The fight to protect Catholic institutions from the Obama administration’s new health-insurance mandate is not only a dispute over contraception and abortion. For many colleges, schools, and charities, it is a fight for the right to be Catholic.
If the outrageously narrow “religious employer exemption” put forward by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is allowed to stand, America’s concept of religious freedom under the First Amendment will be dangerously altered. It can have an impact far beyond health care, to issues such as employment benefits for homosexual partners, the National Labor Relations Board’s jurisdiction over union disputes with Catholic schools, and federal grants for Catholic social services.
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