An article by Amy Sullivan in TIME, "Health Care: Will Catholic Bishops Try to Block Reform," is very revealing.  As Sullivan tells the story, health care reform may fail and the USCCB will share the blame.

The USCCB, according to Sullivan, is guilty of an "inconsistent approach to the issue" of abortion which "created confusion that has hampered Democratic attempts to accommodate their concerns."

The confusion was created by the difference in two letters from Cardinal Rigali, one from July, the other on August 11. In the first, Rigali stated the USCCB was opposed to any "direct funding of abortion."  Congressional Democrats took that as an endorsement of their Capps Amendment .

That amendment, as Sullivan explains, allowed an individual to obtain an abortion "but the procedure would be paid with segregated dollars from a pool funded by privately-paid premiums."

In other words, abortion under the "public option" would be paid for by premiums not directly by federal tax dollars.  In his August letter, Cardinal Rigali rejected this approach -- "Funds paid into these plans are fungible, and federal taxpayer funds will subsidize the operating budget and provider networks that expand access to abortion."

The inconsistency, as Sullivan sees it, is that Rigali changed his position from opposing direct funding of abortion to indirect funding.

Here is the most revealing sentence from Sullivan's article:

Democrats' reaction to Rigali's new stance has been twofold: feelings of frustration that the bishops hadn't been negotiating in good faith, and a broader confusion over where the bishops actually stood.

Here Sullivan goes beyond the impact of the first Rigali letter and refers to the bishop's process of "negotiating." 

Such negotiations always have several key players: USCCB staff, Congressional staff, and, very likely, a White House Congressional liasion or someone from the Faith-Based Office.  Sullivan's article raises several questions about the negotiations between these parties.

Was USCCB staff using the Rigali's "direct funding of abortion" language to encourage Congress and the White House that the Capps Amendment approach to health care reform was acceptable?

And further, does this mean that Rigali's second letter caught the same USCCB staff by surprise?

And finally, is it possible that staff from the USCCB, Congress, and the White House believed that the Jesuitical distinctions of the Capps approach would satisfy strongly pro-life leaders like Cardinal Rigali?

Sullivan does not mention that in the time between the two Rigali letters, the Obama Catholic noise machine had gone into overdrive, with groups like Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good and Catholics United touting the pro-life virtues of the Capps Amendments. 

It's clear that for Democrats, the Capps Amendment was created to solve Obama's health care abortion problem, and they activated the entire pro-Obama Catholic network to support it.  

But Cardinal Rigali's letter pulled the rug out from under this effort -- a move they obviously were not expecting.

From whom at the USCCB did Congressional Democrats receive assurances that Capps was going to be enough to satisfy the bishops? 

Sullivan mentions a September meeting at the White House, subsequent to the second Rigali letter, including "Nancy-Ann DeParle, the administration's lead health care official, Joshua DuBois, head of the White House faith-based office, and John Carr, executive director of the USCCB's Department of Justice, Peace, and Human Development."

Was John Carr there to apologize for misleading the Congress and the White House, or was he there to say the Congress and the White House misunderstood Rigali's intention when he talked about "direct funding for abortion"?

Either possibility is hard to believe.  A seasoned USCCB staffer like Carr should realize instantly that the language of Rigali's first letter could not be stretched into a bait-and-switch tactic like Capps.

At the same time, those negotiating the Capps compromise in Congress and the White House should have been told from the beginning Capps would be rejected by Rigali.  

Sullivan's purpose in writing her article is to point a finger at the bishops for thwarting health care reform. What she has really done is reveal the close relationships that exist between the USCCB, Congressional Democrats, and the Obama administration.