The HHS regulations announced on January 20 are one domestic expression of defining-religious-freedom-down. The administration does not propose to, say, restore the 1970 ICEL translations of the prayer-texts of the Mass; that, even HHS might concede, is a violation of religious freedom. But the administration did not think it a violation of religious freedom for its Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to try and overturn the longstanding legal understanding which held that religious institutions have a secure First Amendment right to choose their ministers by their own criteria\u201d\u201duntil it was told that it had gone way over the line in January\u2019s Hosanna-Tabor Supreme Court decision (a judicial smackdown in which the administration\u2019s own Court nominees joined).<\/p>\n
Now, with the HHS \u201ccontraceptive mandate\u201d\u009d (which, as noted above, is also a sterilization and abortifacent \u201cmandate\u201d\u009d), the administration claims that it is not violating the First Amendment by requiring Catholic institutions to provide \u201cservices\u201d\u009d that the Catholic Church believes are objectively evil. That bizarre claim may well be another constitutional bridge too far. But the very fact that the administration issued these regulations, and that the White House press secretary blithely dismissed any First Amendment concerns when asked whether there were religious freedom issues involved here, tell us something very important, and very disturbing, about the cast of mind in the Executive Branch.<\/p>\n