Chicago's Cardinal Warns Of An ObamaCare Gulag

[Geee]

Investors Business Daily:

First Amendment: The ex-head of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops compares the administration take on freedom of worship to the Soviet Union's and says its contraceptive mandate will force church hospitals to close.

On the first Sunday of Lent, Chicago's Francis Cardinal George issued his version of the letter issued by the USCCB he recently led.

It shredded assurances by the administration that things could be worked out so that religious freedom would not be impaired and painted a bleak future that just might be the administration's intent.

Going a bit further than his peers, Cardinal George essentially rejected the administration position that you can have freedom of conscience as long as you don't act on it and that Catholics can run hospitals believing what they want as long as they don't act on those beliefs.

Cardinal George responded that what Catholics and others do is what they believe and the two cannot be separated.

"Freedom of worship was guaranteed in the constitution of the former Soviet Union," Cardinal George wrote in a column in the Catholic New World. "You could go to church, if you could find one. The church, however, could do nothing except conduct religious rites in places of worship — no schools, religious publications, health care institutions, organized charity, ministry for justice and works of mercy that flow naturally from a living faith. We fought a long Cold War to defeat that vision of society."

Indeed we did. It was fought to protect the First Amendment and the free exercise of religion in all its aspects.