“Roman Catholicism does not readily distinguish between public and private moral obligations”, and yet Roman Catholic institutions have worked to be exempt from this integration of the Chuch and State spheres. The institutions aim for “the exemption solution”: Catholic hospitals argue their First Ammendment rights free them from, e.g., performing or discussing abortions, and so on. Liz B sees two simultaneous outcomes:

There are those who worry that the exemption solution won’t work forever, and those who worry that it will work too well, shrinking the role of religion in public life and reducing the ranks of the faithful. There are also those, like me (I should note that I, too, am Catholic), who suspect that both may happen at once: that religions whose ethics conflict with the broader culture will shift toward forming small, dense enclaves, where they are unlikely to encounter legal challenges to their preferred practices.