In a telephone news conference on Friday, Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, the chairman of the religious liberty committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion made “a nod in the direction of religious liberty, but not enough of one.”

“Of course we retain the right to think what we want and say what we want and preach what we want about marriage,” he said.

“But the free exercise of religion means we have the right,” he continued, “to operate our ministries and to live our lives according to the truth about marriage without fear of being silenced or penalized or losing our tax exemption or losing our ability to serve the common good.”

“We serve millions of people every day, and we do it well, we do it lovingly and it would be a shame to see it jeopardized, to see it swallowed up in this decision,” he said.

Religious groups that continue to oppose same-sex marriage include conservative evangelical churches (like the Southern Baptist Convention), the Roman Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox churches, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (known better as the Mormon Church), Orthodox Judaism and Islam. Many other religious groups support same-sex marriage, as do countless members of the groups that oppose it.

Gay rights advocates argue that religious institutions are already well protected by the First Amendment; no church can be forced to hire a gay pastor and no pastor can be forced to preside at a same-sex wedding. But they balk at permitting discrimination against gay people or couples by businesses that serve the public or by government-funded entities like foster care agencies.