They barely protested when the last president authorized torture, but the Catholic hierarchy is now determined to use what's left of its authority to 
This will be their cause – not saving universal healthcare from repeal, not bringing illegal immigrants out of the shadows, not protecting the poor, but affirming that religious liberty is at stake if they cannot keep the pill from their female employees' insurance, 98 percent of whom use it at some point in their lives anyway.
They are not without a genuine concern. I thought the original Obama proposal was too much. But the compromise was a reasonable fig leaf that would have allowed the Catholic hierarchs some pragmatic face-saving if they chose it – especially given the fact that universal access to healthcare is a longstanding Catholic goal. But they have chosen political warfare instead – and partisan political warfare at that. They would rather keep their power over their female employees than bring acces to healthcare to millions.
It's a risky strategy. I know few Catholics in the pews who share these absurd priorities, and for the hierarchy to become so closely identified with the Christianists among the evangelical right could split the church more profoundly. And that, I suspect, is partly the intent. If your goal is to purify the Church, to deter all the faithful that do not share the reactionary priorities now increasingly preached from the pulpit, then this will help. A smaller, purer Catholic church, reduced to the Santora and the Donohues, is what these dim-witted Vatican apparatchiks have been told to encourage. I cannot believe it will help the faith.
The Dish 