The Department of Health and Human Services Mandate goes into effect today, thrusting Catholic institutions between a rock and a hard place. Catholics now must face a choice of complying with the law or upholding their consciences and religious beliefs. Some 43 Catholic organizations, and counting, have filed lawsuits against the mandate on the grounds that it violates fundamental religious liberties. At specific issue are government requirements that will force Catholic-related employers to offer health insurance plans covering contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs, such as morning-after pills.

What’s behind Catholic resistance to the mandate? Here, His Eminence Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, eloquently defends the viewpoints of the church in a Face The Nation interview with Bob Schieffer that first aired in April.

St. Louis attorney Fred L. Vilbig interviews Cardinal Timothy Dolan about the HHS Mandate — how this section of the vast Obamacare bill came to be introduced as an amendment on the floor of the Senate by Barbara Mikulski, D-Maryland, and adopted with minimal debate. Similarly, HHS Cabinet Secretary Kathleen Sebelius farmed out the drafting of the department’s regulations to an outside agency, the Institute of Medicine. Those recommendations were prepared on an emergency basis, with scant public input, none whatsoever from the affected Catholic institutions.