Garry Wills:

By a revolting combination of con men and fanatics, the current primary race has become a demonstration that the Republican party does not deserve serious consideration for public office. Take the controversy over contraceptives. American bishops at first opposed having hospitals and schools connected with them pay employee health costs for contraceptives. But when the President backed off from that requirement, saying insurance companies can pay the costs, the bishops doubled down and said no one should have to pay for anything so evil as contraception. Some Republicans are using the bishops’ stupidity to hurt the supposed ‘moderate’ candidate Mitt Romney, giving a temporary leg up to the faux naïf Rick Santorum; others are attacking Barack Obama as an ‘enemy of religion.’
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The bishops’ opposition to contraception is not an argument for a ‘conscience exemption.’ It is a way of imposing Catholic requirements on non-Catholics. This is religious dictatorship, not religious freedom.
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Catholics who do not accept the phony argument over contraception are said to be ‘going against the teachings of their church.’ That is nonsense. They are their church. The Second Vatican Council defines the church as ‘the people of God.’ Thinking that the pope is the church is a relic of the days when a monarch was said to be his realm.
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http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2012/feb/15/contraception-con-men/