The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has issued a “special letter” regarding the Obama administration’s HHS mandate. The USCCB, meeting this month in Baltimore, passed the letter unanimously.

Calling the HHS mandate “coercive,” the bishops state that they have tried to work with the current administration, to no avail.

Beginning in March 2012, in United for Religious Freedom, we identified three basic problems with the HHS mandate: it establishes a false architecture of religious liberty that excludes our ministries and so reduces freedom of religion to freedom of worship; pels our ministries to participate in providing employees with abortifacient drugs and devices, sterilization, and contraception, which violates our deeply-held beliefs; and pels our faithful people in business to act against our teachings, failing to provide them any exemption at all.

Despite our repeated efforts to work and dialogue toward a solution, those problems remain. Not only does the mandate undermine our ministries’ ability to witness to our faith, which is their core mission, but the penalties it imposes also lay a great burden on those ministries, threatening their very ability to survive and to serve the many who rely on their care.

The current impasse is all the more frustrating because the Catholic Church has long been a leading provider of, and advocate for, accessible, life-affirming health care. We would have preferred to spend these recent past years working toward this shared goal instead of resisting this intrusion into our religious liberty. We have been forced to devote time and resources to a conflict we did not start nor seek.

The bishops go on to say that the HHS mandate is a “heavy burden” and threatens American religious freedom.

Read “U.S. Bishops Issue ‘Special Message’ on HHS Mandate at Conclusion of General Assembly.”