In a post last Friday, I contested Michael Sean Winters’s evidence-free assertion that the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty has supposedly imposed its own position on moral complicity on its client, the Little Sisters of the Poor. As I pointed out, the fact that “the American bishops are taking exactly the same position on moral complicity as the Little Sisters in various lawsuits around the country” makes very strange Winters’s complaint that “the bishops, not the Becket Fund,” should be advising the Little Sisters on moral theology.

Rather than confess error, Winters quibbles with me for referring to “the American bishops,” for, he asserts, “the ‘American bishops’ as a group have not taken a position on the issue of moral complicity.” Winters’s quibble is both irrelevant and wrong. It’s irrelevant because it doesn’t remedy the defect in his argument: if those bishops who are suing are taking the same position on moral complicity as the Little Sisters, on what conceivable basis does he attribute the Little Sisters’ position to the Becket Fund? It’s wrong because (as I pointed out in a Friday addendum to my post) the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops—the organization through which the American bishops act as a group—has submitted an amicus brief in support of the Little Sisters (including on the issue of moral complicity; see, e.g., Brief at 17-18).