Cardinal Dolan's Liberty Letter

The Catholic Cardinal describes a chilling visit to the White House.

The debate over the Obama Administration's birth control mandate has been ingloriously fact-free, even more than usual. So amid demonstrably false claims about a plot to relegate women to the era of "Mad Men," if not Salem, Massachusetts circa 1692, Cardinal Timothy Dolan's letter on religious freedom deserves more readers.

"We have made it clear in no uncertain terms to the government that we are not at peace with its invasive attempt to curtail the religious freedom we cherish as Catholics and Americans," the archbishop of New York wrote in a public epistle to Catholic bishops last Friday. It's an eloquent and powerful document, though not one that received much of any media notice. "We did not ask for this fight, but we will not run from it," he continues.

Cardinal Dolan explains that "As pastors and shepherds, each of us would prefer to spend our energy engaged in and promoting the works of mercy to which the Church is dedicated: healing the sick, teaching our youth and helping the poor." The problem, and the genesis of this Catholic confrontation with Washington, is the government's "bureaucratic intrusion into the internal life of the church" and its bid "to define what constitutes church ministry and how it can be exercised."

The test of pluralism in a democracy is the protection afforded to minority views, especially of religious faith and practice. Nine of 10 health plans already cover contraceptive and sterilization methods, and they present no ethical or moral qualms in a majority of the others. (The economics are another matter.)

But the Administration is using raw political force to compel a small subset of schools, hospitals, charities and other religious institutions "to maintain in our policies practices which our Church has consistently taught are grave wrongs in which we cannot participate," as Cardinal Dolan puts it.

He also relates a remarkable meeting that he says the White House convened with the bishops to "work out the wrinkles" of the mandate. Having accepted the invitation, the bishops asked if concrete policy changes like broadening the mandate's exemptions were "all off the table. They were informed that they are."

In other words, the White House's solution is merely for the bishops to shut up about the wrinkles. Cardinal Dolan writes that "there was not even a nod to the deeper concerns about trespassing upon religious freedom." White House staffers also cited some writings by vicars of the Catholic left in support of the mandate, in effect telling the bishops that they know less about church teachings than your average Washington Post columnist.

As a study in ideology and power, the anecdote is chilling, compounded by all the recent claims by Democrats and liberals that Catholics who actually abide by their faith are opposed to modernity. Such prejudice is supposedly defunct in contemporary America, except when it's practiced against religion.

Cardinal Dolan touches on the way the mandate's supporters are having a false debate about "access" to health care, which everyone supports, but he doesn't say—though we can say—how cheap contraception is in most cases. Prescription birth control pills generally cost between $15 and $50 a month, and Wal-Mart and Target sell generic versions for as little as $9. The idea that college coeds are going broke from this small and predictable expense is ludicrous.

"Religious freedom is our heritage, our legacy and our firm belief," Cardinal Dolan concludes. The sad reality is that his letter will not persuade the dominant wing of America's governing political party from insisting that religion kneel before its secular will.