According to Newsbusters, Erika Christakis, Harvard College administrator, dismissed all the "hysteria with a fever pitch" about religious liberty and insisted that if Catholic bishops don't like the idea of being forced by the government to pay for services that violate their religious beliefs, they should go to prison "in an act of civil disobedience."
“Let’s see what our society would look like if we all had the luxury of imposing our unfettered will," Christakis wrote, utterly ignoring the fact that this is precisely what Obama is doing.
“At a minimum, the Catholic bishops and employers resisting contraceptive coverage should be willing to pay for the care of all those unwanted children. Or perhaps they’d be willing to spend some time in jail in protest. At my taxpaying expense, of course.”
She then attempts to construct a scenario where the Catholic bishops are infringing on the "rights of millions of people who are burdened by unplanned pregnancy," as if millions of Americans are on the health plan of a Catholic institution.
"People who cry moral indignation about government-mandated contraception coverage appear unwilling to concede that the exercise of their deeply held convictions might infringe on the rights of millions of people who are burdened by unplanned pregnancy or want to reduce abortion or would like to see their tax dollars committed to a different purpose," she writes.
"Why should an employer’s right to reject birth-control coverage trump a society’s collective imperative to reduce unintended pregnancy? Should employers be allowed to withhold a polio vaccine or cataract surgery or safe working conditions on similar 'moral' grounds?"
"This is the way liberals say 'put up or shut up'," Newsbusters reports, and accuses Christakis of "filling a fish bowl with red herrings."
But her willingness to throw dissenting bishops in jail served as an eery contrast with a powerful statement just released by Cardinal Timothy Dolan.
"Religious freedom is a fundamental right of all," he states. "This right does not depend on any government’s decision to grant it: it is God-given, and just societies recognize and respect its free exercise."
This issue not just about contraception, abortion-causing drugs, and sterilization, or about Republicans and Democrats, or conservatives and liberals, he says. "It is about people of faith. This is first and foremost a matter of religious liberty for all."
He then asks a question Christakis and her ilk seem more than willing to answer.
"If the government can, for example, tell Catholics that they cannot be in the insurance business today without violating their religious convictions, where does it end?"
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