The national director of the Staten Island-based Priests for Life plans to repeal a dismissed lawsuit the group filed against the birth control mandate included in the Affordable Care Act, the Staten Island Advance reported.
"Injunction or not, we will absolutely not obey, cooperate with, or tolerate in any way this unjust mandate," Fr. Frank Pavone said. "As Scripture says, we will obey God rather than men."
The decision in the Priests for Life case, which was ruled by a judge in the U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia, did not turn out the same way that cases from the Monsignor Farrell High School and other affiliates of the Archdiocese of New York recently received.
U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan, in New York, ruled in favor of Farrell and the affiliates, preventing U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius from enforcing the birth control mandate.
"The judge's decision today is a complete contradiction to Judge Cogan's decision of just a few days ago in New York for organizations situated similarly to us and using exactly the same arguments," Fr. Pavone said.
"The New York decision recognized that the religious non-profits were being forced to cooperate with evil. Our judge, instead, claims that we are not being forced to cooperate with evil. Our judge's decision is wrong, and we are confident of victory in our appeal."
On their website, the group is described as "a very specific effort to galvanize the clergy to preach, teach, and mobilize their people more effectively in the effort to end abortion and euthanasia."
