On Feb. 1, I asked pastors across the Diocese of Helena to bring to your attention an alarming and serious matter that strikes at the fundamental right to religious liberty for all U.S. citizens, of any faith.

In my pastoral letter, I wrote of a new U.S. Department of Health and Human Services mandate that would have forced virtually all employers, including Catholic employers, to offer their employees health coverage that includes sterilization, abortion-inducing drugs and contraception. Individuals like yourselves would have been forced to purchase those “services” as part of your insurance coverage.

In so ruling, the administration cast aside the First Amendment of the Constitution, thus denying Catholics our nation’s first and most fundamental freedom – religious liberty.

I stated clearly and unequivocally, “We cannot—we will not—comply with this unjust law.”

In response to pressures from church leaders of every denomination, and reacting to a firestorm of protest from Catholics and from citizens of every faith, President Obama announced changes in this insurance mandate. Unfortunately, in seeking a middle ground, the president has raised new moral concerns, and left many serious and vexing problems unaddressed.

By these regulatory changes, the president has retained his “core principle” of preventive care, continuing to mandate insurance coverage for sterilization and contraception, including some abortion-inducing drugs.

Health and Human Services is grouping pregnancy with the other mandated services designed to prevent disease, appearing to classify pregnancy as just one more preventable disease.

The HHS mandate imposes a burden of unprecedented reach and severity on the consciences of those who consider immoral the “services” of sterilization, abortion- inducing drugs and contraception.

Insurers are now forced to write policies including this coverage.

It appears the government is creating its own definition of who is “religious enough” for full protection.

It appears that self-insured plans (in which a religious organization is both employer and insurer), and student health plans offered by religious colleges and universities, will be required to offer the objectionable coverage.

The mandate raises an unanswered question of how insurers, now forced to provide uncompensated services, will pay the cost.

It also seems clear that there is no exemption for Catholics or other individuals who work for secular employers, for individuals who own or operate businesses or for employers with moral but not religious objections to some of the mandated “services,” such as the providing of abortifacients. Last Friday, the administration assured religious leaders that these and other related questions will be worked out in the coming year.

Based on recent experience, the leadership of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has expressed caution and misgivings about the substance and sincerity of this offer for further dialogue.

If the offer for substantial dialogue materializes, you may be certain that the U.S. bishops and other religious leaders will ask the government to uphold important principles as the policy is refashioned:

— Respect religious liberty. No government has the right to intrude in the internal affairs of the Church, much less, to coerce the Church or its individual members to engage in or cooperate with immoral practices.

— Ensure that the Church, and not the government, will define its religious identity and ministry.

Be assured that we will continue to oppose the underlying policy of government mandate for the purchase or promotion of sterilization, abortifacients, and contraception. The only complete solution is for HHS to rescind the mandate of morally unacceptable “services”.

The genius of the American system of government is found in its balance of powers.

When one branch of government, while attempting to provide for the “rights” for some, abridges religious liberty, tramples upon individual consciences or violates deeply held moral convictions, we have the guaranteed right to protest, to seek opportunity for dialogue, and to offer courses of remedy that are consonant with our moral and social teaching.

We also reserve the right to seek redress through the courts and through the legislative branch of the government.

We will, therefore, continue with no less vigor and with no less sense of urgency, our efforts to correct this problem created by the HHS mandate. In these efforts we will work with all branches of government—executive, judicial and legislative.

We renew our call for Congress to pass, and the president to sign, the Respect for Rights of Conscience Act, and we ask our Catholic parishioners to write our members of the U.S. Senate and the House, seeking their support for this measure.

We ask all of our fellow Americans to join together in our effort to protect religious liberty, seek freedom of conscience for all citizens, and raise our collective voices in unity whenever the proverbial camel gets its nose too far under the tent.


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 28, No. 2, February 17, 2012.