I am very well aware of the Smith decision. It represents a crabbed, narrow view of religious liberty and was specifically rejected by Congress (see the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act), as well as by many state legislatures and courts. Supreme Court First Amendment jurisprudence is a mess, as many commentators and Justices (most recently Justice Thomas) have pointed out.

Yet even in Smith, and certainly in the more recent Hosanna Tabor case, the Supreme Court recognized that some kinds of religious conduct and decisions are beyond the reach of government to control — the choice of ministers, internal governance, and presumably matters of belief. In other cases the Court has recognized (Dale, and the St. Patrick’s Day Parade cases, for instance) the freedom of groups — including religions — to association and speech, free of government control.

So, the law is not as clear-cut as you suggest — the government does not have the unlimited authority to enact laws that apply to all and that can compel obedience from religious people against their consciences. That’s a good thing, no?

As you set out the options, Catholic institutions can provide health care plans that offend their beliefs, or they can pay an assessment. As it happens, the assessment is expected to function as a fine. So, their choice will be, they can comply or they can pay a fine. Do you think the exercise of religious liberty can be conditioned on the payment of a fine?

You also say that laws that are generally applicable to everyone can require even those who have religious objections to comply. But the new requirement isn’t applicable to everyone. Tens of millions of Americans won’t be covered. Why is it essential to cover those working for Catholic institutions or other believers while tens of millions won’t be covered by the requirement? It looks like animus.

Don’t mistake your wishful thinking for the law. As reiterated in the Supreme Court’s most recent First Amendment decision, under the Constitution the government cannot enact laws specifically aimed at a particular religion (which would be regarded a constraint on religious liberty contrary to the First Amendment), but can enact laws generally applicable to everyone or at least broad classes of people (e.g., laws concerning pollution, contracts, fraud, crimes, discrimination, employment, etc.) and can require everyone, including those who may object on religious grounds, to abide by them. http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0494_0872_ZS.html

The bishops of the Catholic Church (along with many other faiths) opposed the final version of the health care law, although they supported the concept of extending health insurance availability. They cautioned against the dangers of the bill, particularly because they believed — presciently — that it would lead to this.

Nice touch with the “blame the victim” line, and the dismissive reference to the “Roman” church (ever hear of Eastern Catholics?). How to win friends and influence people.

The rule of law is a good thing. In our American tradition, however, the emphasis is on the “law”, and much less on the “rule”. That’s the problem with this mandate, and indeed with the whole health care law.

You seem to think that freedom is something that we are permitted to enjoy by sufferance of the state. No. Religious freedom means that I may do certain things, or not do certain things, according to my conscience. The state has no right to demand otherwise, I have no duty to obey an unjust law that infringes on that freedom, and I am not liable for penalties for doing so. This freedom is the natural state of the human person, and governments are established to protect it from usurpation — not to dispense with it and rule us according to the ideology of the day.

Here’s how the Declaration puts it:

all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed

How magnanimous of you to judge that we have no legitimate moral problems here, and no religious liberty rights that need to be troubled with. Some day, when your own constitutional rights are threatened, I imagine you would hope for a different response from your fellow citizens.

Perhaps the Roman church shouldn’t have been so quick to hop into bed with Obama and back Obamacare. You can’t claim you’ve been raped when you took off your clothes and threw yourself at the man.

Largely lost in the fuming over some supposed moral dilemma is that THE HEALTH CARE LAW DOES NOT FORCE EMPLOYERS TO ACT CONTRARY TO THEIR BELIEFS–unless one supposes the employers’ religion forbids even payment of money to the government (all of us should enjoy such a religion). In keeping with the law, those with conscientious objections to providing their employees with qualifying health plans may decline to provide any health plans and pay an assessment instead or, alternatively, provide plans that do not qualify (e.g., without provisions they dislike) and pay lower assessments.

No moral dilemma, no need for an exemption. That the employers must at least pay an assessment is hardly justification for an exemption. In other contexts, for instance, we have relieved conscientious objectors from required military service, requiring them instead to provide alternative service in noncombatant roles or useful civilian work. In any event, paying assessment does not pose a moral dilemma, but rather a garden-variety gripe common to most taxpayers–who don’t much like paying taxes and who object to this or that action of the government. Should each of us feel free to deduct from our taxes the portion that we figure would be spent on those actions (e.g., wars, health care, teaching evolution, subsidizing churches, whatever) each of us opposes? The hue and cry for an exemption is predicated on the false claim–or, more plainly, lie–that employers otherwise are forced to act contrary to their religions.