"We have been taught to think that 'democracy' is ...

... automatically "the best regime," the only alternative to any totalitarian state power. Though it has been coming for some time, within these past couple of weeks, we are seeing clearly that the desire, force, and will to subsume all subsidiary social institutions, especially religion and family, under the control of the state is also endemic in current democratic societies. Religion is seen to be, not the "first right," that popes speak of, but the principal opposition to the utopian move to provide everything for everybody under the benevolence of the all-caring state.

Perhaps no organization has been more reluctant to grasp and acknowledge the operative logic of this total control ideology than the Catholic Church. It has prided itself in its subtle accommodation in recent times to what were thought to be reasonable principles for understanding of the political order, the nature, limits, and place of revelation within it. Catholics have striven to show that its beliefs and organizations are able to accept a limited state, a state that understands its own nature and does not claim competence over all spheres of human life.

On the surface, we might be tempted to look on the move to extend what is called "health care" to everyone, including religious institutions, to be something wholly neutral and well-meant. The fact is, however, that it is but one aspect of a world-wide logic, by no means limited to this country. It demands, under the name of the universal common good, the complete control of the state over all aspects of human well-being, especially those having to do with matters of life, death, human reproduction, and efforts to prevent or control the same.

— from "Under the control of the State", by Fr. James V. Schall, S.J., on the CWR blog.