The Obama administration has made the politically difficult decision to allow a group of Native Americans to kill two bald eagles (which otherwise is a federal crime) so that these people can practice their religion as they desire. Why, then, will Team Obama not show the same respect for the Catholic Church’s First Amendment right in the case of forcing it to provide contraceptives, sterilizations, and morning-after pills to the employees of church-sponsored institutions?
Aside from being a clear case of favoring one religion over another, I believe it is because the first involves a religious rite, while the second only involves a religious right. Apparently, as my friend Chuck Colson has been warning, the administration is attempting to transform our Constitution’s broad protection of “freedom of religion” to a much narrower “freedom of worship.” Such an approach seeks to privatize matters of faith, rendering it irrelevant for most issues of life.
This is the game plan of a dictatorship, not a democracy. If our faith means anything in the public sphere, we Christians cannot allow this to happen.
