"Religious Freedom," for those of you who don't already know, is code for the cardinal and his fellow prelates' ability to deny your rights while maintaining or increasing their financial support from your tax dollars. George is president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The last two annual reports released by the USCCB showed that in 2004, 45% of its income came from federal grants and 43% in 2005. (Unlike other non-profits, religious organizations are not required by the IRS to produce any financial reports whatsoever and still maintain their tax exemptions and government subsidies). So George was able to congratulate Mormons and Catholics for working together to successfully trample the civil rights of gays and lesbians with their own taxes.  

The USCCB has also successfully fought all efforts to end government grants, subsidies and tax exemptions to the myriad of Catholic agencies throughout the country which discriminate in hiring tax-paying Americans of other, or no, religious persuasion in positions which require no profession of credal belief.  When Americans protested that the USCCB umbrella group, Catholic Charities USA, received 65% of its 2007 budget from government grants while its members denied adoption and foster care services to gays and lesbians, the bishops' outcry was that this was an attack on - you guessed it - their "religious freedom."

The cardinal also used the occasion at BYU to denounce government attempts to "stand between the consciences and the religious practices of its citizens and Almighty God" and "government failure to protect the conscience of it's citizens." George was referring to President Obama's review, which George called "despotism," of an eleventh-hour bone tossed by George W. Bush to the religious right before he left office. Bush issued the Provider Refusal Rule stating that any employee in any medical facility receiving government dollars had the right to deny any medication, procedure, aid or service solely at their own descretion. More than half the income of Catholic hospitals and health facilities comes from Medicare and Medicaid, so what George and the USCCB are demanding is tax-payer dollars for their employees to deny Plan B medication to rape victims; withhold birth control pill formulas as hormonal treatment, indeed, deny all birth control even condoms to HIV patients; deny any surgery or procedure which might result, even secondarily, in sterilization; surgically insert feeding and hydration tubes to force feed the frail regardless of the wishes of patients, their families or physicians; deny abortions to save the lives of women or in cases of severe fetal deformity; or anything else an employee claims is against their conscience.

No one has even remotely suggested restricting the freedom of George's church, agencies and medical facilities to practice their religion as long as they use their own money. It is interesting, however, how words such as "despotism," "fascism" and the "Soviet Union" have entered the public speech of a man wanting to dictate the terms of American medicine and morality and do it with our money.

(Betty Clermont is author of The Neo-Catholics: Implementing Christian Nationalism in America)