Gary Gutting analyzes the two main arguments that some bishops make in their lawsuits against the administration over contraception.  He demonstrates that both arguments illustrate routine areas of balancing competing rights and that there is no reason for the alarmist rhetoric.  It is a good analysis, and concludes as follows:

These two arguments express the main case made by Catholic bishops and their supporters against the Obama administration’s birth control mandate. They correctly assert two basic truths: that religious people and institutions have rights to act according to the dictates of conscience and that there are limits on the government’s right to interfere with those rights. But they ignore the complex question of how to balance the right of government to do its job of promoting the general welfare against the right of religious believers to be true to their consciences. Therefore they fail to show that, in this case, the government is wrong. At best, the arguments show that there may be a need, as some Catholic organizations are now doing, to ask the courts to resolve these complex questions.

There may be a cogent case against the government’s position. But there is no slam-dunk appeal to outrageous violations of the First Amendment, such as genuine instances of persecution or a war on religion would provide. Rather, there are arguments based on complex (and contestable) legal considerations — for example, interpretations of the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act — turning on the question of what sort of burden of proof the government has to show that its requirement is necessary to achieve its legitimate goal. The bishops may have a viable legal case against the Obama administration. But they have no case for a call to the barricades.

We cannot, of course, be certain about the bishops’ motives in overdramatizing what should be a routine disagreement. But their often demagogic reaction suggests political rather than religious concerns. There is, first, the internal politics of the Church, where the bishops find themselves, especially on matters of sexuality, increasingly isolated from most Church members; they seem desperate to rally at least a fervid core of supporters around their fading authority. But the timing of their outbursts also suggests a grasp for secular political power. It’s hard to think that the bishops — especially given their concerns for social welfare — would more than mildly prefer a Romney administration to an Obama administration. But, hoping to emulate the success of Protestant evangelicals, they may well want to establish their own credentials as significant players in American politics. We can only pray that American Catholics will see through any such effort.