Deneen Article: 1) The public response of critics of the mandate essentially cede to liberalism most of the ground that

they would need to mount a serious case against the individualizing, relativizing and subjective claims that lie at the heart of the mandate and, more broadly, liberalism itself. 2) That philosophy holds at its core that humans are by nature free, autonomous and independent, bound only by positive law that seeks to regulate physical behavior that results in physical harm to others (and, increasingly, selves). Liberal people should not be bound by any limitation upon their natural freedom that does not cause harm (mainly physical harm) to another human; otherwise, the State should be indifferent (neutral) to any claims regarding the nature of the the Good. 3) Liberalism, instead seeks to secure legal structures governing Right procedures ensuring fairness with an aim to protecting (and expanding) the sphere of individual liberty while balancing claims regarding the harms of some individual practices (such as limiting some harmful activities of the market while leaving it largely intact). 4) Liberalism understood from the outset that it could not abide by any religious tradition that sought to influence the order of society based upon its conception of the Good. Private belief could be tolerated; such belief would extend only to the faithful of that faith. This represents a chosen self-limitation. 5) It is no coincidence that many of the cases involving religious liberty now involve Catholics, inasmuch as Catholics have erected worldly institutions in the effort to live out the witness of their faith schools, universities, hospitals, charities, and the like. The Catholic faith is, by definition, not private; it involves a conception of the human Good that in turn requires efforts to instantiate that understanding in the world. As such, Catholics represent a threat to the liberal order, which demands that people check their faith at the door and acknowledge only one sovereign in the realm of proscribing public behavior the State. 6) Critics of the HHS mandate have framed their responses to the mandate within liberal terms. This is doubtless a requirement and necessity in contemporary liberal society to gain a hearing at the table of public opinion, and especially the Courts, arguments must be framed in dominantly liberal terms 7) Critics of the Mandate thus downplay and even ignore the content of the belief in question; 8) However, The Church does not seek to propound its teachings as a matter of internal belief solely for its faith adherents: it claims that its teachings are true as a matter of human good. 9) The Church understood long before this tendency became evident that liberalism was finally incapable of indifference toward the choices of individuals, particularly when those choices involved the limitation of individual autonomy, and particularly when any such limitation occurred in the context not of organizations that stressed individual choice, but

rather asserted the preeminence of conceptions of the Good that commended practices of self-limitation. In short, liberalism would finally reveal its partiality toward autonomy by forcing institutions with an opposing worldview to conform to liberalisms assumptions. 10)Liberalism would seek actively to liberate individuals from oppressive structures, even at the point of requiring such liberalism at the point of a legal mandate and even a gun. 11)But, the real debate is not over religious freedom, in fact: it is over the very nature of humanity and the way in which we order our polities and societies. 12)Catholicism is one of the few remaining voices of principle and depth that can articulate an forceful and learned alternative to todays dominant liberal worldview. That it truncates those arguments for the sake of prudential engagement in a contemporary skirmish should not shroud the nature of the deeper conflict. That conflict will continue apace, and Catholics do themselves no favors if they do not understand the true nature of the battle, and the fact that current arguments aid and abet their opponent.