By Terence P. Jeffrey
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (AP Photo)
(CNSNews.com) - The Archdiocese of New York, headed by Cardinal
Timothy Dolan, the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C., headed by Cardinal
Donald Wuerl, the University of Notre Dame, and 40 other Catholic
dioceses and organizations around the country announced on Monday that
they are suing the Obama administration for violating their freedom of
religion, which is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the
Constitution.
The dioceses and organizations, in different combinations, are filing
12 different lawsuits filed in federal courts around the country.
The Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. has established a special website--
preservereligiousfreedom.org--to explain its lawsuit and present news and developments concerning it.
"This lawsuit is about an unprecedented attack by the federal
government on one of America’s most cherished freedoms: the freedom to
practice one’s religion without government interference," the
archdiocese says on the website. "It is not about whether people have
access to certain services; it is about whether the government may force
religious institutions and individuals to facilitate and fund services
which violate their religious beliefs."
The suits filed by the Catholic organizations focus on the regulation
that Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announced
last August and finalized in January that requires virtually all
health-care plans in the United States to cover sterilizations and all
Food and Drug Administration-approved contraceptives, including those
that can cause abortions.
The Catholic Church teaches that sterilization, artificial
contraception and abortion are morally wrong and that Catholics should
not be involved in them. Thus, the regulation would require faithful
Catholics and Catholic organizations to act against their consciences
and violate the teachings of their faith.
Earlier, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops had called the
regulation an "unprecedented attack on religious liberty" and asked the
Obama administration to rescind it.
“We have tried negotiation with the Administration and legislation
with the Congress--and we’ll keep at it--but there's still no fix,"
Cardinal Dolan, who is also president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic
Bishops
said in a statement released by the conference this morning.
"Time is running out, and our valuable ministries and fundamental
rights hang in the balance, so we have to resort to the courts now," the
cardinal said. "Though the Conference is not a party to the lawsuits,
we applaud this courageous action by so many individual dioceses,
charities, hospitals and schools across the nation, in coordination with
the law firm of Jones Day. It is also a compelling display of the unity
of the Church in defense of religious liberty. It's also a great show
of the diversity of the Church's ministries that serve the common good
and that are jeopardized by the mandate--ministries to the poor, the
sick, and the uneducated, to people of any faith or no faith at all.”
Cardinal Dolan's New York Archdiocese filed suit today in the U.S.
District Court in the Eastern District of New York. Joining the
archdiocese as plaintiffs in the suit are the Catholic Health Care
Sytem, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rockville Centre, Catholic
Charities of Rockville Centre, and Catholic Health Services of Long
Island.
In their suit, these groups name HHS Secretary Sebelius, Labor
Secretary Hilda Solis, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and their
departments as defendants.
The archdiocese of Washington, D.C., is being joined in its lawsuit
by Catholic Charities of the Washington Archdiocese, the Consortium of
Catholic Academies of the Archdiocese of Washington (which includes four
parochial schools), Archbishop Carroll High School, and the Catholic
University of America.
"This morning, the Archdiocese of Washington filed a lawsuit to
challenge the mandate, recently issued by the Department of Health and
Human Services, that fundamentally redefines the nation’s long-standing
definition of religious ministry and requires our religious
organizations to provide their employees with coverage for
abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, and sterilization, even if
doing so violates their religious beliefs," Cardinal Donald Wuerl of
Washington said in
an open letter posted online this morning. "Just as our faith compels us to uphold the liberty and dignity of others, so too, we must defend our own."
"The lawsuit in no way challenges either women’s established legal
right to obtain and use contraception or the right of employers to
provide coverage for it if they so choose," said Cardinal Wuerl. "This
lawsuit is about religious freedom."
"The First Amendment enshrines in our nation’s Constitution the
principle that religious organizations must be able to practice their
faith free from government interference," Cardinal Wuerl said.
