Good decision by Obama. Just because you may work at a catholic hospital shouldn't mean you don't get basic medical care.
Now you won't. The Church is going to end up cutting all medical benefits and paying the fine because of this.
If I understand what you're saying correctly , that would be a ridiculous thing to do (not to mention extremely un-Catholic). What happened to American Catholics' ability for doublethinking?
Basically, the law would give them three options:
1. Pay for abortion, contraception, and sterilization.
2. Cut health insurance to their employees and pay a fine to the government for not providing it
3. Fire all non-Catholics and kick out all non-Catholic patients and students to qualify for a religious exemption.
From the comments of Cardinal Dolan, the Church seems most likely to do (2) if the deadline passes and the new rule is appied. However, the healthcare mandate will soon kick in and these people will have to find another way to get insurance. The Church probably won't be able to afford paying them more to buy their own since the federal government will make them pay a fine in addition. I've heard from various officials that the Church will under no circumstances consent to (1). The religious exemption (3) is a bit of a joke and the bishops are now sarcastically noting that Jesus wouldn't qualify for an exemption because he cured the sick without asking what religion they were.
The Church is really, really angry about this. Cardinal Dolan met with President Obama a couple months ago and apparently the meeting went well, and then the administration passed this rule and Cardinal Dolan recently said he feels like he was stabbed in the back. Last Sunday, the bishops had a scathing letter read at Mass outlining what has happened. The Catholic Church in the US rarely if ever mentions something overtly political like this from the pulpit. We'll pray for an end to abortion and something about the poor and downtrodden and usually leave it at that. Long letters taking government officials to task on something are not normal. My jaw was practically on the floor the entire time.
