Michael Winters- Bishops Need To Quit Listening To Lawyers On Legal Challenge To HHS Contraception Mandate

Michael Sean Winters has been a needed voice from the slightly  more progressive leaning branch of American Catholicism against the HHS Contraception mandate. Still there are some areas differences as to tactics and indeed as to the scope of the problem.

He wrote this piece The USCCB Response: Change or Not?

Prof  Rick Garnett takes issues with two aspects of his piece at Some thoughts on the bishops' response, lawyers, and for-profits (responding to MSW)

Garnett first responds to Winter's suggestion that the Bishops need to quit listening to all these  Lawyers they have. I have to say from a slip and fall lawsuit to Bishops suing the Obama administration it is never a good idea to quit listening too your Lawyers. I think Garnett does a good job responding here as well as defending the Beckett Fund .

However a much bigger issue is Winter's viewpoint that once we the Bishops can save Catholic orgs from the affects of the HHS Contraception mandate that the Bishops have no business sticking up for the rest of us. This is a view that Winter's has had for some time and sadly in my view has not relented on much.

Garnett I think does a good job responding to this too. To quote Garnett "Religious-freedom is a human right, and is presented as such in authoritative Catholic teaching.  How could violations of that right not be a concern of the bishops, simply because their own and the Church's institutional interests are (perhaps) taken care of.  "