Obama Hopes Cardinal George’s Threat is a Promise

Francis Cardinal George, the Catholic archbishop of Chicago, has a column up warning about four potential consequences of the Free Birth Control Rule on charitable and non profit institutions associated with the Catholic Church.

It makes for sad reading because I don’t think Cardinal George quite gets that the impacts against which he warns are precisely those that the president and his hard political left cohorts want. I’ll break it down, piece-by-piece. From, “What Are You Giving Up This Lent?”

What will happen if the HHS regulations are not rescinded?

A Catholic institution, so far as I can see right now, will have one of four choices: 1) secularize itself, breaking its connection to the church, her moral and social teachings and the oversight of its ministry by the local bishop. This is a form of theft. It means the church will not be permitted to have an institutional voice in public life.

But that’s the very point. It is not theft, in their view, but social justice.

And they don’t want the Catholic Church or other “orthodox” faiths to have an institutional voice in public life because the moral views of such organizations conflict with those of the secular left.

For now, POTUS and his ilk will permit churches “freedom of worship,” but not “freedom of religion,” that is to decide what’s what in churches, convents, temples, synagogues, etc.

But, beyond the pews and altars, either shut up or get out!

First Things