Letters: Catholic bishops and the government

Re “Catholic bishops cry wolf,” Editorial, July 8

Conservatives and progressives hold conflicting conceptions of liberty.

For conservatives, liberty has meant being free to dominate or control others. For progressives, liberty has meant liberation from others’ control.

Edmund Burke, the archetypal conservative, viewed English “liberty” as including a hierarchical, hereditary monarchy and aristocracy. In the post-Civil War period in the U.S., Southern conservatives viewed maintaining laws that favored whites as part of their liberty.

Today, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops views same-sex marriage and access to contraception as an assault on the church’s “liberty.” Their “liberty” requires being able to control the personal lives of others.

That won’t do.

Roger Carasso

Los Angeles

Notice the similarities in the editorial with what the Obama administration has been doing lately: telling religious institutions what they should and should not believe or what they should or should not be fighting for when moral values are violated by government law.

When the government requires any institution to pay for items that are morally objectionable, that is a violation of the rights of the institution, which is in fact made up and led by individual citizens who have individual consciences. It is not crying wolf but rather a matter of integrity: doing what you say you are doing, not what the government decides you should be doing.

Brian Delaney

Irvine

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