Pope Obama I

President Obama's apparently personally directed HHS regulation mandating that religious organizations must pay for sterilization and contraception for their employees is turning into such a firestorm that it appears the White House may only be able to end the crisis by backing off on its position, if only temporarily.  If that were to happen, however, it would be an utterly humiliating defeat for the President, surely the last thing he wants to suffer in the run up to November's election. Assuming the President hasn't bullheadedly forbidden it, I would guess that behind the scenes the White House is frantically attempting to find a way out of this crisis that will allow the President to retreat without his campaign being seriously damaged, probably through proclaiming it has reached some sort of "compromise," real or not.

Of course, this incident is nothing more than the latest episode in the Obama Administration's endless quest to increase government power at the expense of individual liberty, always in the name of some greater good for society. That this comes right on the heels of a unanimous Supreme Court slapdown of the Administration (Hosanna-Tabor) in another case involving religious freedom makes it easy to speculate that there is something personal in this area for Obama, and that he intends to get his way on this, one way or another.

What's notable here is how badly the White House has miscalculated the level of opposition to this regulation.  It has received vocal support from that part of Obama's base who like to refer to the Tea Party as "teabaggers," but the President in this affair is receiving unusual criticism from some important Democratic leaders, who have supported him in nearly everything else.  That a good number of these Democrats represent states that will be crucial to Obama's reelection attempt must have the electoral vote counters in the Obama campaign drinking a little heavier than usual at the end of the day. And in spite of the liberal trope that American Catholics don't care about the Church's rules about sex and procreation, it's clear that the majority of Catholics are seeing this as a direct attempt to destroy the freedom of the Church and its members to practice their faith as they believe is right.  In this the Catholic Church isn't alone, and support is growing from leaders of other faiths and denominations in opposition to the regulation.

In the last three years, a vast amount of print and pixels have been devoted to attempting to figure out what exactly it is that President Obama means to do. Is he diabolical, or is he just an incompetent idealist?  Does he realize the deeper implications of his actions?  Does he care?

I'd say in this latest episode we have one answer to these questions.  This is what he means to do:  he wants to control how you and others of your faith practice your religion -- the faith so many of you believe in with all your heart. Could it be any more clear?