From Breitbart
A new document published by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops(USCCB) is preparing Catholics across the nation for the prospect of engaging in massive civil disobedience in response to the HHS mandate requiring Catholic-affiliated institutions to provide free contraception, sterilization procedures, and abortion-inducing drugs to employees.
The document, which has been prepared as a church bulletin insert, to be distributed in Catholic parishes throughout the country, suggests that the current campaign for religious liberty may be the largest example of civil disobedience since the Civil Rights Movement 50 years ago. The bishops refer to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. who boldly asserted, “I would agree with Saint Augustine that ‘An unjust law is no law at all.’”
“The civil rights movement,” the document states, “was an essentially religious movement, a call to awaken consciences.” The bishops go on to say:
Some unjust laws impose such injustices on individuals and organizations that disobeying the laws may be justified. Every effort must be made to repeal them. When fundamental human goods, such as the right of conscience, are at stake, we may need to witness to the truth by resisting the law and incurring its penalties.
This document follows a dozen organized lawsuits, featuring 43 plaintiffs, in federal courts across the country, claiming that the Obama administration is violating the religious freedom of Catholics and others through the HHS mandate.
Read more here.
Notwithstanding the bishops’ arm waving about religious liberty, the health care law does not force employers to act contrary to their consciences. Contrary to bishops’ assertions and the widespread belief of those who trustingly accept their claims, the law does no such thing.
Many initially worked themselves into a lather with the false idea that the law forces employers to provide their employees with health care plans offering services the employers consider immoral. The fact is that employers have the option of not providing any such plans and instead simply paying assessments to the government (which, by the way, would generally amount to far less than the cost of health plans). Unless one supposes that the employers’ religion forbids payments of money to the government (all of us should enjoy such a religion), then the law’s requirement to pay assessments does not compel those employers to act contrary to their beliefs. Problem solved. Solved–unless an employer really aims not just to avoid a moral bind, but rather to control his employees’ health plan choices so they conform to the employer’s religious beliefs rather than the law, and avoid paying the assessments that otherwise would be owed. For that, an employer would need an exemption from the law.
Indeed, some have continued clamoring for such an exemption, complaining that by paying assessments to the government they would indirectly be paying for the very things they opposed. They seemingly missed that that is not a moral dilemma justifying an exemption to avoid being forced to act contrary to one’s beliefs, but rather is a gripe common to many taxpayers–who don’t much like paying taxes and who object to this or that action the government may take with the benefit of “their” tax dollars. Should each of us be exempted from paying our taxes so we aren’t thereby “forced” to pay for making war, providing health care, teaching evolution, or whatever else each of us may consider wrong or even immoral? If each of us could opt out of this or that law or tax with the excuse that our religion requires or allows it, the government and the rule of law could hardly operate.
In any event, those complaining made enough of a stink that the government relented and announced that religious employers would be free to provide health plans with provisions to their liking (yay!) and not be required to pay the assessments otherwise required (yay!). Problem solved–again, even more.
Nonetheless, some continue to complain, fretting that somehow the services they dislike will get paid for and somehow they will be complicit in that. They argue that if insurers (or, by the same logic, anyone, e.g., employees) pay for such services, those costs will somehow, someday be passed on to the employers in the form of demands for higher insurance premiums or higher wages. They evidently believe that when they spend a dollar and it thus becomes the property of others, they nonetheless should have some say in how others later spend that dollar. One can only wonder how it would work if all of us could tag “our” dollars this way and control their subsequent use.
The bishops are coming across more and more as just another special interest group with a big lobbying operation and a big budget—one, moreover, that is not above stretching the truth. The bishops want the government to privilege their business enterprises by allowing them to offer their employees health care plans conforming to the bishops’ religious beliefs rather than the law. They’re so keen on this that they have resorted to a media blitz centered on the false claim—sometimes uttered in priestly tones by bishops themselves—that the law forces employers to act contrary to their consciences. Bunk!