If the U.S. Dept of Health and Human Services "thought the outrage voiced by various cardinals, bishops, and countless lay Catholics over the anti-conscience mandate was mere bluster, they got a wake-up call yesterday,"
writes David Catron at the
American Spectator.
On Monday, 43 high-profile Catholic
organizations, including the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. and
the University of Notre Dame, filed suit against the Obama
administration. In an open letter, the Archbishop of Washington
summed up the collective position of the plaintiffs by
explaining that the mandate "fundamentally redefines the nation's
long-standing definition of religious ministry… HHS's conception of
what constitutes the practice of religion is so narrow that even
Mother Teresa would not have qualified."
[snip]
As a new website launched
yesterday by the Archdiocese of Washington phrases it, "This
lawsuit is about an unprecedented attack by the federal government
on one of America's most cherished freedoms: the freedom to
practice one's religion without government interference." And the
Obama administration has obviously launched this assault on
religious liberty in an effort to propitiate the feminist left,
whose support it apparently deems more valuable than that of
millions of Catholics and countless other people of faith. This is
a bad call.
As Catron points out, "Catholic organizations provide services to more Americans than any other entity except the federal government itself."
Its 600 health care institutions, for example, provide care to one in six patients treated in the United
States every year. Catholic schools provide education to millions
of elementary and secondary school children, while more than a
million students attend the nation's 200 Catholic colleges and
universities. And it is this very ubiquity that is the real target
of the anti-conscience mandate. The "fundamental transformation"
Obama and his accomplices wish to inflict upon America can't be
managed while large, autonomous institutions like the Catholic
Church and its charitable organizations remain in place.
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