If the problem is personal, the Church tries to outlive it.  I think Barack Obama is more extreme than most Democrats when it comes to giving orders to the Church; therefore when he steps down the problem should be resolved; therefore their first inclination was to try to ride it out til Obama left.

So I don't know there will be a lasting trend of resistance once the idiot who demanded immediate compliance goes away.

There IS real improvement in messaging.  The Bishops' opposition to Obamacare was read out the Sunday after the Wednesday it was passed in the House.  Now they're ahead of the legislatures with their reports.

?

That doesn't make any sense. Have you ever read the Constitution? Do you know anything of history?

Why all the hating on free speech of late? Of course religious institutions have certain moral views. Of course they're talking about it.

?

Or they could just hold a vote and attach conditions to state money?

Duh.

This is one reason the oldsters called the welfare state "unAmerican"

the Constitution guarantees "Free Exercise" not "free worship".  Worship is something limited to 1 day a week, exercise is 24/7/365

The Church is guaranteed the freedom to operate charitable instutitions.
It's secular welfare organizations that are limited.
To ban religious outfits unless they obey secular requirements is unconstitutional.

There is no separation of church and state in the Constitution, for one thing.  It's an invention of judges since then.

There IS a guarantee of free exercise.

AND, the churches have everywhere been doing adoption, teaching and education before the federal government set up shop.  Even before the US government had jurisdiction.  (maybe that leaves out Scientology and their AlAnon, too bad).

Yeah the government can set up alcohol stores in competition with grocery stores...then declare a government monopoly on the sale of alcohol...there's no specific guarantee of the sale of alcohol in the Constitution.

I know the Democrat party is confused about this...they're about to get straightened out.

Yell,

Thomas Jefferson explicitly stated that the first amendment guaranteed the separation of Church and State. If he inferred the same conclusion, then the supreme court was justified doing the same. So you're wrong!

Except, social services provided by the religious institutions are not typically funded by the government. Once the government gets involved, the government is promoting the establishment of a religion.

Flint,

Except most US Christians are not socially conservative nut jobs.

Justinian I,

"Which is what this Obama thing is about."

The "Obama thing" is about employees of these religious institutions and the healthcare provided, not the services rendered with the tax money. The government is saying hey, you have the infrastructure, provide these services for us k plz thnx. Then they're saying the Catholic church has to provide their employees with birth control and such, because they took government contracts. It's not like they're being paid to offer birth control then aren't offering birth control. They're not reneging on contracts, they're saying they'll offer whatever healthcare they're morally comfortable with to their employees, as is their right.

It's a non-issue and entirely politicized bullshit, since birth control is cheap and nobody has the right to have it provided for them by anybody. Nobody's rights are being violated by the Church not providing birth control in most circumstances.

I do agree that the government generally shouldn't be funding these institutions. Favoring any religious institution over others can easily be seen as an establishment of religion of sorts and infringement upon the free exercise of others.

Unfortunately, the Catholic Church has proven itself better at running hospitals than most idiot bureaucrats. So we're stuck with government working with them, or with a deterioration of services available to the public. I'm not exactly upset that I can't get contraception and abortions from them, however. Lots of government money is already dedicated to killing the children of minorities. So long as this is true and these services are available from other government-sponsored entities, even those minorities set on killing their kids aren't harmed by Catholic policy of not being okay with that.

And I need to pay for HIV, herpes, and Hepatitis meds too. Because I might suddenly become a stupid whore and be at risk of contracting any of them.

And I have to pay for it!

And I'd still have to pay for it.