Please tell me that you are paying attention to what is happening right now between the Catholic Church and the Obama Administration. I have to be honest in saying that I have too many work commitments to do justice to this story, and yet it deserves every ounce of attention we can give to it. All I can really do is point you to places where you can read better coverage and ask you to please go to them. Do you value freedom of religion? Freedom of conscience? Then pay attention!

You may have heard about the Catholic church's stand against a Health and Human Services policy that will require religious institutions (not churches) to provide provide health insurance to their employees which includes subsidized contraception, sterilization and coverage for abortion-inducing drugs. In it's grandiosity, the Obama administration thinks that giving the church an extra year to comply with its policies will be enough to satisfy the poor benighted bishops. I think Obama miscalculated on that one, and I pray that the church will continue to stiffen it's spine and resist this overreach.

If the story wasn't bad enough when it was just the administration telling Catholic institutions to go stuff their principles, it got worse when it was revealed that Catholic military chaplains had been censored. The letter that was read in Catholic churches all across the U.S. on January 29th was not, as it turns out, read to every Catholic congregation. Catholic army chaplains were instructed not to read the letter, because it hadn't been approved by the army's office of the Chief of Chaplaincy. A version edited by the Secretary of the Army, John McHugh, has now been approved for the chaplains to read. Seriously? We have a member of the administration editing pastoral letters?

I am not a Catholic. I am not a conservative. I am someone who believes that our personal freedoms will disappear over issues like this, and this, and this. They'll disappear because we only pay attention to what immediately affects us, and Obama seems like a decent guy, and there aren't any better alternatives, and we're busy driving our kids to soccer and paying the bills and trying to keep our jobs. We can't be bothered to worry about what's happening to the rights of others. Except, of course, that their rights are our rights, as well. We thought our Constitution would protect us, but that requires a government that respects and upholds the Constitution. We seem to be lacking one at the moment.

Pay attention. Say something. Strengthen what remains.

UPDATE:  Although I tried to cleverly link to the whitehouse.gov petition above, clever is not the same thing as clear.  So for those interested in signing, here's the petition site.