A new legislative year starts, and bishops are lining up to go to jail over the HHS mandate which, as far as I can tell, is still in the negotiation stage.

It’s interesting to suggest one might go to jail for a just cause. Jesus, of course, suffered unjustly. And perhaps we like to think of the honor of sacrifice for a worthy cause–the end of the build-up of nuclear arms, the Occupy movement, the SOA campus in Georgia–causes not seen in the same light as the current majority ideology on the bishops’ bench.

Equally interesting and possibly illustrative that some of the same bishops are unwilling to go to jail for their own transgressions. Blame has been passed on to others, and prison sentences avoided.

It also strikes me that in the health insurance arena, we’ve been hearing about financial penalties more than we’ve been hearing about the Hobby Lobby CEO going to jail. Face it: if bishops aren’t going to wear prison orange for mismanaging sex predators, it’s not going to happen for idelogical resistance to the federal government. That’s a PR fiasco even the Democratic Party and its president are unwilling to risk.

I’d prefer seeing the bishops team up with the guys who have real insurance savvy, the Knights of Columbus, and drag along Catholic health care institutions and do what could have been done a generation ago: disentangle health insurance from employment and offer a real alternative. If the bishops want to go to jail to get that done, I’m all over that.

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