piece of propaganda (a web exclusive, probably because the paper caught fire every time they tried to commit it to print), designed to mitigate the Catholic church’s vile betrayals by distorting facts and by using the victims’ silence and defenselessness against them.

While we did imply that the New York Times was perhaps a little stodgy and definitely humorless only a few hours ago, we’re pretty sure calling arguably the most respected newspaper in the world satanic is going a bit too far. However, that is just what Italian exorcist Father Gabriele Amorth implied this week when discussing the recent battle between the media (led by the Times) and the Vatican over sexual abuse charges. The Catholic News Agency is reporting that Father Amorth has claimed members of the media were “prompted by the devil” in their attacks on the church.

Sinead O’Connor, who was almost as famous in the early nineties for tearing up a picture of the Pope (John Paul II) on SNL as she was for her music (in fact, the move almost derailed ‘Sinbad’s career) has returned to weigh in on the enormous sex scandal that is rocking the Catholic Church.

Even though we’ve noticed it before, we still find Bill O’Reilly‘s transformation to a more moderate and inclusive news analyst somewhat remarkable. The latest example of tolerance demonstrated by Fox News’ alpha male is his defense of the two preschool-aged children of a Lesbian couple, who were recently expelled from a Boulder-area Catholic preschool.

The Boston Herald has printed excerpts of a letter from Senator Edward Kennedy to Pope Benedict XVI in July, hand-delivered by President Barack Obama during his Papal visit last month.