Do you trust this man to decide whether our laws are right or wrong?

Do you trust this man to decide whether our laws are right or wrong?

The Catholic Church is afraid. It is afraid that Americans, even Catholic Americans, don't actually give much credence to the moralizing passed down and across the globe from Rome.

Last month, Pope Benedict XVI met with several members of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, to specifically advise them about how to best handle what the the pope described as a "grave threat" to "religious freedom." The threat, according to the pope, is the U.S. government's attempt to "deny the right of conscientious objection on the part of Catholic individuals and institutions with regard to cooperation in intrinsically evil practices."

If you're thinking now of some of the most notorious "intrinsically evil practices" of our government to which Catholics might object—like war or capital punishment—you'd be wrong. The pope and the bishops are concerned about the Obama administration's new policy to require that health insurers cover contraception without co-pays.

And the pope is especially concerned that if such a policy is implemented, and if Americans continue to not give a damn about what the Church has to say on such "intrinsically evil practices" as contraception—as the vast majority of American Catholics don't—this will "delegitimize the Church's participation in public debate."

That, of course, is the real fear, isn't it? That the Church will lose its influence over policy debates, that it will continue to lose its moral authority to dictate what our laws should be. And that is why the Catholic Church, from the pope to the Conference of Catholic Bishops to the priests in churches across the country, has declared war—to further assert its "legitimacy." And now, despite the continued efforts of the Obama administration to allay the concerns of the bishops about health care for women and their continued and fully protected right to believe whatever they want, the bishops have a new demand, according to Anthony Picarello, general counsel for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops:



"There has been a lot of talk [from the White House] in the last couple days about compromise, but it sounds to us like a way to turn down the heat, to placate people without doing anything in particular," Picarello said. "We're not going to do anything until this is fixed." That means removing the provision from the health care law altogether, he said, not simply changing it for Catholic employers and their insurers. He cited the problem that would create for "good Catholic business people who can't in good conscience cooperate with this." "If I quit this job and opened a Taco Bell, I'd be covered by the mandate," Picarello said.

So that's the real concern? If Anthony Picarello decides he's done fixing the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' legal troubles—a huge and daunting job, no doubt—and trades it in to sell chalupas, he'll be forced against his conscience to allow his employees to purchase contraception through their health insurance without a co-pay. Can you imagine a worse injustice?

How about this one: a systemic and widespread conspiracy, over decades, to cover up the rape and molestation of thousands of children?

Continue reading below the fold.