Let's cut to the chase.

In a telephone news conference on Friday, Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, the chairman of the religious liberty committee of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, said Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion made “a nod in the direction of religious liberty, but not enough of one.”

“Of course we retain the right to think what we want and say what we want and preach what we want about marriage,” he said.

“But the free exercise of religion means we have the right,” he continued, “to operate our ministries and to live our lives according to the truth about marriage without fear of being silenced or penalized or losing our tax exemption or losing our ability to serve the common good.”