The very First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America, the first article of the Bill of Rights, states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The import of that statement is straightforward and, it seems to me, absolute.

Unfortunately, the vagaries of time and the complexities of government have brought it about that the administration of our nation's business is extraordinarily complex and so Congress, little by little, has allowed executive agencies to usurp its power and make rules that, while they are not laws, are regarded as being laws.

On Jan. 20, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a decree imposing a rule that all private health plans will be required to pay for sterilizations and contraception, including abortion-inducing drugs. Describing these mutilations and poisonings as "preventive services" (imagine pregnancy as a disease!) must be included in private health insurance plans without copayments or other methods of sharing the costs. This means that unless the Catholic Church wishes to surrender its services and helps to all people of goodwill, our Catholic institutions will have to pay for insurance for practices that run counter to precepts of our faith. This is the latest affront to religion, and part of a series of like attacks on the bases of Christian morality. I think of the refusal of the executive branch to enforce the law passed by Congress called the Defense of Marriage Act, the so-called "war against Christmas," the vitiation of marriage laws and other such incursions on the religious fabric of our nation. Even many who do not share our religious convictions on the edict of the Department of Health and Human Services, are aghast at this effrontery of the federal government.

Cardinal George noted in his article in the Catholic New World for Jan. 15: "In previous generations, Catholics were protected against individual and organized prejudice by an exemplary legal system. In a society that is pluralistic in its moral standards, the law always provided religious exemptions and conscience clauses that protected both individuals and religious institutions. These traditional safeguards of liberty can no longer be taken for granted. Now it is the law itself that has become, in some instances, our adversary. This is a new development for Catholics in America: the legal system is being changed to remove protections for our faith and our religious liberty. Catholics risk being once again excluded from the American consensus. That is my fear."

One thing I have always personally resented and have tried to avoid, even as a suggestion, is the idea that the Church should tell Catholic people how they should vote. In the election process of our civil government, it seems to me that this is neither the office of the Church nor a necessity for its functioning. But as bishop of this diocese, I declare to you frankly that each and every Catholic citizen must take some steps to make known to our federal government and its minions that this kind of incursion upon the liberty of our Church cannot and will not be tolerated. It is perhaps not necessary to start hoarding holy water or to hide away crucifixes, rosaries and prayer books against searches by the FBI and the IRS which could easily become our own Gestapo, but it is necessary for each one of us to take seriously what is happening.

The Bishop of Peoria has written that: "Under the Constitution, no president has the authority to require our cooperation with what we consider to be intrinsic evil and mortal sin. We must therefore oppose by every means at our disposal this gross infringement upon the rights of Catholic citizens to freely practice our religion."

The Bishop of Springfield stated: "We will not comply with this unjust law ... people of faith cannot be made second class citizens."

In my own view, this situation gives the lie to all those who regard religion as potentially disruptive of the civil order, and therefore must be a private concern. Note that this attack upon our faith is not the result of anything we have done, but an unprovoked ukase that evinces utter disregard of our religious traditions that were already the practice of millions long before this republic existed (and which, if our government should continue on its present disastrous course of denying religious freedom, will outlast this republic to be sure). In a way, some who lead us have brought this upon ourselves by a too-ready identification of our goals with those of the political state. I think of the haste with which many of our coreligionists embraced Obamacare, which even its proponents admitted they had not read.

Laoco�n, priest of the ancient City of Troy, warned his people against bringing into the city the trophy horse that the Greeks had left in apparent lifting of their siege of the city. To those who wanted to celebrate by bringing that trophy within the walls, he said: "Whatever it is, I fear Greeks bearing gifts." You know the rest of that story that Homer narrates; the wooden horse brought into the city was filled with Greek soldiers, who opened the gates at night and let in the Greek army, and the city was destroyed.

Our government may well have done us a favor by putting us on notice whenever it proposes some benefit or "service." We should not leap to clasp it to ourselves. Whatever be the case, we should fear the federal government bearing gifts.

I do not believe it to be true that government must always be our enemy. But it has been sadly said and often that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. As government seeks to expand its role, it lays claim to our total allegiance; and so there must always be some conflict between church and state, because the state claims our total loyalty, forgetting that we are citizens not only of the city of man, but more importantly of the City of God. Sane and compassionate government certainly is not always our enemy, but we should never presume, ever again, that government is our friend.