Roman Catholic Bishops Have Themselves to Blame

My readers may have noticed my vociferous opposition to the Obama regime’s attack on the Roman Catholic Church and on freedom of religion. But do not think I hold American Catholic bishops and clerics blameless in this. Just the opposite.

For those bishops as a group along with lefty clerics supported the passage of Obamacare. Did they really think that they could support the suppression of freedom inherent in Obamacare without endangering the freedom of their church? If so, they were fools:

Mr. Obama's allies among Catholic liberals are also professing shock — even the Catholic Health Association's Sister Carol Keehan, who lobbied for ObamaCare, and Notre Dame's Father John Jenkins, who invited Mr. Obama to speak on campus in 2009. But if they now claim they were taken for a ride by the secular left, the truth is that they wanted to be deceived in the name of their grander goal of government-enforced equity. The Catholic left was one of ObamaCare's great enablers.

They are not unlike those clerics who collaborated with the French Revolution only later to face the guillotine themselves. Those who collaborate with regimes that attack freedom endanger their own freedom as well.

(There is an excellent article on The French Revolution and clerics by James Hitchcock in the September/October issue of Touchstone. It is not available online at the moment, however.)

By the way, there are now noises from the Obama Administration that they are maybe, kinda, sorta willing to make some accommodation for the Roman Catholic Church. I think that just pre-election posturing. But in any case, I’m right again.