If forced to chose between Barack Obama and the Catholic Bishops, I'd be inclined to invoke Henry Kissinger's quip about the Iran-Iraq war; i.e., it's a pity they can't both lose. I'm one of those Catholics who believes with St. John Chrysostom that the road to hell is paved with the skulls of bishops.
In the kerfuffle over contraception, however, I'm squarely with the Bishops. So a couple of great op-eds in today's WSJ caught my eye. First, Daniel Henninger:
The question raised by the Catholic Church's battle with ObamaCare is whether anyone can remain free of a U.S. government determined to do what it wants to do, at whatever cost.
Older Americans have sought for years to drop out of Medicare and contract for their own health insurance. They cannot without forfeiting their Social Security payments. They effectively are locked in. Nor can the poor escape Medicaid, even as the care it gives them degrades. Farmers, ranchers and loggers struggled for years to protect their livelihoods beneath uncompromising interpretations of federal environmental laws. They, too, had to comply. University athletic programs were ground up by the U.S. Education Department's rote, forced gender balancing of every sport offered. ...
The Catholic Church has stumbled into the central battle of the 2012 presidential campaign: What are the limits to Barack Obama's transformative presidency? The Catholic left has just learned one answer: When Mr. Obama says, "Everyone plays by the same set of rules," it means they conform to his rules. What else could it mean?
Likewise, John Cochrane opines that:
When the administration affirmed last month that church-affiliated employers must buy health insurance that covers birth control, the outcry was instant. ... Critics are missing the larger point. Why should the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) decree that any of us must pay for "insurance" that covers contraceptives? ...
By focusing on an exemption for church-related institutions, critics effectively admit that it is right for the rest of us to be subjected to this sort of mandate. They accept the horribly misnamed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, and they resign themselves to chipping away at its edges. No, we should throw it out, and fix the terrible distortions in the health-insurance and health-care markets.
Sure, churches should be exempt. We should all be exempt.
Both are great reads.
Meanwhile, the Obama administration is talking out of both sides of its mouth:
White House press secretary Jay Carney, defending the decision for the third consecutive day, reiterated on Wednesday that the administration would work to address concerns while maintaining that it would continue to require free contraceptive coverage for all women except those covered by a narrow exemption, such as those working directly for churches. ...
How do you address the concern while refusing to address the source of the concern?