Columbia, SC (WLTX) - The South Carolina Attorney General and state Catholic leaders are protesting a federal mandate requiring employers to provide health insurance that pays for contraceptives.
"You can see the contradiction," said Msgr Leigh Lehocky of Saint Peters Catholic Church. "Besides our Sunday masses, we have this enormous outreach through our hospitals, our schools, our Catholic charities. Those are the institutions that are particularly affected by this mandate."
The mandate, issued by the Department of Health and Human Services, exempts church employees but does not provide the same exemption for employees of other businesses run by the church.
The Catholic Church, along with it's schools and hospitals, preach against the use of any contraceptive material.
"We get in this awkward position of our church standing for certain principals and preaching those as our belief in God and then having to pay for something in those same institutions that contradicts that," said Lehocky.
Providence Hospital is run under the Sisters of Charity hospital system.
"The regulation denies adequate conscience protections for religious employers like us," the system's CEO, Sister Judith Ann Karam, said in a statement.
The head of Catholic Churches in South Carolina has also spoken out.
"We Catholics will be compelled either to violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees," said Reverend Robert Guglielmone. "This is a direct attack on our religious freedom."
"The government would be forcing us to go against our conscience and what we see as a mandate from our Lord," said Lehocky. "That's something the United States has always been very careful, not to box people in."