What if the bishops aren’t bluffing?

Ed Morrisey does an assessment of the massive damage that will be inflicted on the American social infrastructure should the Tyrant King get his way and force the Church to abandon the works of mercy in the the public square. It’s not pretty, and it illustrates the point I’ve been making all along: that the question is not whether the Church will survive this stupid act of persecution (of course it will). It’s whether America will survive it. He concludes:

Some may doubt that the bishops would create this kind of havoc and disruption, and perhaps President Obama believes Cardinal George and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to be bluffing. However, Obama may want to read St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, and his Principle and Foundation of faith, which informs Catholics on the priority of salvation. The first task of mankind, according to St. Ignatius, is to serve God and “save his soul,” and “other things on the face of the earth” should be used only as long as they serve that purpose. When they become a hindrance to salvation, St. Ignatius warns to “rid himself of them.”

If the HHS mandate forces the Catholic Church to fund and facilitate access to products and services they believe imperil souls, they will apply Ignatius’ principle and stick with salvation — which is the entire raison d’être of any religious organization. The implications for public-sector spending and services is massive, and Obama may be pushing all in with only a pair of jacks. Don’t count on the bishops to blink first.

Exactamundo. I don’t think these guys are kidding, thank God. If the Administration tries force the Church into becoming a subsidizer of grave sin, one option is for the Church to simply refuse to comply and, as she has already done when gay adoption has been forced on her, simply back out of providing that social service rather than do evil that good may come of it. The Church is an absolutely crucial grease in the functioning of our culture. Massive amounts of unsung, underpaid, and unnoticed work is done by Christians who do it for love, not for profit. Boot the Church out of the American social support network and you will very swiftly see the US social order overheat and burn to the ground. It’s a fantastically stupid and arrogant move by Obama to force this utterly unnecessary fight. But few people are more stupid than a lefty pol with his face set against the teaching of Christ and determined to socially engineer the New Human Race.