Roman Catholics, right or wrong, teach that artificial forms of birth control and any form of abortion is against God’s law and therefore wrong. It is a religious conviction, a belief that it is God’s will and that human life is sacred. Monty Python’s “Every Sperm is Sacred” distorts the teaching in order to lampoon and protest it. The teaching is not popular these days, even amongst practicing Roman Catholics. But it is official Roman dogma, part of their religion and the US constitution is supposed to protect the free exercise of religion. It no longer is. Hunter Baker said it well,

The Department of Health and Human Services has determined that religious institutions (including Catholic ones) must include coverage for contraceptive services in the care insurance they provide to employees. This is not a big deal, we have been told, because Catholic churches will be exempted, and the organizations adversely affected will be given a year to make their peace with the situation.

He punctuates the summary this way, “Let that sink in for a minute. You’re a Catholic organization. You have just been purposefully placed on a collision course between your God and Caesar. But it’s okay. Caesar is going to give you a year to stop being so upset.” Our democratically elected government has decided that reproductive choice is more important than religious freedom. Sex trumps faith. It doesn’t matter what your church teaches about sexual ethics, the state has determined how it much act. That is chilling.

This is coming from two protestants (Baker and I) who are alarmed at how our government is stepping on the rights of a church we don’t completely agree with. I don’t know where Baker stands on contraception (though I’m fairly confident he is against abortion) but I disagree with how Rome prohibits it. But I disagree more with how Washington has now prohibited that prohibition. Rome has a right to be wrong.

And it isn’t just conservative, evangelical voices who are upset. John Kass is an editor at the Chicago Tribune and he expresses a similar concern, albeit from a different perspective. I don’t agree with his secular “religion in private” approach, ¹And really, doesn’t this debate prove that the secularist “religion is a private matter” is unsustainable? Obama is trying to separate religious belief from public policy and failing. Religion belongs in the public debate not because we’ll all agree on it but precisely because we do not. We need to protect those we disagree with and ensure their rights are curtailed in a private, quite, dark corner. Ours might be next. but I do appreciate and agree with his concern that politics is stepping on even that here. Consider:

With great will and personal charm, Obama pushed through government-run health care. The problem was never with giving care to the needy. The problem was that this policy increased federal power. And now Americans are learning a terrible fact about what happens to freedom as federal authority grows…

Obama has sent the spinners and town criers galloping out of the White House to say, incorrectly, that this debate is only about contraception. It is not. It was always about federal power trampling religious freedom, and now the White House is panicking.

Kass is correct. Our federal government has been increasingly taking more and more power to itself and when it does that, it gets the power from somewhere else. At first the power was taken from States. Now it is coming from us. Small steps at a time. A little here, a little there. I hope this little step set off the burglar alarm because, folks, we’re being robbed.

It is fascinating that this is an election year and we see the federal government make such a huge gaff. I hope this kind of thing wakes people up. The Occupy Wall St. protest had good intentions but they were shooting at the wrong target. The problem didn’t abide only in Wall St., it real home is in Washington. We have got to stop electing those who promise us our wildest dreams and start electing those who promise to keep out of the way of us chasing those dreams. Including dreams of religious freedom.

But wait! The White House has heard our lament! They have proposed a compromise. After extending the kindness of giving organizations a year to get over it, the White House has gone even farther. Now the organization doesn’t have to pay for contraceptives. The insurance company must provide them free of charge. Religious freedom preserved, right? Not really. I mean, are all health care insurance providers going to, from this day forth, take a reduced profit based on how many pills they give away each year? Not likely. Rates will rise to compensate for this “free” service and still religious organizations are required to pay. Can we have our freedoms back? Please?