As the trumped up controversy over the affordable healthcare act by the Conference of American Catholic Bishops began, Bishop David A. Zubik of Pittsburgh declared, “The Obama administration has just told the Catholics of the United States, ‘To Hell with you!’” That was not true, of course, nor do I think Obama should have said such a thing. It would have been too timid. What he should have said to the Catholic bishops and any Catholic (or anyone else) who agrees with you: “Go to hell.”

It’s time to take the gloves off in these cultural wars. The Catholic Church is as hypocritical as it gets. These are the same bishops who either moved pedophile priests around to protect themselves, or condoned those who did. These are the bishops who want to be exempted by the state when they think laws violate church teachings, but want to impose those teaching on the state, including all Protestants. That is why in my own state they are leading the fight to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The claim by the Catholic Church that it wants the freedom to live by its own teachings is a lie. It wants everyone to live by those teachings, Catholic or not.

It is time for non-Catholics to say enough is enough. To hell with your persecution complex that makes you believe those who disagree with you are waging a war on religion, And while I’m at it, to hell with your efforts to impose your views on the whole nation. To hell with your insistence that you speak for Christ on earth when so much of what you say and do would be an embarrassment to Jesus were he still here. You don’t speak for him, and you sure as hell don’t speak for me as a person of faith.

What Catholics believe or don’t believe doesn’t matter to me or anyone else who is not Catholic. But that doesn’t mean they get to play by their own rules when it comes to the laws of the land. I pay taxes to a government that started a war in Iraq I opposed. I pay taxes to a government that discriminates against gays and profiles minorities and middle easterners. I pay taxes to a government that is as corrupt as governments can be. These things violate my conscience. But I am also an American who has to live with the bad and the good. So do Catholics. But their bishops are crying foul about it. They have forgotten that they are not God, they are fallible men who are no better or worse than the rest of us, it’s just that the rest of us know we aren’t God.

As a religious person I understand and affirm that the first amendment gives me freedom of religion, and also that it gives my neighbor freedom from religion. The Catholic Church cannot have the former without the latter. If it refuses to accept this reality, then, indeed, to hell with it.