What’s Wrong with the World

Thank you for posting this Lydia Bishop Olmsted asked us to pray the Rosary and fast, among other things. Sounds like an excellent idea with the Lenten season coming up. If anyone knows of any organized efforts for fasting, I'd like to take part in them. I'd appreciate it if anyone could let me know.

Did Sebelius actually use that phrase -- "adapt their consciences"? What hubris! I am glad to know that she was instructed and warned by her bishop in Kansas about her non-Catholic ways, at least. She certainly has no excuse. May God change her heart.

She used the term "adapt." Give religious employers a year to adapt to the new regulations. Obviously, this applies to their consciences, and the year is a year of grace from the emperor, as it were, for them to find a way to violate their consciences. Anyway, that's why I put the first word in quotation marks but not the whole phrase. She's also been quoted as saying something to the effect that the Catholic institutions "have this conscience thing," but I haven't tracked that one down yet.

Ah, the "this conscience thing" was Nancy Pelosi, with reference to not providing abortions:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/princess-nancy-pelosivows-to-do-for-child-care-what-we-did-for-health-care/2011/11/15/gIQACzY1VN_story_1.html

It looks like the exact Sebelius phrase was that the employers would have a year "to adapt to this new rule."

Will this outrage have any effect on the election in November?

Although Obama and Sebelius have managed to outrage a lot of Catholics, there is one modest political step they took to manipulate the impact on the election: the "one year" period starts at the end of the otherwise effective date, August 2012, so the orgs will have until Aug 2013. That means the impact of complying or not complying comes AFTER the election. Nice, isn't it? I wonder if we can goad Americans United to sue HHS about the 1-year period, trying to get the courts to eliminate it? Nah, even they aren't that stupid.

Did Sebelius actually use that phrase -- "adapt their consciences"?

I don't think so. Here is the actual language:

This additional year will allow these organizations more time and flexibility to adapt to this new rule.

That's in the HHS News Release of Jan 20.
http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2012pres/01/20120120a.html

I predict the following:
1. Most if not all the bishops will start out sounding strong in solidarity in trying to get this reversed.
2. Some catholic organizations (colleges, hospitals, clinics, etc) will refuse to go along with the bishops, will not follow their lead, and will give in to the demand to provide the insurance.
3. Some bishops (but not all) who have Catholic orgs in their diocese who give in (#2 above) will "enter into" dialogue with them, and this dialogue will become extraordinarily complex to sort out. Aug 2013 will pass without resolution of the dialogue. (Recall the complex discussions Cardinal Law had about a Catholic org entering into contracts with non-Catholic entities for shared space?)
4. Approximately 6 bishops who have orgs in #2 above will timely excommunicate members of the boards. Bruskewitz of Lincoln NE (if he has any boards so foolish as to tempt him) being first, followed quickly by Olmstead of Phoenix, Chaput of Philly, and Loverde of Arlington VA.
5. Several org boards will simply renounce their Catholic ties and become non-affiliated orgs. Then they will buy the insurance. (This has already happened by one group, so it doesn't take much prescience.) They will hope to avoid excommunication this way.
6. A large number of theologians will announce that giving in to the regulations is not (a) formal cooperation with evil, and (b) is not immediate material cooperation with evil, and therefore is subject to the usual "cooperation with evil" rule, requiring proportionate good.

The practical problem the bishops (as a body) have with making any kind of effective political stand is the combination of 3, 5 and 6 above. The more they hold a hard line with solidarity, the more pressure some board members will feel to sever Catholic association, and use 6 to justify themselves - resulting in a noticeable number of rats leaving the ship, upsetting the ONE LARGE BLOCK UNITED IN OPPOSITION picture. If they were unified and pro-active they would pre-emptively formulate a strategy together to _all_ (a) give a 1-month hard deadline to all orgs trying to go with the HHS regulation for all "discussion", and (b) publicly punish all orgs and their boards that EITHER sever ties over this or buy the insurance, and (c) formally silence theologian dissent on the issue. I don't even know if these are readily possible within Canon Law.

Pat Buchanan wrote just recently that the entire point was to influence the election. Obama was basically shoring up support on the left by sacrificing the support of at least semi-devout Catholics. Perhaps he perceives this group will not be supporting him much longer anyway.

I don't understand why contraception would be considered something fundamental to what we call 'healthcare' though. It seems an obvious luxury to me.

Matt, that seems kind of odd. The kind of people who really want the religious orgs forced into offering this as insurance are the sorts that will either have to go with Obama or someone a lot more to the rightwards of him, a lot more distasteful to them - obviously Obama is the choice. For moderate fence-sitters about the health issue, surely forcing religious orgs in a heavy-handed way is a game changer for SOME of them, pushing them into voting for the Republican camp, especially if they were at least toying with voting for, say, Romney.

I think Karl Denninger of the Market Ticker had an excellent point (and he's Catholic) in denouncing the fact that the Bishops are only now growing balls since core Catholic institutions will be forced to pay for things which have long been part of the Medicaid and Medicare systems that the Catholic hierarchy has enthusiastically supported as a moral duty. Heaven forbid that the Bishops lead a tax revolt against a system which forces Catholic laymen to use their wages and business money to support people whose behaviors might be violating Catholic dogma. Why, that would be judgmental and "uncharitable."

But oh boy, now the government has come after the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church itself and we must cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war.

Will there actually be peace-n-justice Catholics who finally decide that Obama is not on their side and refuse to vote for him when they otherwise would have done so?

I would suspect it may sway some of them, but probably not in significant numbers. Rationalization is a powerful thing. I would love to be proven wrong.

I have been pleasantly surprised by our bishops' initial reaction.

But our bishops are natural Democrats; as a body they flinched when Paul VI wrote Humanae Vitae, they were all but unarmed when Roe came down five years later, and every once in a while they promulgate lame, too-little too-late pro-life educational efforts. They speak most forcefully on anti-war, anti-nuclear-anything, anti-capitalism. When it comes to the sexual revolution, so-called, we are told that homosexuals are Always Our Children, that pro-abortion politicians should not be denied Communion- it's a long & easy rant to criticize our bishops.

So my bet is that they fold, that as a body they will quietly close ranks against the handful of bishops who might want to continue holding out. They'll opt for 'dialogue' with their friends in the Democrat party, they'll not be holding Sister Kathy's feet to the fire, or asking Ambassador Doug if he has any recantations to make. The bishops won't be able to hold out against their own theologians, nor against their own version of the mainstream media. (If you want to distress yourself with the latest calm-voiced matter-of-fact we-love-Obama-now-more-than-ever insanity from dissenter Catholics, point your poor browsers at the National Catholic Reporter.)

The fact is that the bishops lost this battle in 1968, when they refused to defend- heck, they seem to've refused even to read it- Humanae Vitae. So they let their flock indulge in The Pill, and so it is now. Most Catholics are uncomfortable about abortion, but at least they generally recognize that it's wrong, and they can even muster a reason or two why abortion is wrong. Ask your average Catholic why contraception is wrong, and you're likely to get a puzzled look.

So the bishops are, for now, opposing, on narrow, abstract & abstruse Constitutional grounds something that, apparently, most Catholics approve of & engage in.

That's a fight for which the bishops have no heart. Now, if it were Reagan, and ballistic missile defense, why they'd oppose it with every drop of their blood. But being as how it's contraception, not abortion, and a lot of money is involved, and, hey, y'know, an awful lot of good work, well.... All it will take is one Georgetown casuist to point out that employees of Catholic organizations are already having abortions, and buying condoms and contraceptive pills, so the monies paid by the Church's organizations to their employees are already being used for contraception. Therefore remote, non-formal, and hey, it's only the Pill, and we only need a younger pope with fresher, less rigid thinking to get this whole Humanae Vitae thing definitively non-Magisteriumed.

They'll be self-muzzled, and self-policing the outliers, well before the Obama campaign gets into full swing.

As a Protestant, I have a heart for this fight, because I recognize this power move for what it is--vicious, dangerous, and inherently anti-religious. This is about coercion of conscience and making Christians cry, "Uncle." The Obama admin. absolutely loathes conscience exemptions of all kinds and has an ideological agenda to close them off as much as possible and to prove that Caesar is in charge. I'm willing to go so far as to say that this doesn't even have to be primarily about the object-level issue. It's birth control today; it will definitely be abortion tomorrow, and same-sex partner benefits, and so forth. Indeed, adoption by homosexuals was the first hard line drawn in the most recent culture wars, and Catholic charities have been shut down over it. I'm certain that the Obama admin. would love to make that nationwide.

Some people are claiming that under this new regulation, hospitals would be forced to offer abortifacients, birth control drugs that actually kill embryos. I'm not familiar with the science behind that however.

The Elephant

It includes Plan B. Plan B is a whacking, extra-large dose of hormones which can work either by preventing implantation or by delaying ovulation--it depends on when it is taken in the woman's cycle and on whether or not she has already conceived (but the embryo has not implanted).

Some Obama Catholics will happily let the State conform the Church to their religio -ideology. Others will take the first steps towards realizing Christianity is empty without the Cross and become breed for it.

Sorry, meant to say "better for it". Must have been thinking about having more kids.

David Brandt, your scenario is fairly plausible, given the bishops' track record over the last 40 years. However, I suspect that actual events are already a little divergent from that: the bishops that have spoken out already are not at all limited to the hard-hitting outspoken ring-leaders for traditional Church teaching. Cardinal Mahoney resoundingly castigated the administration's ruling. It may just be that Obama has figured out how to unite the bishops effectively.

So my bet is that they fold, that as a body they will quietly close ranks against the handful of bishops who might want to continue holding out.

I don't think that the second part is quite what's going to happen: the bishops have never really gotten any hard-nosed tactics for making the non-liberals be team players. They are limited to hiding behind USCCB bureaucrats to initiate efforts that are supposed to be "group" policies, but in actual fact any bishop that feels like not complying does so with nary a mention against him in any forum that matters in the least. Bishop Bruskewitz completely ignored their "Mandate" program for dealing with child abuse. He basically told them to stick it in their ears. Turns out it wasn't that much of a mandate after all. The bishops' as a collective body has absolutely no power to enforce ANYTHING upon a single (or small group of) bishop(s), without first asking pretty please from the Vatican, and the Vatican for 50 years now has had a very hands-off attitude about that kind of stuff.

I don't understand why contraception would be considered something fundamental to what we call 'healthcare' though. It seems an obvious luxury to me.

Matt has a good point here. Part of what should be distasteful about the HHS decision to anyone who dislikes cant and deception is the fact that the ruling reeks of cant and deception. You do not even have to be a conservative to understand that contraception and sterilization are not "basic health care" and certainly that they are not "preventative medical services." The latter term is supposed to denote preventing a disease or, at a minimum, detecting a disease early so that it can be treated. To use it to describe both preventing disease and preventing pregnancy is the sheerest sophistry, a glaring equivocation. And "basic health care," really? The wild-eyed ideology behind all of this is utterly blatant, and its blatancy begins in the plain lies with which the requirements are described by those making them.

Bishop Bruskewitz completely ignored their "Mandate" program for dealing with child abuse. He basically told them to stick it in their ears. Turns out it wasn't that much of a mandate after all.

And where were they offering their testimony to help get him personally indicted for what they could easily portray as a culture of indifference, bordering on the pathological, to serious abuse of children? Attorneys general love that stuff. It's the stuff that makes careers. If the conservative bishops came forward to help them, they'd be treated like rock stars.

This will be too insiderish for any non-Catholics reading this far down, but Mahony is retired; he seems to have maybe had a sort of reconversion towards the end, though it didn't prevent his final 'educational conference' horror show from being its usual circusfreaky self. If he were still actively cardinalling, I betcha he would not have spoken out.

(His replacement, though, has a spine, and we in Texas are still kinda sad B16 called him away to LA.)

I love Bp Bruskewitz, but all you need to know about him is that he stands alone. Very alone. The bishops ignore him and wish he'd return the favor a little more heartily. Maybe 5% of the episcopacy is near the same ballpark orthodoxywise; and of those, the ones who speak out as forthrightly you can count on one hand, with too many fingers unneeded.

I do hope you're right, that the bishops will take this as, at long last, a 'this far, but no further' turning point. When our new bishop in Austin said flatly that we would not comply, his letter read aloud during the homily in every parish last Sunday, even the folks in our wealthycrunchy superduper TeenLifey parish stood up and applauded. The flock wants strong shepherds and clear teaching. But I suspect whatever lasting pique the bishops will have will not be about federal coercion of the Church into the headlong sexual amorality of the rest of the culture, but about federal impingement upon their power to conduct their business affairs as they see fit. They will see it as merely a bureaucratic battle, and lose, grumbling; they will not see it as the moral battle that it is. How could they, without acknowledging their failure to fight against the contraceptive mentality a generation ago?

Heaven forbid that the Bishops lead a tax revolt against a system which forces Catholic laymen to use their wages and business money to support people whose behaviors might be violating Catholic dogma.

Denninger made some good points in that post, but this wasn't one of them. It's not hypocritical for the bishops to support the use of taxpayer dollars to treat people with lifestyle diseases because the Catholic church doesn't teach against doing so. They don't, for example, refuse treatment for diabetics who got that way because of gluttony and sloth.

However, by forcing them to pay for abortion and contraception, the church would be paying for things which they believe to be immoral in and of themselves. There's a huge difference between using ethical treatments to relieve the consequences of bad behavior and paying into an account that's used to perform an immoral act. KD should've just stuck with pointing out the fact that the bishops support Medicare and Medicaid, both of which pay for sterilization and contraception.

KD should've just stuck with pointing out the fact that the bishops support Medicare and Medicaid, both of which pay for sterilization and contraception.

That was his main point. The hypocrites had no problem guilt-tripping their flocks into supporting a system that had them funding something their church teaches is evil and then cry foul when the government forces the institutional church to do the same thing the laymen had been forced to do for years.

Oh but NOW it's tyranny!

I hope they like chicken because their chickens have come home to roost.

In Canada, Tory MP Stephen Woodworth, is attempting to initiate a national conversation on "Canada's 400-year-old definition of a human being." Such a conversation could have a profound impact on the legality of abortion. Woodworth expected to have men of goodwill rally to his cause; as he seeks to regain the rhetorical offensive in the abortion debate. Instead, the silence from Christians, especially Roman Catholic Bishops, has come as a something of a surprise to Woodworth and his supporters.
Roman Catholic Bishops, both in the US & Canada, have taken a lead is proclaiming their opposition to wars and nuclear what ever. They never got around to excommunicating anyone for supporting nuclear development or the wars against which they were exclaiming. Roman Catholic Bishops have seldom excommunicated legislators and other policy makers, for funding and requiring the public to comply with things, that the Bishops believe to be immoral in and of themselves.
Many Christians of a reformed persuasion ask why Sebelius and Pelosi have not been publicly excommunicated.
Some conservative Reformed Churches have taken steps to discipline those who publicly support abortion. The Reformed believe one of the marks of a true Church is the right exercise of Church discipline.

Y'know, Mike T, I don't agree with you here. I think there is a distinction between tax revolt and the church's being told to purchase these insurance plans. The apostle Paul told Christians to pay taxes even while the taxes were funding the amphitheater games. Christians are supposed to pay taxes even if the government chooses to do something evil with the tax dollars.

There are, I'm sure, plenty of negative things that can be said about the liberal bishops who are now drawing a line in the sand. And conservative Catholic groups have said many of those things. But "They didn't order their flocks to commit tax evasion" isn't one of them. Moreover, I think now is the time to commend them for growing a spine rather than bitterly talking about all the other things they didn't do in the past or have done. It may be legit. to point to those other things as part of making resigned predictions of later capitulation, but just grousing that they are "hypocrites" is pretty unproductive, in my opinion.

"The apostle Paul told Christians to pay taxes even while the taxes were funding the amphitheater games. Christians are supposed to pay taxes even if the government chooses to do something evil with the tax dollars."

Yet another reason to decouple the provision of healthcare from employment. All this nonsense would be avoided if the Congress had simply extended Medicare to the whole population in 2010.

I think there is a distinction between tax revolt and the church's being told to purchase these insurance plans. The apostle Paul told Christians to pay taxes even while the taxes were funding the amphitheater games. Christians are supposed to pay taxes even if the government chooses to do something evil with the tax dollars.

Unless there was a specific tax for bread and circus that didn't go to the Roman Empire's general treasury, I don't see your point. Medicare/Medicaid tax is a distinct tax item on your W2. It is separate from general federal income tax which funds the general operations of the federal government.

It may be legit. to point to those other things as part of making resigned predictions of later capitulation, but just grousing that they are "hypocrites" is pretty unproductive, in my opinion.

Perhaps it is, but it calls into question if they even understand what they have done and are now opposing. My gut says they don't have a clue that it is their general approach to economics which enabled this.

Yet another reason to decouple the provision of healthcare from employment. All this nonsense would be avoided if the Congress had simply extended Medicare to the whole population in 2010.

Only until conservative Catholics woke up to the reality that their FICA taxes were funding abortions and birth control.

It is clearly the fault of Obama, Pelosi and Reid for not nationalizing the nation in '09 before the nation woke up and started disempowering them. But there's still time for an executive order extending Guantanamo from the toehold of Cuba- dearest exemplar!- to the whole of the fifty-seven states. Eh, eh, Al, gitcher collectivist heart all atwitter? All your base are belong to us!

Mike, I tend to agree with you. They were okay with an expansive Federal government until it started to gore their ox. Now, they are getting the vapors.

I agree this is an assault on religious conscience even though I don't agree with certain parts of Catholic contraception theology. But, I'm skeptical that this backlash will be more than a lot of noise. If Catholics abandon Obama in this year's election (If he goes from about 50% of the Catholic vote to 20-30%) and the bishops stand firm, I will believe it has some teeth. Otherwise it will prove they aren't serious.

I see Al is still taking hallucinogens and showing his vast empathy for the convictions of others.

Mike, I just don't agree. A huge amount of FICA tax goes for Grandpa's and Grandma's monthly social security checks and doctor's visits. The actual percentage that goes for poor women's abortions is _not_ broken out as a separate line item. Similarly, general income and other federal taxes fund Planned Parenthood (cough, cough, the non-abortion parts, of course), the UN Population fund with its forced abortions in China, population control programs through USAID throughout the world, and so forth. Inter alia, if this is the item of interest, enough boatloads of contraception to guarantee negative population growth for several planets. And none of these are broken out into separate line items either. And it's all accounting dodges anyway, because a lot of it is paid by money borrowed from the Chinese with the debt later monetized by quantitative easing. The government puts a gun to our heads, gets lots of money, and throws it into a big pot and spends it hither and yon on all manner of things good, bad, and ugly. Some of it very bad and very ugly. There's no way to do really principled _targeted_ tax evasion, and no Christian or Christian organization is obligated to try.

An imbecilic, agressive, and generally terrible policy choice by the Obama administration. How astonishing. Contrary to some people here, however, I think there is reason to hope that our bishops will be effective- I remember a case some ten years ago where the Maryland legislature wanted to pass some law to force priests to violate the seal of confession to report any child abusers. It went pretty far, I believe, since the bishops (or at least Cardinal McCarrick) wrote letters instructing all priests to disobey any such legislation. Our bishops went up in arms and the legislation was not passed. That was a very Catholic issue; on opposing mandatory contraception coverage (which was not even debated in Congress but is a unilateral decision by a presidential appointee), we have many potential allies (anybody with common sense, really), so why could it not be managed?

98% of the people eligible for Medicare are 65 and older. Their call for contraceptives and abortions is, ummmm, really low. Rrrrreaalllly low. Others are, let's see, people with end-stage renal disease, people with ALS.... stop me when I hit something significant here. Also, the Hyde amendment is a major barrier in place to prevent US funds being used for abortions (as in Medicaid). I fail to see Mike's point about FICA taxes as being terribly germane. I agree that the bishops have had their heads in the sand all along, but even ostriches can wake up and strike out against jackals when they need to.

It's more the principle of the matter. I doubt that an appreciable percentage of the costs from Obamacare will go to these either. Probably not much more than Medicaid does. The Catholic Church opened the door to this when it didn't insist that Catholics strongly oppose a secular, state-driven system in favor of working through Catholic hospitals and doctors to provide similar care. It also lost a tremendous amount of its ability to use that system as a vehicle to further Christianity where it was present.

M.Z. used to mock me here for saying that charity could provide the same level of service or higher as Medicare and Medicaid, cheaper. He tried to use the inability of certain large catholic congregations to raise enough resources for the health care of the priests, nuns, etc. as "proof." I stand by my assertion that if Catholics were able to give the same level of funds that they have to give to FICA to Catholic medical institutions to use as a war chest for caring for indigent patients, Catholic hospitals could do at least the same level of service cheaper and more efficiently with all of the funding coming "in house" from direction donations to be used at the discretion of the church.

It is not clear to me that Medicaid as opposed to Medicare is specially funded federally by FICA taxes more than by general taxes. Even if it is, a fair proportion of the dollars also come from state funding, and that is definitely from general state revenues.

Lydia,

I just don't see a fundamental difference between making someone pay a tax that supports abortion and making them buy health insurance that provides abortions. Either way, the person paying the tax or insurance money is pooling their resources with others who will have the freedom to use their piece of the pie to get an abortion. I think insurance just feels more personal than a tax/program than it really is and that now the Catholic Church is being forced as an institution to do what its flock had done for years.

In any case, Obama may find out that he has bitten off more than he can chew. If enough bishops get (and stay) together on this, Obama may find that ALL Catholic businessmen / owners (or, at least several hundred thousand) refuse to pay for this insurance, and (if the bishops are really smart about it) then find that he cannot find sufficient tax and/or HHS personnel to enforce the regulation when the Catholics in those offices start gumming up the works with work-stoppages, recusals, and other methods of not quite getting around to imposing a bad regulation. At least, that's one avenue I would be exploring if I were in the bishops' shoes.

That's all assuming of course that the bishops are unsuccessful in getting an additional 25% of the Catholic vote away from Obama. If 70% of Catholics vote against Obama instead of 45%, (even if they don't all vote for the Republican) Obama would lose: taking 10 million votes from Obama would have cost him the election even had none of them gone to Repubs. They may not be able to deliver on this, but it really comes down to how serious they are about the matter. If they put the thumbscrews on and make it a weekly matter of discussion that Catholics are obliged to disobey this Obama-HHS regulation, even the people who don't much listen to the bishops will notice.

I think insurance just feels more personal than a tax/program than it really is and that now the Catholic Church is being forced as an institution to do what its flock had done for years.

Mike, I am hoping that the bishops notice this aspect of the overall problem. See, they are already talking about doing "civil disobedience" about this law, i.e. the diocese organizations, and whatever else the bishops control directly (which isn't all that much). If they think it through, they will realize that they will be on MUCH MORE SOUND footing if they push this as a form of civil disobedience that ALL Catholic businessmen, indeed all Christian, Mormon, Jewish, Hindu, and Islamic business owners should join up with. And the more the merrier: if everyone is doing it, and if all these religions' (the ones who are serious about their religion) civil servants won't help the government tackle the individual cases, you can bet your boots that the administration will "adjust" to reality in some fashion or other. I am afraid that Obama won't let it get that far, but you never know how stubborn someone can be.

This survey gives some relevant information about religious voters; notice that "among non- hispanic white catholics, "an eight point Democratic advantage in 2008 has become a seven point Republican advantage at the end of 2011".

Withdraw all military Chaplains and discourage enlistment in the armed services, close all hospitals and K - 12 schools and let Ceasar reap the whirlwind. All the compromises required by assimilation have made a Vichy of the American Church. Time to form creative minorities capable of offering genuine witness and resistance to the mighty death cult.

Interesting that you should mention that. The bishop for the Catholic chaplains to the military just had a little battle already. The bishop wanted all the priests to read a letter denouncing HHS's move against religious liberty, and the Army head of the chaplaincy service objected to that letter being read.

On Thursday, January 26, Archbishop Broglio emailed a pastoral letter to Catholic military chaplains with instructions that it be read from the pulpit at Sunday Masses the following weekend in all military chapels. The letter calls on Catholics to resist the policy initiative, recently affirmed by the United States Department of Health and Human Services, for federally mandated health insurance covering sterilization, abortifacients and contraception, because it represents a violation of the freedom of religion recognized by the U.S. Constitution.

The Army’s Office of the Chief of Chaplains subsequently sent an email to senior chaplains advising them that the Archbishop’s letter was not coordinated with that office and asked that it not be read from the pulpit. The Chief’s office directed that the letter was to be mentioned in the Mass announcements and distributed in printed form in the back of the chapel.

Archbishop Broglio and the Archdiocese stand firm in the belief, based on legal precedent, that such a directive from the Army constituted a violation of his Constitutionally-protected right of free speech and the free exercise of religion, as well as those same rights of all military chaplains and their congregants.

Following a discussion between Archbishop Broglio and the Secretary of the Army, The Honorable John McHugh, it was agreed that it was a mistake to stop the reading of the Archbishop’s letter. Additionally, the line: “We cannot — we will not — comply with this unjust law” was removed by Archbishop Broglio at the suggestion of Secretary McHugh over the concern that it could potentially be misunderstood as a call to civil disobedience.

Religious liberty indeed!

Of course, the words "we cannot - we will not - comply with this unjust law" was actually a call to civil disobedience if the regulation is not changed. No mistake in "understanding" it that way. The archbishop will be better prepared next time. So, the government has created for itself a problem: the military chaplaincy is either going to have to permit Catholic chaplains to speak about this, or it is going to have to court-martial and/or discharge these chaplains for refusing to be muzzled.

This might be a good place (i.e. if the army tries to put a chaplain into a military cell) for the bishop to start speaking about interdict: the bishop (or the Pope) can forbid mass and other sacraments to a particular jurisdiction, and can also dissolve the vows and oaths that bind a Catholic to obey the authorities of that particular jurisdiction (though they may have to suffer civil penalties along the way). I don't know if Obama is stubborn enough to force it this far, but if the Catholics decide to fight fire with fire, he won't like the outcome in the least.

The USCCB could put a stop to this and get a reversal within 24 hours, if it was willing to pay a real political price for it. I'm frankly convinced they're covering themselves for a future capitulation. Any Catholic who thinks the bishops will stand firm on this issue is simply deluding himself, or rather, permitting himself to be deceived.

I'm not worried the least about Dolan or Chaput. What is troubling is the clericalism running rampant here. Let's see some courage from the laity beyond blog posts too.