Catholic Bishops, Religious Liberty, and Doomsday

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops held its Spring General Assembly in Atlanta this week.

This meeting had a greater sense of urgency than others because of the looming deadline for complying with the Obama government's health care mandate and its infringement on the religious liberty of Catholics.

From FOX News:

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, says, realistically, doomsday could come when none of the bishop’s advocacy, dialogues or appeals to the courts work.

Dolan says, “If doomsday comes, what are we going to do? Are we going to disobey the government? Are we going to pay the fine? Are we going to go out of business?... I hope we don’t come to that, but we have to be realistic in anticipating it.”

Adding to the unknowns is the fact that Dolan and President Barack Obama have not spoken since February 10. There have been lower level talks between the administration and the USCCB, but the two have not been in dialogue for several months. Dolan believes it’s because the president is not ready to make a deal.

Dolan says, “It’s not good to talk just to be talking. He knows where we stand, and we make it pretty clearly, we’ve made it pretty cogently I trust, and I think he knows, ‘well I owe it to them if we had something substantive to offer.’”

In the last few months, more than 40 Catholic Institutions and dioceses have filed a federal lawsuit against Health and Human Services and its health care mandate, which requires that all employers offer contraceptives and other benefits that bishops say violate church teaching. The Obama administration offered an accommodation that would make contraceptives free to the employee. The insurer would then pick up the tab. But many Catholic institutions are self-insured, so the accommodation still put them back in the same situation. The Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio dropped its health insurance coverage for students this fall, rather than comply with the federal mandate to provide free birth control.

The other issue is how each side has defined the conflict.

The Obama administration has defined it more narrowly as being about contraceptives and reproductive rights.

The bishops, however, say this is about the much larger foundational issue of Religious liberty, and that the government can’t define for them what constitutes a church.

..."We’re not the ones who asked for this fight. Things were existing just fine and then they said ‘oh guess what, we have a view that certain services should be available to everyone and paid for, and we’re going to impose that view on you so you go ahead and pay for it. And we say, you want to do that fine, don’t make us do it and don’t define what our ministries have to do to get out of that violation of conscience. So the imposition, the lines in the sand seem to be coming from the other side."

Looking forward, the bishops are gearing up for a two-week, nationwide campaign starting next week called “Fortnight for Freedom.” Some seventy dioceses, and growing, across the country will sponsor prayer, sermons and town hall meetings to inform the faithful about what the church is facing.

Here's video:



I have been a practicing Catholic my entire life.

There has never been anything like the nationwide "Fortnight for Freedom" campaign. There was never a need.

What Obama is demanding of Catholics should give pause to people of any faith.

Obama is disregarding the Bill of Rights.

Why Obama has decided to assault Catholics by infringing upon the freedom we are guaranteed by the First Amendment is beyond me.

Not a good move in an election year by a president seeking a second term.