Not content to harass just Catholic nuns , the successor administration to the Obama White House has taken up harassing Catholic hospitals.

In April, Saint Francis Hospital South, which is one of five hospitals in the Saint Francis Health System network in eastern Oklahoma, received an ultimatum from the Biden administration: Extinguish your chapel’s sanctuary lamp, or we will strip you of your ability to accept Medicare, Medicaid, and the Children's Health Insurance Program.

For context, a sanctuary lamp is a “wax candle, generally in a red glass container, kept burning day and night wherever the Blessed Sacrament is reserved in Catholic churches or chapels,” according to the Modern Catholic Dictionary. “It is an emblem of Christ's abiding love and a reminder to the faithful to respond with loving adoration in return.”

Saint Francis eventually enlisted the aid of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, whose attorneys argued the ultimatum violated the hospital’s First Amendment freedoms. (Full disclosure: Becket is one of several charitable organizations this author has supported over the years. Becket did not solicit this article.)

On Friday, Becket announced the Biden administration had agreed to allow Saint Francis a “waiver” to keep its chapel flame burning.

“The game was simply not worth the candle for HHS,” Lori Windham, vice president, and senior counsel at Becket, told the Washington Examiner. “It realized it would be playing with fire in court if it stood by its absurd demand, so it chose wisely. We are glad Saint Francis can continue to serve those most in need while keeping the faith.”

Though the federal government has — for now — backed off slightly, it is hardly cause for celebration.

For starters, federal officials are still trying to exert their authority over the hospital, structuring the terms of the “waiver” in such a way as to force the Catholic hospital to concede the farcical “safety” violation is indeed a “safety” violation. One may say a “waiver” is better than nothing, but this small victory inspires neither joy nor comfort. Indeed, it never should have come to this in the first place, not in a country whose founding documents explicitly protect religious freedoms.

And it’s made all the worse when one considers the specific allegations of the case.

This episode begins in February, when a surveyor from the Joint Commission, an Illinois-based non-profit accrediting organization, flagged the sanctuary lamp in Saint Francis Hospital South’s chapel, declaring it a fire-safety violation.

“[T]he surveyor expressly asked to go to the chapel to see if there was a living flame,” Windham said. “Of course, he found it: the same sanctuary flame that Saint Francis has kept alight since the chapel was blessed by the local Ordinary.”

When it seemed clear the inspector was going to make an issue of the sanctuary lamp, hospital staff objected. In response, according to Windham, “The surveyor observed to Saint Francis personnel that other Catholic hospitals had complied and extinguished the living flame at their chapels, substituting it with an electric light.”

Interesting.

The Joint Commission, which makes accrediting recommendations to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has flagged other Catholic healthcare organizations for the exact same so-called fire-safety violation, according to Windham's account. Saint Francis isn’t even the first. It’s simply the first one to refuse compliance.

Representatives for the Joint Commission declined the Washington Examiner’s request for comment, explaining they are “unable to comment on any matters pertaining to litigation.”

Naturally, Saint Francis appealed the citation — four times. The Biden administration declined each appeal, siding instead with the Joint Commission, whose surveyor reported “there was a lit candle with open flame burning unattended 24/7.”

In declining the appeal, the Department of Health and Human Services argued the lit flame runs afoul of federal regulation CFR §482.41(b) as well as a 2006 CMS policy memorandum for nursing homes, which states in regard to the use of lit candles that they must be “placed in a substantial candle holder and supervised at all times they are lighted.”

For reference, this is what the sanctuary lamp in question looks like:

[Credit: Saint Francis Health System]

The flame is nowhere near medical equipment or patients. It’s enclosed completely in glass. It sits on a brass basin and is covered by a brass top. Moreover, according to the hospital, the sanctuary lamp sits under a sprinkler head. The citation is even more ridiculous, considering the sanctuary lamp has been in use since Saint Francis’s founding in 1960. Each of the five hospitals in the Saint Francis Health System has chapels, and each chapel has a lit sanctuary lamp. It has been this way for literal decades.

If you get the sense Saint Francis is being taken for a ride, you’re not alone.

Even the terms of the “waiver,” which are subject to change, appear to have been written both begrudgingly and through gritted teeth, the terms of a party determined to flex its authority even in retreat.

The “waiver is contingent upon the hospital providing a plan of correction to [the Joint Commission] that includes taking some simple, appropriate steps to mitigate fire risks (e.g., signage posted outside or in the chapel warning patients, visitors, and staff of keeping oxygen equipment and their delivery devices sufficiently far from any flame in the chapel to serve as the primary action by the hospital to mitigate the fire risks, and, if possible, the use of a rope or other barrier to serve as a secondary mitigation measure),” a CMS spokesman explained in a letter to Saint Francis.

It adds, “We recommend continuing to engage with [the Joint Commission] on implementing these solutions and addressing this deficiency citation in a way that mitigates fire risks while still ensuring you can maintain this feature of your chapel. Once these agreed-upon actions have been implemented, CMS will consider this particular matter closed.”

What generosity. What beneficence, offering a religious organization a government “waiver” so that it may enjoy its religious freedoms. Also, note the language of the “waiver.”

Its authors still insist the sanctuary lamp poses a public health hazard. There’s no reason to believe it does, and there’s even less reason to believe the authors of the “waiver” genuinely believe this. But this was never about public health, was it? Remember: The federal government was willing to strip Saint Francis of its ability to care for low-income and elderly patients for the sake of a chapel candle.

This entire episode is about power and authority, the power of the government over institutions that dare to refuse compliance.

Saint Francis’s case makes it clear: It's not a question of if but when the ballooning bureaucratic state will demand of you absolute and unquestioning compliance. Your choice now is to surround yourself with allies willing to fight on your behalf.

Becket Adams is a columnist for the Washington Examiner and National Review. He is also the program director of the National Journalism Center.