Like most Americans, these Catholic leaders have long taken for granted the unique model of religious freedom that has enabled this nation’s diverse religions to flourish in relative harmony. Recent governmental actions, however, have caused citizens of all faiths to fear that religious liberty is becoming a second-class right.
Over the past year, the bishops have become increasingly concerned about the erosion of conscience protection for individuals and institutions. Their top-rated program for assistance to human trafficking victims was denied funding for refusing to provide “the full range of reproductive services” including abortion. For a time Catholic Relief Services faced a similar threat to its international relief programs. But what led this normally pacific lot of churchmen to litigation was the Department of Health and Human Services’ issuance of regulations requiring employers to provide insurance coverage for sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs, and contraceptives.
The bishops first tried to solve the problem through negotiation. They hoped that HHS could be persuaded to bring its regulations into line with other federal laws that provide exemptions to protect the conscience rights of religious institutions and individuals.
But on January 20, HHS announced that it would not revise the mandate or expand its tight exemption which covers only religious organizations that mainly hire and serve their own co-religionists. That excludes hospitals, schools, and social service providers run by groups whose adherence to Gospel teachings or other religious beliefs require them to serve everyone in need regardless of creed.
Continued attempts to persuade the administration to re-examine its position produced only an announcement by the administration in February that insurance providers would pay for the contested services. Since many Catholic entities are self- insured and the others pay premiums, the bishops’ concerns were not alleviated. It was fast becoming clear that the main goal of the mandate was not, as HHS claimed, to protect women’s health. The mandate is nothing less than a move to conscript religious organizations into a political agenda, forcing them to facilitate and fund services that violate their beliefs, within their own institutions.
The media has implied all along that the HHS dispute is mainly of concern to a Catholic minority with peculiar views about human sexuality. But religious leaders of all faiths have been quick to see that what is involved is a flagrant violation of religious freedom. That’s why former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, declared, “We’re all Catholics now.”
More is at stake here than the mission of all churches, including the Catholic, to provide vital social services like health care and education to everyone regardless of creed, and to do so without compromising their beliefs.
At the deepest level, we are witnessing an attack on the institutions of civil society that are essential pillars of limited government and important buffers between the citizen and the all-powerful state. If religious providers of education, health care and social services are closed down or forced to become tools of administration policy, the government consolidates a monopoly over those essential services.
As Cardinal Timothy Dolan, President of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, put it, we are witnessing an effort to reduce religion to a private activity. “Never before,” he said, “have we faced this kind of challenge to our ability to engage in the public square as people of faith.”
The twelve lawsuits filed by Catholic entities this week swell a growing movement that began last November when the first suits challenging the HHS regulations were filed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty which represents persons of all denominations.
With this week’s actions, major Catholic institutions, including Notre Dame University, Catholic University of America, and the archdioceses of New York, Washington, and St. Louis, joined a growing army of plaintiffs around the country, Catholic and non-Catholic, who are asking the courts to repel an unprecedented governmental assault on the ability of religious persons and groups to practice their religion without being forced to violate their deepest moral convictions.
It goes without saying that religious freedom is subject to necessary limitations in the interests of public health and safety.
But the HHS regulations do not fall into that category.
The world has gotten along fine without this mandate—the services in question are widely and cheaply available, and most employers will provide coverage for them.
If the regulations are not reversed, they threaten to demote religious liberty from its prominent place among this country’s most cherished freedoms.
That is why Cardinal Dolan told “Face the Nation”: “We didn’t ask for this fight, but we won’t back away from it.”