Many have remarked on it: President Obama’s strong statements at this year’s National Breakfast in support of religious freedom around the world seemed at odds with some of the actions of his administration. Skeptics noted how cavalier the President has been about securing an influential person to fill the post of ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, how a unanimous Supreme Court rejected the administration’s denial that religious institutions have a constitutional right to select their own ministerial leaders (the Hosanna-Tabor decision), the administration’s dogged persistent in requiring free coverage of contraceptives . . .

There was also this interesting passage in the speech: the mention of governmental opposition to people because of “who they love” in a paragraph about global threats to freedom of religion. Is same-sex love an instance of religious freedom? Isn’t it, instead, all too often the reason to suppress religious freedom?

And about that conflagration concerning the contraceptives mandate. Here’s the pointed comment of Michel Sean Winters of Distinctly Catholic blog, no die-hard critic of the President. He wrote, The President’s fine words about religious freedom and respect for the dignity of everyone would have made sense . . .

” . . . if he had added, ‘Therefore, I am instructing the Secretary of Health and Human Services to stop obstructing the awarding of contracts to combat human trafficking to the USCCB which does such great work in that field. I am also instructing Secretary Sebelius to devise a better means of delivering the free contraceptive care to women who want, finding a way that does not infringe on the religious liberty of those religious institutions that object to contraception and, further, I am instructing the Attorney General to let the University of Notre Dame alone. And, I would also like to take this opportunity to apologize on behalf of the Department of Justice for that ridiculous brief in Hosanna-Tabor.’

“But, the President did not say any of that, which makes what he did say about religious freedom seem at least a little bit rich.”