Remember when Komen defunded Planned Parenthood back in January and then was forced to reverse its decision (at least temporarily) after a huge public outcry? Now we know why Komen pulled its funding: the Catholic Church started telling its parishioners not to donate to the charity.

Internal Komen documents reviewed by Reuters reveal the complicated relationship between the Komen Foundation and the Catholic church, which simultaneously contributes to the breast cancer charity and receives grants from it. In recent years, Komen has allocated at least $17.6 million of the donations it receives to U.S. Catholic universities, hospitals and charities.

Church opposition reached dramatic new proportions in 2011, when the 11 bishops who represent Ohio’s 2.6 million Catholics announced a statewide policy banning church and parochial school donations to Komen.

Such pressure helped sway Komen’s leadership to cut funding to Planned Parenthood, according to current and former Komen officials.

[snip]

The Ohio bishops would soon be joined by the North Dakota Catholic Conference, which cautioned its nearly 190,000 parishioners against donating to Komen. The charity’s officials in California also say they received their first request in two decades to meet with Catholic bishops, who expressed concern about Planned Parenthood but took no action.

The Ohio and North Dakota pronouncements nearly doubled the number of dioceses that have questioned Komen’s support for Planned Parenthood or severed financial ties with the charity, bringing the total to at least 23 of the 195 Catholic dioceses in the United States.

You can call it leverage or you can call it blackmail, but whatever you call it it looks pretty seamy. “Nice little non-profit you’ve got there. It’d be a shame if anything happened to it.”

Tell me again what the difference is between the US Conference of Bishops and the Corleone family?