PrintDecember 11, 2011
That 'Conscience Thing'
So: Nancy Pelosi is concerned that America's Catholic bishops have "this conscience thing" because they oppose an Obamacare mandate that would force Catholics to buy insurance policies that cover abortion. Nothing could so graphically illustrate the former speaker's unmooredness in American history and tradition than her cavalier dismissal of that "conscience thing."
In almost explicit terms, Pelosi has revealed that "the culture war," which is at bottom a war against the religious basis of our culture, has now been carried into attacks on the very moral foundations of our civilization. For surely, the free exercise of religion, if it's to mean anything significant for our public life, must mean the right to follow one's moral conscience -- the right to have, in the former speaker's dismissive words, a "conscience thing." That right, indeed, is the foundation of all other rights, including particularly the right to stand for one's own moral and religious...(Read Full Article)
