Statement on New Federal Rules Requiring Religious and other Employers to Provide Contraception in their Health Insurance Plans

Archbishop José H. Gomez

February 13, 2012

President Obama’s announcement on Friday concerning health care mandates is troubling and frustrating. Because unfortunately, he did not really respond to the deep moral concerns raised by America’s Catholic community.

The government is still ordering almost every U.S. employer to provide health insurance that covers birth control, sterilization and abortion-causing drugs free of charge.

As I have said before, this does not make sense as a public health policy priority. Worse, it will force millions of Americans to have to violate their consciences or risk the penalties of breaking the law — penalties that include possibly millions of dollars in fines.

The President now says that Church hospitals, schools and charities will not have to pay directly for their employees’ contraception; instead our insurance companies will.  This is frustrating because it completely misses the point. The issue here is not one of bookkeeping or accounting. It is a matter of moral principle and religious liberty.

The government has no right to require the Catholic Church or other institutions to pay for — even indirectly — products and services that we find to be immoral and unconscionable. Again, this is not a question of contraception. It is a question of religious liberty. This mandate continues to represent a grave government intrusion on Catholic consciences and on the freedom of our Catholic institutions.

There are many other serious moral problems and unanswered questions in the President’s proposed “accommodation.”

So I join my brother bishops in the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in calling on the government to withdraw this mandate which I believe to be both unneccesary and unconstitutional. I also join my brother bishops in urging the U.S. Congress to pursue its own measures to repeal this mandate and to finally pass the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act.

They are strong words that he does not use lightly. Here is a list of ways Catholics feel backed into a corner by the Obama administration.

(Update: Archbishop Naumann asked us to start a Memorare Army for religious liberty. Click here for details.)

1. Abortion Extremism. Most Americans call themselves pro-life when it comes to abortion. In this regard, the Obama administration is not at all like most Americans. As I documented at the National Catholic Register, Obama’s administration made attacks on the right to life priority No. 1.

2. Forced Contraception Coverage. If the administration forced Jewish delicatessens to serve pork that would rightly be denounced as an attack on religious liberty, both by those who “keep kosher,” those who don’t, and those who aren’t Jewish at all. By forcing Catholic institutions to pay for contraception and sterilization, the White House is doing exactly the same thing.

3. Forced Funding of Abortifacients. By forcing Catholics to pay for birth control pills, Obama has inadvertently forced into the light a medical fact that contraception’s supporters would like to forget: Contraceptive pills work in several ways. The Mayo Clinic lists them here.  Among them: “Alter the lining of the uterus so a fertilized egg doesn’t attach to it.” A “fertilized egg,” in layman’s terms, is a newly conceived human being who is already male or female and with all the genetic information that will determine whether or not she is tall, short, good at singing or excellent at softball. And preventing implantation kills that new boy or girl.

4. Breaking Notre Dame Promise. When he spoke at Notre Dame, Obama assured Catholics that his still-new administration would “draft a sensible conscience clause” for Catholics. Forcing Jewish delicatessens to sell pork would not be a “sensible conscience clause.” Forcing Catholics to fund contraceptives is not a “sensible conscience clause.”

5. Anti-War Catholics Disappointed. Some Catholics who supported Obama said they did so because he was anti-war, compared to Bush. But Obama has not deviated from the Bush administration’s Iraq timetable, Afghanistan strategy or Guantanamo Bay policy. After he added a Libyan conflict to his record and spent a third of his 2012 State of the Union promoting his military record, the Nobel Peace Prize committee came under investigation for awarding him its prize.

6. Hushing Army Chaplains. At the same time, under the Obama administration, the Army has silenced chaplains who were instructed by their Archbishop to read a letter about the Obama administration’s forced contraception coverage. Kathryn Jean Lopez reports.

7. Government Regulating Ministers. If the Supreme Court had not stopped him, the Obama administration would have inserted the federal government in the hiring and firing of civilian ministers. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the unanimous January 2012 decision that the court was protecting “the interest of religious groups in choosing who will preach their beliefs, teach their faith and carry out their mission.”

8. Catholics Officially Bigots. Obama campaigned claiming he was for protecting traditional marriage and against same-sex “marriage.” But as Bishop William Lori testified in the U.S. Senate, “The Federal Department of Justice has ratcheted up its attack on the Defense of Marriage Act by mischaracterizing it as an act of bigotry.” He cited several examples, including Catholics being driven out of adoption services because they will not assist homosexual couples in adoptions.

9. Federal “Catholics Need Not Apply” Policies. It was bad enough when local businesses barred Catholics from certain jobs in the early 20th century. Now the White House has put “Catholics Need Not Apply” signs up in key places, denying Catholics the ability to fulfill certain charitable grants. Bishop Lori provides several examples.

10. Anti-Immigrant Policies. President Obama’s unprecedentedly harsh deportation policy has drawn the ire of Latinos. Catholic bishops as recently as August had hoped for a change that would be more in line with Church teaching on welcoming immigrants.

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Tom Hoopes is writer in residence at Benedictine College in Atchison, Kan., where he teaches in the Journalism and Mass Communications department and edits the college’s Catholic identity speech digest, The Gregorian.

A great many people are visiting this site today because of my comments on the Komen situation — my most recent thoughts on that can be found here (ongoing updates can be found at my twitter page @AmericanPapist — the story is very fast moving and complex).

But I don’t want to lose track of the “bigger” story – Obama’s war against religious liberty in this country and the Catholic effort to win this war definitively.

Peggy Noonan calls this a “battle the President can’t win” in her syndicated column today for the Wall Street Journal and says “President Obama just may have lost the election” because, in going after the religious liberty of Catholics, he has “awakened a sleeping giant”:

If [Catholics] stay strong and fight, they will win. This is in fact a potentially unifying moment for American Catholics, long split left, right and center. Catholic conservatives will immediately and fully oppose the administration’s decision. But Catholic liberals, who feel embarrassed and undercut, have also come out in opposition.

The church is split on many things. But do Catholics in the pews want the government telling their church to contravene its beliefs? A president affronting the leadership of the church, and blithely threatening its great institutions? No, they don’t want that. They will unite against that.

I hope and pray she is exactly right.

Stephen White (a valued CV contributor) writes in National Review about the brazen politics behind Obama’s decision — exploding the myth that this was about helping women. It wasn’t. It was about asserting the raw power of the state over people and institutions of faith:

Perhaps the most telling moment in the [White House briefing] call came when one official conceded that the administration has no idea how many people this exemption is expected to “help.” In other words, in all HHS’s “careful considerations,” there was no comparison of the “benefit” (however marginal) of this exemption versus possible alternatives.

It mattered not at all whether this narrow exemption, when compared to a more robust exemption, expanded coverage to one more woman or one million more women. Coverage simply had to be expanded as a matter of principle. Whoever meets the requirements of the narrow exemption, and decides to take advantage of it, should be grateful they are allowed even that.

… Overall, the administration’s defense of the HHS mandate has been an exercise in condescension. In their eyes, the “religious exemption” wasn’t carved out so the government could protect constitutional rights while it addressed what it saw as a compelling interest — those rights, we are told, are not even at issue. In the eyes of this administration, the “exemption” is a benevolent, even gratuitous, concession. HHS even allows a whole year for certain cultural laggards (read: Catholics) to bring their “religious beliefs” up to speed. Is that not generous?

No kidding.

Luckily, a rising chorus of voices (in addition to all those I have already cited over this past week) are speaking out. Radio pundit Hugh Hewitt writes a “memo” to the U.S. Bishops:

It may have taken a few days to sink in, but by now you should all have realized that President Obama has opened a massive assault on the Roman Catholic Church in America the likes of which none of you have ever experienced and for which few of you have prepared.

He goes on to interview Presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who says he has condemned the Obama/HHS decision “in every speech I’ve given today.” And that Catholics should respond to the law with “civil disobedience.”

GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has published an op-ed in the Washington Times on the subject of standing up for Catholics and religious liberty:

I stand with the Catholic Bishops and all religious organizations in their strenuous objection to this liberty- and conscience-stifling regulation.  I am committed to overturning Obamacare root and branch. If I am elected President, on day one of my administration I will issue an executive order directing my Secretary of Health and Human Services to issue a waiver from its requirements to all 50 states. And on day one I will eliminate the Obama administration rule that compels religious institutions to violate the tenets of their own faith.

Imagine that: we have the possibility of electing in November a President who will respect the constitutional right of American citizens to be, to live, Catholic.

That’s a battle worth winning. Let’s not forget it.

Obama spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast this morning, ironic considering his decision to attack religious liberty last week. Politico makes clear it was his decision ultimately to force religious institutions to subsidize sterilization, contraception and abortifacient drugs. It tells us that Obama is intent on motivating his base beyond all else. Gone is the mask of compromise.

On a deeper level, I think it also tells us that Obama really believes religious freedom means only the freedom to worship, not the freedom to act on our public beliefs in the public square. He, however, reserves the right to justify Obamacare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation as inspired by his religious beliefs. In other words, his religiously “inspired” vision of government has the authority, he believes, to crowd out through the use of the state’s force other competing religious visions of the good (on this topic see Ross Douthat’s column), for instant, the Catholic vision.

On a more cynical note, I think it means he believes people will be more excited about scoring free birth control than angered by his forcing religious institutions and individuals to violate their conscience.

Nancy Pelosi said, when asked about the mandate, that she will “stand with her fellow Catholics in supporting the administration on this” and that she believed the President’s move was “courageous.” Speaker Boehner has said he believes the mandate is unconstitutional. Constitutional expert Ed Whelan says that it violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

It’s fascinating to watch liberal Catholics tie themselves in knots over this. But it’s not hard to imagine what confusion having dual allegiances causes. Michael Gerson writes that “Obama play[ed] his Catholic allies for fools” and he’s right.

Many have noted that even veteran liberal E. J. Dionne calls this “Obama’s breach of faith.” But that breach was made long ago. Dionne only was forced to notice it now. Some liberals are attempting to make this dispute be about contraception, but it is not — it’s about religious liberty. Even Sister Carol Keehan, who lobied for Obamacare, gets this:

The impact of being told we do not fit the new definition of a religious employer and therefore cannot operate our ministries following our consciences has jolted us.

No kidding. But who gave Obamacare the power to do this in the first place? Sister, you did.

On the far end of the religious spectrum you have unabashed liberals who are rejoicing over this move. The canard they tend to use (see: Kevin Drum at Mother Jones and Joan Vennochi at the Boston Globe) is that since some Catholic institutions receive federal dollars they should all be forced to do whatever the government tells them to do. This is also a red herring, because the mandate applies equally to religious organizations that receive and DO NOT receive federal funding. Props to Megan Mcardle at The Atlantic for making this salient point.

Perhaps saddest in the list of Obama’s excusers is Cecilia Munoz, a Catholic whom David Gibson admits was basically hired to appease “tense relations” with Catholics. You’ll notice that the Obama administration has Munoz front and center to supply spin.

The smartest liberal Catholics understand how big a deal this all is:

“In my estimation it’s a huge misstep politically,” said Stephen Schneck a political scientist from Catholic University who has consulted with the administration on Catholic issues.

“The way in which the narrative is being developed is that the administration is at odds with the Catholic Church fundamentally. What I’m seeing in the pews is something of a waking up, a Catholic solidarity. That I think could very well carry over into their political activities” Schneck said. “There’s nothing like having a sense of opposition to you to rally the troops and I suspect that’s going to happen here.”

Schneck pointed particularly to states with large Catholic populations where this new solidarity could have a far-reaching political impact.

“If you look at where those Catholics are, they’re in places like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado and Florida, which are of course critical states for anyone who wants to become president of the United States,” he said.

A final thought: Obama’s decision is a power move. It uses the power of government to force religious entities to either break the law and face the consequences or buckle. Obama only understands power politics. If Catholics want to teach him a lesson, the only lesson he’ll hear is a power lesson. So power on. Lobby hard. Stay focused and energized.

And let’s win this. That’s a thought that ought never be neglected.

1) By my updated count, over 70% of bishops who head dioceses in the U.S. have spoken out against the mandate (131 of 184). I think we’ll pass 75% this weekend easily as more and more bishops join the movement.

2) CNSNews reports that White House press secretary Jay Carney claimed there was “no constitutional rights issue” when questioned about the mandate. This coming from the administration that just lost their religious liberty argument 9-0 at the Supreme Court.

UPDATE — here is the video:

At one point he says: “I would also just note that our robust partnerships with the Catholic Church and other communities of faith will continue.” — I wouldn’t be so sure.

The Commonweal blog has a full transcript of both times the issue came up in the press briefing. Some clues are beginning to emerge about the Obama’s administration’s attitude towards the Catholic counter-reaction, but more on that from me later.

3) This is not just a Catholic issue (something we have to stress). The Becket Fund has released a statement from Protestant and Jewish leaders: “We Stand with Catholics“:

Today, more than 40 non-Catholic religious organizations including Protestant-affiliated colleges, National Association of Evangelicals, Focus on the Family, Assemblies of God, Northwest Nazarene University, and Eastern Mennonite University, sent a letter to the White House demanding religious protection against the newly issued HHS contraceptive mandate.

“We write not in opposition to Catholic leaders and organizations. We write in solidarity.” Says the coalition letter. “Leaders of other faiths are also deeply troubled by and opposed to the mandate and the narrow exemption.”

More coverage of this letter from Baptist Press.

4) GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich spoke out against the Obama/HHS mandate in an email distributed by Human Events:

“Last week, the Obama administration finalized a radical new rule that uses the health care law to require all health insurance providers to cover abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization as well as contraception, all free of charge,” Gingrich writes. “The administration based the rule’s “religious exemption” on a provision drafted by the ACLU, applying the rule even to religious organizations such as Catholic schools, hospitals, universities and charities that oppose such things as a matter of religious belief.” [Continue reading]

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney included this line in his acceptance speech last night after winning the Florida primary: “President Obama orders religious organizations to violate their conscience. I will defend religious liberty and overturn regulations that trample on our first freedom.”

5) It’s important during critical moments such as these to remember our history. Obamacare was amended to authorize HHS to make this coercive decision back on December 3rd, 2009 through the passage of the Mikulski Amendment (#2791) in the U.S. Senate.

Republican Senators Snowe, Collins and Vitter voted for that amendment, helping ensure passage (all other GOP senators voted NO). All Democrat Senators (except Ben Nelson and Russ Fiengold who went on to vote for Obamacare and help it pass) voted YES on the amendment.

The Senators who voted YES on the Mikulski Amendment and voted YES on Obamacare played a special role in authorizing HHS to make this bad decision. When Catholics and pro-lifers warned that passing this amendment would result in precisely this sort of coercion taking place down the road, these Senators ignored us. We should remember that when they all come up for reelection.

Ph/t: Michael Blissenbach for refreshing my memory on #5.

Bishop James Conley of Denver:

Let’s be clear. This decision does nothing to respect religious freedom. Without change, Catholic institutions will soon be legally required to provide services which violate a fundamental principle of our religious beliefs. If plans go unchanged, the Catholic Church, acting through our Catholic institutions, will no longer have legal protection for the free exercise of religion.

…Unity has never been more important. Certainly, there is disagreement among Christians about the legitimacy of contraception. But there should be no disagreement among Christians about religious freedom. Each of us has an interest in defending liberty. Now is the time. The bell tolls for us all.

Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria is calling on all Catholics to resume praying the St. Michael Prayer starting at all Masses in the diocese (an excellent idea!):

Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Ill. has asked parishes, schools, hospitals and religious houses to insert the Prayer to St. Michael the Archangel into the intercessions at Sunday Mass to pray for Catholics’ freedom.

…“It is God’s invincible Archangel who commands the heavenly host, and it is the enemies of God who will ultimately be defeated,” the bishop said in a Jan. 24 letter to the Catholics of his diocese.

[...]He asked that the intention of the prayer be announced as “for the freedom of the Catholic Church in America.”

Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh has by far the strongest response:

It is really hard to believe that it happened. It comes like a slap in the face. The Obama administration has just told the Catholics of the United States, “To Hell with you!” There is no other way to put it.

… A million things are wrong with this: equating pregnancy with disease;  mandating that every employer pay for contraception procedures including alleged contraceptives that are actually abortion-inducing drugs; forcing American citizens to chose between violating their consciences or providing health care services; mandating such coverage on every individual woman without allowing her to even choose not to have it; forcing every person to pay for that coverage no matter the dictates of their conscience.

Let’s be blunt. This whole process of mandating these guidelines undermines the democratic process itself.  In this instance, the mandate declares pregnancy a disease, forces a culture of contraception and abortion on society, all while completely bypassing the legislative process.

Bp. Zubik also gets practical — an important step to take:

It is time to go back to work. They have given us a year to adapt to this rule.  We can’t! We simply cannot! Write to the president. Write to Secretary Sebelius. Write to our Senators. Write to those in Congress.

He’s absolutely right: getting angry is not enough. We have to get active!

Here I have to part ways with CV-blogger Emily Stimpson, who asks today if this reaction to the onerous mandate is “Too Little, Too Late?”

Absolutely not. It’s never too late to stand up for religious freedom and for Catholic identity.

First of all, the issue here is not contraception. The issue is religious liberty. The issue is that Catholic individuals and institutions are being forced by the government to violate their conscience. I particularly disagree with this line:

As grateful as I am for the fiery witness of Bishop Zubick and others like him, it’s hard to make the case that our present situation is a wonder. It’s hard to argue that it is a surprise. To a large extent, we’ve made our own bed, and now we have to lie in it. And we might very well have have to keep lying in it until the Church gets her own house in order on these issues.

How is the Church supposed to get her own house in order when she is being forced by the government to keep her house out of order?! The quest to establish and strengthen Catholic identity within her own institutions can and must continue without government interference and coercion. How are Catholic supposed to stand up for not condoning and subsidizing the evils mandated by the Obama/HHS decision if the very same individuals and institutions are daily participating in it by the government?

That’s why it is so important to fight now, and fight hard. We won’t back down.

There are numerous tools at our disposal. We can lobby Congress as I’ve advocated. We can support the groups pursuing a legal recourse, such as the Becket Fund (especially because top legal scholars are already saying they believe the HHS mandate is illegal).

And, most importantly, we can continue to stand up for religious liberty and articulate to our friends, neighbors and anyone who will listen why this right is foundational to the peace and justice of our country.

To those who would shirk from this task, see Bishop Zubik’s words. To those who would ignore the gravity of the threat, see Bishop Conley’s words.

And to all of us, let us heed Bishop Jenky’s exhortation to pray to St. Michael for victory.

UPDATE — for a complete list of bishops who have spoken out against the mandate, CLICK HERE.

This is probably one of my favorite phrases of Arcbishop Chaput.

Here’s the phrase in its original context:

“We need to remember that tolerance is not a Christian virtue. Charity, justice, mercy, prudence, honesty — these are Christian virtues. And obviously, in a diverse community, tolerance is an important working principle. But it’s never an end itself. In fact, tolerating grave evil within a society is itself a form of serious evil.”

I’ve been thinking a lot about this point in the days since the Obama/HHS mandate was announced.

Tolerance, after all, has been used in our public discourse by liberals to argue first for a diversity of opinions, only to then remove the mask and argue for intolerance towards opinions that liberals disagree with.

Example 1: “We should be tolerant of those who think abortion is moral” turns into “People who believe abortion is immoral are intolerant!”

Example 2: “We should be tolerant of those who believe two men can make a marriage” turns into “People who believe marriage is between a man and a woman are intolerant!”

The same thing has happened to the so-called “primacy of conscience” arguments, a tactic used since the 1970′s to “justify” Catholics dissenting from the Church’s teaching on a host of issues while still attempting to claim they are in fact still good Catholics.

I’m not trying to get into a debate about conscience here. I’m trying to simply point out how absurdly warped the “tolerant” view of conscience has become in this Obama/HHS decision.

This leads me to Example 3: “We should be tolerant of those who think contraception is moral” has become “People who believe contraception is immoral are intolerant!”

BUT NO! THE OBAMA/HHS MANDATE GOES FARTHER THAN EVEN THIS!

It actually says: “People who believe contraception is immoral and refuse to pay for the contraception of others who believe it is moral …are intolerant!”

Now tell me, how on earth do you justify this extreme position of “tolerance” as a position that respects the rights of conscience? How does forcing some people to subsidize the viewpoints of others constitute tolerance?!

For the life of me I cannot get this “logic.” How anyone can say that the principle of forcing some people to violate their conscience is a respect for conscience is beyond me.

Furthermore, it’s not as if this particular expression of conscience (“Catholics ought not to subsidize contraception, sterilization, and abortifacient pills”) is a “fringe” definition (although we do accomodate in our laws even less common expressions of conscience as the Catholic one I’ve just described) — this definition of conscience is shared by significant number of people, including all believing Catholics, all Catholic institutions that remotely care about their Catholic identity, and the authoritative structure of the universal Catholic Church.

If this institution and these people do not have a right to their conscience, who does?

The simple answer is no one.

Let me re-state my challenge in simpler terms: someone who denies the right of this institution and these people to follow their conscience must turn in their “pro-conscience” card. You simply cannot claim you are “for” the rights of conscience.

I’m thinking in particular of Jon O’Brien, the President of Catholics for Choice, who has sanctimoniously prostituted the concept of “conscience” for over two decades. I recently forced myself through the nauseating experience of reading and watching him bloviate about how Catholic bishops are guilty of “violating” the rights of conscience of dissenting Catholics.

For O’Brien, Catholic bishops (and faithful employers of all Catholic institutions) are “violating” the rights of conscience because they refuse to subsidize contraception.

That’s like saying I’m refusing to respect the rights of people to eat Big Macs because I refuse to pay for their Big Macs and deliver them as many Big Macs as they desire.

But we’re not talking about Big Macs, are we?

Let’s flip this on it’s head. According to the Obama/HHS definition of conscience, whereby to not subsidize my right to act on my conscience makes them guilty of discrimination, Obama/HHS should be paying me to write this post! After all, how are they truly tolerant of my desire to write this unless they pay for my laptop, internet connection, web hosting fees, and bottled water I’m sipping as I write this?

Insanity.

Or, at the very least, the deepest hypocrisy.

So, please, Jon O’Brien and other self-appointed crusaders of conscience, explain to me why your view of conscience justifies forcing faithful Catholics to violate their conscience by paying for things they don’t believe in?

You can start by buying me a Big Mac. Because, if you don’t buy me a Bic Mac, you all clearly don’t respect my conscience.

If we refuse, we are given fines and open ourselves to potentially harsher consequences.

So argues Cardinal-designate Timothy Dolan in the Wall Street Journal today:

The rule forces insurance companies to provide these services without a co-pay, suggesting they are “free”—but it is naïve to believe that. There is no free lunch, and you can be sure there’s no free abortion, sterilization or contraception. There will be a source of funding: you.

Some liberal Catholics are scrambling to defend this direct assault on conscience and religious liberty. Patrick Whelan of Catholic Democrats tries to justify the Obama mandate this way:

“…we know Catholic women, and by extension their families, use oral contraception at the same rate as the overall population. For over half a century, since the issuance of Humanae Vitae, Catholics and Catholic theologians have taken issue with the Church’s teaching on birth control.”

This is a red herring. The question is not to what degree Catholics have chosen to ignore the Church’s teaching on contraception. This is about government forcing Catholics who do agree with the Church’s teaching to violate their consciences. Surely this fact is not lost on Patrick Whelan. And just as surely, he’s choosing to ignore the real issue.

Here’s another liberal Catholic attempting to change the subject:

James Salt, executive director of Catholics United, a group supportive of the health-care overhaul law, said the contraception debate “is an issue that rank-and-file or pew-sitting Catholics aren’t spending a lot of time thinking about.” But he said he expected the bishops to maintain vocal opposition to the decision, keeping the controversy alive during the 2012 campaign. “This has the potential to be a major distraction for Catholic voters,” he said. [WSJ]

He wishes.

Does he honestly thing Catholics won’t care that their Churches and public institutions are being forced by the government to subsidize things they don’t believe in? Apparently the position of Catholics United is that religious liberty — and by extension, Catholic liberty — is no more than a “distraction” from the liberal agenda. I think we all appreciate what his clarification reveals about his liberal Catholic mindset.

Bill McGurn, also writing in the Wall Street Journal, argues that faithful Catholics should hope that liberal Catholics unite with us in standing up for religious liberty. I entirely agree. As I wrote yesterday, this Obama mandate should serve as a litmus test for Catholics to reveal where their true priorities and allegiances are placed. I will continue to highlight examples of liberal Catholics failing this litmus test (as I did above) and when they pass it (as I did in my post yesterday). Here is how McGurn states his hope:

“…for those who care about issues such as life and marriage and religious liberty that so roil our body politic, we ought to wish Catholic progressives well in their intra-liberal fight. For we shall never arrive at the consensus we hope for if we allow our politics to be divided between a party of faith and a party of animosity to faith.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself: supporting the Obama mandate is equivalent to harboring animosity to faith. Whatever our differing views are about the Catholic faith, we must be in agreement that animosity towards the faith is completely unacceptable.

As Congressman Chris Smith, a pro-life hero in the U.S. House recently said: “The mask is off. It’s about time we woke up.”

What will it take to rouse liberal Catholics from their slumber? Simple: it will take all of us faithful Catholics promising to loudly wake them.

UPDATE: Even the liberal Washington Post editorial board agrees that the administration should respect religious exemptions.

Namely, that the executive order signed by President Obama to give cover to Bart Stupak and his “pro-life” Democrats for them to support Obamacare was a joke (emphasis mine):

Kagan, while serving as President Obama’s Solicitor General, exchanged emails with her then-colleagues in the Justice Department indicating her support for the Obamacare legislation when it was under consideration in Congress.

“I hear they have the votes, Larry!! Simply amazing,” Kagan wrote, in an email obtained by Judicial Watch, on the day Obamacare passed through Congress. Larry Tribe, a Harvard Law professor and Supreme Court attorney who served as “senior counselor for access to justice” in the Department of Justice (DOJ), replied to Kagan that the bill’s passage was “remarkable.”

“And with the Stupak group accepting the magic of what amounts to a signing statement on steroids!” Tribe added in delight, and in derision for the pro-life Democrats.

Here’s what Tribe means by a “signing statement on steroids” — he means the executive order was little more than a photo-op. Why? Because the president doesn’t write the law – Congress does.

In other words, Obama got Stupak and the last Democrat hold-outs to accept the “magic” (fake political theater) of voting for a bill while claiming they didn’t vote for it because the executive order changed it. But the executive order did no such thing, because Obamacare is the law now, not any executive order.

Imagine a contract that’s very important to you. How confident would you be in that contract if your lawyer explained how it actually works is “magic”? Not very confident? You’d be correct.

I think it’s important that we don’t lose sight of how significant this behind-the-scenes glimpse at the opinion of a top Department of Justice official is. It confirms what many of us suspected all along, that the final Stupak “compromise” amounted to a total collapse and capitulation of the “pro-life” Democrats.

There are those on the pro-abortion Democrat side that absolutely dispute these pro-life claims. One of the Stupak congressman who went on to lose re-election in 2010 is (last I heard) waging a legal battle against the Susan B. Anthony List over this very issue of abortion funding in Obamacare and the executive order.

So this isn’t small potatoes, this is absolutely essential to the fundamental disagreement, for instance, the U.S. Bishops had with the final legislation that was passed, and over which Sr. Carol Keehan of the Catholic Health Association publicly defied and privately went behind the backs of the U.S. Bishops over.

I guess the simplest way to put this revelation is as follows: add a Harvard law professor and the “senior counselor for access to justice” of the Department of Justice to the long list of experts who agree that President Obama’s executive order was a sham — “magic”.

I hope Judicial Watch and other watch dog groups continue to demand transparency from the administration on this point to discover what other officials in the administration knew in advance that the final compromise brokered between the President and the “pro-life” Democrats was fundamentally misleading to the American public. Nothing more than “magic” that will have decidedly unmagical consequences for the rest of us.

Your representative is set to vote this Thursday on legislation that would insure that taxpayer funds are never used to fund any abortions or provide abortion coverage under President Obama’s new health care law.

The bill titled the Protect Life Act (H.R. 358) would specifically prohibit funding for abortion or abortion coverage in the government related exchanges, community health centers, or any other program authorized by the new law.

The proposed law would also protect conscience rights by specifying that federal agencies could not discriminate against healthcare entities that refuse to be involved in abortions.

Can you contact your legislator today and urge them to vote YES and to oppose any hostile amendments?

Pro-abortion legislators, backed by Planned Parenthood, are planning to gut the new bill with amendments designed to water down the taxpayer protections and conscience protections. As of now, the pro-life majority in Congress is holding strong — but they need to hear from the Catholic vote.

Pro-life groups are united behind this legislation. Our Catholic Bishops have also been urging Congress to pass this law.

CatholicVote has backed the Protect Life Act from the beginning — and we want it passed now!

Call 202-224-3121 and tell your representative you support H.R. 358 and want it approved!

If you do not know your legislator, you can look them up by visiting http://www.house.gov/representatives/find.

You may recall that these taxpayer protections were originally proposed by Rep. Bart Stupak during the debate over Obamacare. The House voted to include them in the new healthcare law, but Democrats in the Senate ultimately struck them from the final bill. In an 11th hour move to satisfy wavering legislators, President Obama promised to use an Executive Order to assure that taxpayers would not be forced to fund abortion.

But legal scholars agree the Executive Order is weak, and could be tossed out by any President at any time.

We need a permanent fix. We need a law that guarantees that any government-sponsored health insurance program will NEVER fund the destruction of innocent children. Period.

Help us get this bill passed on Thursday.

Please contact your representative today and tell them to get it done.

Take 3 minutes now and call 202-224-3121.

- Brian, Josh, Kara, Pat, Thomas and the rest of your CV Team