American Catholicism’s Pact With the Devil by Paul A. Rahe

Catholics have been linking to this essay on FB and their blogs. He writes as a conservative [liberal] but I think the following criticism is valid. And then there is the question of constitutionality.

At the prospect that institutions associated with the Catholic Church would be required to offer to their employees health insurance covering contraception and abortifacients, the bishops, priests, and nuns scream bloody murder. But they raise no objection at all to the fact that Catholic employers and corporations, large and small, owned wholly or partially by Roman Catholics will be required to do the same. The freedom of the church as an institution to distance itself from that which its doctrines decry as morally wrong is considered sacrosanct. The liberty of its members – not to mention the liberty belonging to the adherents of other Christian sects, to Jews, Muslims, and non-believers – to do the same they are perfectly willing to sacrifice.

He finds one root of the American Church's current problem in the actions of the Church in the 1930s:

This is what the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church forgot. In the 1930s, the majority of the bishops, priests, and nuns sold their souls to the devil, and they did so with the best of intentions. In their concern for the suffering of those out of work and destitute, they wholeheartedly embraced the New Deal. They gloried in the fact that Franklin Delano Roosevelt made Frances Perkins – a devout Anglo-Catholic laywoman who belonged to the Episcopalian Church but retreated on occasion to a Catholic convent – Secretary of Labor and the first member of her sex to be awarded a cabinet post. And they welcomed Social Security – which was her handiwork. They did not stop to ponder whether public provision in this regard would subvert the moral principle that children are responsible for the well-being of their parents. They did not stop to consider whether this measure would reduce the incentives for procreation and nourish the temptation to think of sexual intercourse as an indoor sport. They did not stop to think.

But was the New Deal wholly bad? There may be some paleos who think so. Allan Carlson offers a different view:
The New Deal
The Social Conservative Case for the New Deal (alt)
The Family in America

Did the bishops have a choice between supporting the modern welfare state and not doing so, when there apparently was and is no viable alternative to securing the good of those who lack economic freedom?* Could the Church have fought for decentralization and greater economic power? How could it do so without first recognizing the importance of communal life and how it is to be fostered? It is for this oversight that the American Church should be primarily criticized.

Still, the American Church had a hand in the unwarranted expansion of the National Government and the implementation of unconstitutional programs?

*Could the Church have worked to protect the small farmer and producer?

Also from Mr. Carlson: Love is Not Enough.
Fractured Generations

Related:
Agrarians, Rejoice!