A Catholic lay group, The Catholic Association, has a new television ad:
Ed Morrissey writes:
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops launched their two-week Fortnight for Freedom program today, their latest salvo in the battle between the Catholic Church and the Obama administration over the HHS contraception mandate. . .
The bishops are hoping that a massive protest now will force the Obama administration to reverse the mandate (or expand the religious exemption to all religious organizations) before civil disobedience becomes necessary.
To that end, the USCCB has begun sending letters out to parishioners in the Mass bulletins to get them involved in protests:
The most imminent threat to religious liberty—but not the only one—that the Catholic bishops have been protesting and seeking to draw public attention to is a regulation that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius issued under President Barack Obama’s health care law. The regulation will require virtually all health-care plans in the United States to cover, without any fees or co-pay, sterilizations, artificial contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs.
This month, the Catholic bishops are distributing an insert in church bulletins around the country pointing to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s leadership of the Civil Rights Movement, and his defense of civil disobedience, noting that King, a Baptist minister, used the arguments of the Catholic Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas to justify peaceful resistance to unjust laws. In the bulletin insert, the bishops made clear that civil disobedience may be necessary when freedom of conscience is attacked.
“Some unjust laws impose such injustices on individuals and organizations that disobeying the laws may be justified,” says the bulletin insert.
“Every effort must be made to repeal them. When fundamental human goods, such as the right of conscience, are at stake, we may need to witness to the truth by resisting the law and incurring its penalties.”
Me: I say good for them!