Bishops Aren't The Only Ones With Religious Freedom

Catholic bishops are used to having the final say, on everything -- where priests serve, which parishes are closed or kept open, how money is spent.

They don't function in a democracy and pay little attention to what the faithful in the pew want. They're not elected. They're appointed.

So why is it not surprising that they think the First Amendment right to religious freedom applies only to them and not the rest of the world? That's the distortion that was behind the Catholic Church-orchestrated rally at the Livingston County Courthouse on Friday (March 23, 2012).

The rally-goers want to deny artificial birth control to all women, not just the handful of their own members who follow the bishops' edicts. They want the federal government to do for them what their own preaching has been unable to do -- prevent women from using birth control, even when birth control is needed for medical reasons, such as treating ovarian cysts. And they consistently -- and dishonestly -- mix up abortion with the idea of birth control, ignoring the evidence that pills that cause abortion are not covered by the birth control requirement.

So the bishops want to exercise their religious freedom at the expense of everybody else in the country.