Catholic Online publishes an article giving a justification to disobey laws they disagree with

[E_Pluribus_Unitarian]

30. Is dogma compatible with democracy?

I'm with JDPriestley on this one...that "top-down" Catholic hierarchy, authoritarianism, patriarchy, bullying, etc. are fundamentally inconsistent with the horizontal or bottom-up premises of democracy (and of our constitutional republic). That the two have lived together for centuries is the result of the American Catholics maintaining a "live and let live" posture -- until now, anyway.

I think they are setting up a strawman argument of "freedom of religion" versus "freedom of worship", hoping that the public will forget that it was not the protection of religious institutions but more highly personalized, and far less institutional, concern for "freedom of conscience" and free agency in religion that motivated Jefferson, Madison and most of the other founders of the nation. There's probably no better example of their clear preference for free individual discernment in religion, rather than the protection and preservation of its institutions, than what was said by Madison in his "Memorial and Remonstrance..." in 1785:

"...We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, that religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men: It is unalienable also, because what is here a right towards men, is a duty towards the Creator. It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him...."

The American Catholics are at a crossroads, seems to me. They can try to plug the holes in their own leaking ship and try to perpetuate their own business as usual-- of authoritarian bullying, dogmatic protectionism, etc. or they can take the vision of the nation's founders to heart. Between dogma or democracy, honestly I don't see much middle-ground for them.