
The other fact supporting such concerns about conservative initiatives, especially those drawing their inspiration from orthodox Catholicism, is that the bishops ran a largely incompetent campaign against the religious liberty restrictions of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), which they helped pass legislatively by giving it the hierarchy’s moral cover at a politically critical moment when its passage was far from a given. Given that the president and the Democratic Party ran a pugilistic campaign against the Catholic Church regularly mischaracterizing the Church’s teachings, President Obama has no political nor personal reason to reach a compromise with the Church on those issues essential to the free exercise of religion. No doubt, given the hostility of Democratic campaigns to Catholic concerns on the question of the HHS mandate and the broader question of religious liberty, the president and his administration will proceed with the notion that he has a mandate to continue his aggressively anti-Catholic, anti-religious, and culturally libertine agenda.
To be honest, my dark assessment of this emerging reality for conservatives, especially orthodox Catholics and other Christians, is this: We are going to be marginalized, our institutions reduced, our liberties restricted, and our persons attacked. Evidence suggests that we have few deeply principled and thoroughly well-informed leaders who enjoy support locally, parochially, and beyond who are in a position and possess the courage to be effective in keeping our views and positions viable in the public square. President Obama’s victory is not about a popular policy agenda, but about the triumph of emotionalism and relativism in the face of an inarticulate, ineffective, and ultimately uncourageous opposition that has convinced a majority of the American people that perception is reality, that feeling is the same as fact, and ‘being nice’ is a moral imperative.

English: President Barack Obama’s signature on the health insurance reform bill at the White House, March 23, 2010. The President signed the bill with 22 different pens. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)