When is a bluff a bluff?

Earlier this week President Obama spoke with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldburg about the tense situation presently in the Middle East between Israel and Iran.

The President told Goldburg, "I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don't bluff."

I sincerely hope he isn't bluffing, but I daresay His Eminence Timothy Cardinal Dolan, Archbishop of New York and President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, might disagree with that statement.

Writing on his blog, The Gospel in the Digital Age, His Eminence recently said (with my emphases):

When the President announced on January 20^th that the choking mandates from HHS would remain — a shock to me, since he had personally assured me that he would do nothing to impede the good work of the Church in health care, education, and charity, and that he considered the protection of conscience a sacred duty — not only you, but men and women of every faith, or none at all, rallied in protest.

If a person says he will do nothing to impede the good work of the Church in health care and then very deliberately chooses to blatantly impede the good work of the Church in health care, I think it could sufficiently be called a bluff.