By PETER MANSEAU
Religion Dispatches<\/p>\n
The controversy surrounding the Obama administration\u2019s birth-control mandate is not the first time the nation\u2019s Roman Catholic bishops have found themselves enmeshed in a dispute concerning religious liberty. In an earlier flare-up sparked by the friction of Catholic doctrine and constitutional freedoms, however, liberty was not a rallying cry for the bishops\u2014it was a problem.<\/p>\n
In a pair of papal encyclicals written at the end of the nineteenth century, Pope Leo XIII expressed ambivalence about the Catholic Church in the United States. Much of what the man sometimes called \u201cthe first modern pope\u201d had to say amounted to nodding approval (\u201cThat your Republic is progressing and developing by giant strides is patent to all\u2026\u201d), which at times seemed to take credit for the success it praised.<\/p>\n
In a rhetorical flourish, the pope even laid claim to the nation\u2019s neonatal survival: \u201cWhen America was, as yet, but a newborn babe, uttering in its cradle its first feeble cries, the Church took it to her bosom and motherly embrace.\u201d<\/p>\n