Cardinal Timothy Dolan #fundie m.nypost.com

Cardinal Timothy Dolan ramped up the battle with the White House today, blasting the government for a controversial new regulation that would require providing free contraceptive services to workers of religious institutions.

“Don’t impose your teaching upon us and make us do as a church what we find unconscionable to do!” the freshly minted prince of the church told a roaring crowd of 1,000 at Holy Trinity Diocesan HS in Hicksville.
In a blistering attack interlaced with humor, Dolan never mentioned President Obama by name — only his policies.

But he did bring up President Lyndon B. Johnson.
“President Johnson said, ‘As an American I look to the church — I look to religion as a beehive. If you leave them alone they’re going to give you tons of their honey. But if you stick your head in there, you’re going to get stung bad.’”
Washington softened its stance on the prickly issue last month, saying that insurers would foot the bill, not the Church’s schools, hospitals or clinics.

But on his blog, Dolan, who was elevated to cardinal on Feb. 18, said that he and the bishops, “are still as worried as ever.”

He told the crowd of church leaders that the battle over the US Health and Human Services regulation is bigger than contraception.

“It is a freedom of religion battle,” Dolan said. “We are talking about an unwarranted, unprecedented radical intrusion into the interior life of integrity of a church’s ability to teach, serve and sanctify in its own.”
Dolan, the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and de facto leader of the American Catholic Church, didn’t shy away from his leadership role, nor from controversy.

“I suppose we could say there might be some doctor who would say to a man who is suffering some sort of sexual dysfunction, ‘You ought to start visiting a prostitute to help you, and I will write you a prescription, and I hope the government will pay for it.

“We live in an era that seems to discover new rights every day and then expects government and culture and society to pay for it. The church emphasizes responsibility more than rights.”

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