Pope In State Of The World Address Talks Religious Liberty & Conscientious Objection Rights - HHS Contraception Mandate Reference ?

Pope Benedict addressed the Diplomatic Corp to the Holy See today.  As Rocco Palmo in his post on this pointed out the Vatican is one of the world's oldest diplomatic service – which has been dispatching emissaries since the 12th century . This is the "State of the World " speech and is pretty far ranging on many topics since the world is a pretty big place.

Rocco has the full text here at "Man's Forgetfulness of God Gives Rise to Violence" – The World According to Benedict .

Among the topics was of course violence / wars  in various parts of the world, corruption , and educating  people to be just. He also spent some time on abortion concerns and some recent developments.

However I wanted to pick out one portion that caught my eye:



Continuing our meeting today, I would like to add that peace in society is also put at risk by certain threats to religious liberty: it is a question sometimes of the marginalization of religion in social life; sometimes of intolerance or even of violence towards individuals, symbols of religious identity and religious institutions. It even happens that believers, and Christians in particular, are prevented from contributing to the common good by their educational and charitable institutions. In order effectively to safeguard the exercise of religious liberty it is essential to respect the right of .

This "frontier" of liberty touches upon principles of great importance of an ethical and religious character, rooted in the very dignity of the human person. They are, as it were, the "bearing walls" of any society that wishes to be truly free and democratic. Thus, outlawing individual and institutional conscientious objection in the name of liberty and pluralism paradoxically opens by contrast the door to intolerance and forced uniformity.

The Pope is of course  talking about many areas of the world where this is taking place. However one cannot read that and not possibly  think that he might be very much including certain current struggles the Church and people of Faith are having right now in such matters as the HHS Contraception mandate here in the USA.