Standing in the White House Rose Garden on September 12th of this year, President Obama declared: "Since its founding the United States has been a nation that respects ALL faiths." This has indeed been our government's constant policy- until now. It is Mr. Obama himself who has broken with this policy and in so doing has shown an egregious contempt for the Catholic Church and  for the Evangelical confession. His administration is demanding that, under pain of ruinous fines, Catholic businessmen and Catholic institutions (and to a significant if lesser degree Evangelical businessmen and  Evangelical institutions) are to be complicit in a violation of conscience through subsidizing what their faith condemns as evil. Under the notorious mandate issued earlier this year by Mr. Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, with authorization dubiously drawn from the ambiguous provisions of  The Affordable Health Care Act, Catholic and Evangelical businessmen are to be compelled to subsidize the provision of abortifacients, sterilization procedures  and contraceptives,  to their employees  through mandatory health insurance policies.  This past February, in a telephone call to New York's Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, President Obama informed the Cardinal that all Catholic hospitals and charitable agencies, and at least many of our Catholic schools, will soon be compelled to make similar provision for their employees. President Obama's words, as quoted by Cardinal Dolan: "I'm giving you a year and a half [till August first, 2013], to figure out how you're going to comply." (Mr. Obama seems at the time to have felt supremely confident that he would still be enthroned in the Oval Office, come August of next year).

All of this constitutes the very first instance in the history of our republic in which an American president has issued a directive explicitly requiring American citizens and religious institutions to do what their faith prohibits. The penalty for refusal to submit to such tyranny will be the payment of ruinous fines.

The imposition of such fines, if not delayed by court order, will mean that many a Catholic or Evangelical businessman will either have to act in contradiction to his faith, or go out of business. So, too, starting next August, all Catholic hospitals and charitable agencies will either have to renounce their connection with, and thus their guidance by, the Catholic faith, or eventually close their doors. The same would be true for all Catholic universities and colleges (and perhaps even grade schools and high schools)  that do not restrict admission to those professing the Catholic faith. Perhaps a very few Catholic institutions of higher learning might be willing and able to pay huge fines for non-compliance -- for a while.

But it's safe to predict that by and large neither the will nor the ability to keep on paying such crushing fines would long endure. Notre Dame, for example, would have to pay millions of dollars in fines each year. What Mr. Obama clearly hopes to secure is the near-abolition of official Catholic participation in  health-care, education, and institutional assistance to the poor.

Clearly, then, a president who campaigned on bringing "CHANGE!" to America, (change specified a bit later as involving the "profound transformation of American society") intends to carry out his pledge. Freedom of religion and freedom of conscience must now give way to presidential decree. With respect to the Bill of Rights it's "Blow a kiss and bye-bye!"