Religious Freedom Week 2019

Seek the Lord Column by Archbishop Schnurr

Archbishop Dennis Schnurr, of the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, reflected on May 31, 2019 on the state of religious freedom in our country in his column in The Catholic Telegraph. He writes,

“In the United States, freedom of worship is taken for granted. However religious liberty involves much more than that. It is also the freedom to live out our faith in the public square as we serve the community in faithful citizenship. That is what the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects in its very first words: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’

Today, however, Catholic hospitals, schools, and charitable services (such as adoption and foster care) are under attack for upholding Catholic teaching about marriage and sexuality. New federal legislation introduced in the House of Representatives, deceptively called the “Equality Act,” would force such institutions to choose between operating according to our faith and shutting down. This is the latest in a series of threats to religious freedom over the past decade.

The Catholic Church in the United States will highlight these challenges later this month with its annual observance of Religious Freedom Week. The week begins with the Feasts of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher on June 22 and ends with the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul on June 29. All those saints were martyred for living their faith – the faith we share as Catholics.”

Join in the USCCB’s observance of Religious Freedom Week, 2019!

Robert Vega on the Equality Act

Last month, MUR Policy Advisor, Robert Vega, was on the USCCB’s First Freedom podcast talking about the Equality Act:

Losses in Foster Care and Adoption Services

After 95 years of offering adoption and foster care services, Catholic Charities in Buffalo, NY had to end their participation, since they seek to place children with married mothers and fathers.

And the U.S. Supreme Court refused to grant an injunction to allow Catholic foster care and adoption agencies to continue operating in Philadelphia, PA for the same reason.

Let us pray for the freedom to serve to be restored to our charities!

Archbishop Aquila article: Punishing the Poor and Needy

Check out this article from Archbishop Aquila in Denver about religious freedom.

USCCB Chairmen Applaud Supreme Court’s Respect for Religious Liberty in Masterpiece Cakeshop Decision

WASHINGTON—Today, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The case involves a Christian baker named Jack Phillips who declined in 2012 to create a custom wedding cake for a same-sex ceremony. State officials sought to compel Phillips to create such cakes under Colorado’s public accommodations law. The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 in favor of Phillips under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Chairman of the Committee for Religious Liberty, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, O.F.M. Cap., of Philadelphia, Chairman of the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, and Bishop James D. Conley of Lincoln, Chairman of the Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), issued the following joint statement:

“Today’s decision confirms that people of faith should not suffer discrimination on account of their deeply held religious beliefs, but instead should be respected by government officials. This extends to creative professionals, such as Jack Phillips, who seek to serve the Lord in every aspect of their daily lives. In a pluralistic society like ours, true tolerance allows people with different viewpoints to be free to live out their beliefs, even if those beliefs are unpopular with the government.”

The USCCB filed an amicus curiae brief supporting Masterpiece Cakeshop, which can be found here: http://www.usccb.org/about/general-counsel/amicus-briefs/upload/16-111-tsac-USCCB.pdf.

Masterpiece Oral Argument Today at SCOTUS

Today the USCCB gave this press release about the Masterpiece Cakeshop case that was heard today at the U.S. Supreme Court:

USCCB Chairmen Comment on Supreme Court’s Oral Arguments on Religious Freedom of Creative Professionals

Religious Freedom in America

At the June 2017 General Assembly, the USCCB approved the continuation of the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty to a permanent standing committee. This demonstrates the bishops’ commitment and the Church’s investment in assuring religious freedom for all people in America.

As Ryan Anderson points out, Americans tend not to value rights that they do not exercise. It is probably not too much of a leap to guess that the “elites” in America (celebrities, media personnel, politicians, CEO’s) are not that interested in religion, and therefore in religious freedom, especially its expression in the public square.

For this reason, it’s even more important for lay people in the Church to make it clear to their representatives and others that religious freedom is important to them. This is an issue that lay people must be engaged in, since the clergy enjoys more leeway because of their “official” ministerial positions, and could more easily be dismissed as not representative of “normal people.”

How can you help make a difference? Join our action alerts! https://www.votervoice.net/USCCB/Campaigns

Religious Freedom Executive Order

Cardinal DiNardo made the following statement about President Trump’s Executive Order today:

“Today’s Executive Order begins the process of alleviating the serious burden of the HHS mandate. We will engage with the Administration to ensure that adequate relief is provided to those with deeply held religious beliefs about some of the drugs, devices, and surgical procedures that HHS has sought to require people of faith to facilitate over the last several years. We welcome a decision to provide a broad religious exemption to the HHS mandate, but will have to review the details of any regulatory proposals.

In recent years, people of faith have experienced pressing restrictions on religious freedom from both the federal government and state governments that receive federal funding. For example, in areas as diverse as adoption, education, healthcare, and other social services, widely held moral and religious beliefs, especially regarding the protection of human life as well as preserving marriage and family, have been maligned in recent years as bigotry or hostility — and penalized accordingly. But disagreement on moral and religious issues is not discrimination; instead, it is the inevitable and desirable fruit of a free, civil society marked by genuine religious diversity.

We will continue to advocate for permanent relief from Congress on issues of critical importance to people of faith.  Religious freedom is a fundamental right that should be upheld by all branches of government and not subject to political whims. As president of the Bishops’ Conference, I had the opportunity to meet with President Trump this morning in the Oval Office to address these and other topics.”

VA Bishops Statement on Religious Freedom

Arlington Bishop Michael F. Burbidge and Richmond Bishop Francis X. DiLorenzo made a statement on the governor’s veto of a bill defending the right of religious organizations to practice their faith in various ways. Read the whole statement at the Arlington Catholic Herald.

“The bill merely sought to preserve fair access to public resources – like tax exempt status, contracts, grants and licensure — for religious charities and schools that hold to their longstanding belief that marriage is between a man and a woman…

“Just as serving the most vulnerable is inherent to our Catholic faith, so is our understanding about the nature of marriage. We cannot sever one from the other. We are dismayed that with this veto the governor fails to recognize the right of these organizations to profess and practice their faith.”

Archbishop Chaput 2016 Tocqueville Lecture

Archbishop Chaput, Chairman-Elect for the Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth at the USCCB, gave the Tocqueville Lecture at the University of Notre Dame on September 15th, 2016. The full text is available here. The middle section, reprinted here, examines the importance of a true understanding of human sexuality:

So, what does any of this have to do with sex, family and the liberty of the Church?  I’ll answer the question this way.

I’ve been a priest for 46 years.  During that time I’ve heard something more than 12,000 personal confessions and done hundreds of spiritual direction sessions.  That’s a lot of listening.  When you spend several thousand hours of your life, as most priests do, hearing the failures and hurts in people’s lives – men who beat their wives; women who cheat on their husbands; the addicts to porn or alcohol or drugs; the thieves, the hopeless, the self-satisfied and the self-hating – you get a pretty good picture of the world as it really is, and its effect on the human soul.  The confessional is more real than any reality show because nobody’s watching.  It’s just you, God and the penitents, and the suffering they bring with them.

As a priest, what’s most striking to me about the last five decades is the huge spike in people – both men and women — confessing promiscuity, infidelity, sexual violence and sexual confusion as an ordinary part of life, and the massive role of pornography in wrecking marriages, families and even the vocations of clergy and religious.

In a sense, this shouldn’t surprise.  Sex is powerful.  Sex is attractive.  Sex is a basic appetite and instinct.  Our sexuality is tied intimately to who we are; how we search for love and happiness; how we defeat the pervasive loneliness in life; and, for most people, how we claim some little bit of permanence in the world and its story by having children.  The reason Pope Francis so forcefully rejects “gender theory” is not just because it lacks scientific support — though it certainly has that problem.  Gender theory is a kind of metaphysics that subverts the very nature of sexuality by denying the male-female complementarity encoded into our bodies.  In doing that, it attacks a basic building block of human identity and meaning — and by extension, the foundation of human social organization.

But let’s get back to the confessional.  Listening to people’s sexual sins in the Sacrament of Penance is hardly new news.  But the scope, the novelty, the violence and the compulsiveness of the sins are.  And remember that people only come to Confession when they already have some sense of right and wrong; when they already understand, at least dimly, that they need to change their lives and seek God’s mercy.

That word “mercy” is worth examining.  Mercy is one of the defining and most beautiful qualities of God.  Pope Francis rightly calls us to incarnate it in our own lives this year.  Unfortunately, it’s also a word we can easily misuse to avoid the hard work of moral reasoning and judgment.  Mercy means nothing – it’s just an exercise in sentimentality – without clarity about moral truth.

We can’t show mercy to someone who owes us nothing; someone who’s done nothing wrong.  Mercy implies a pre-existing act of injustice that must be corrected.  And satisfying justice requires a framework of higher truth about human meaning and behavior.  It requires an understanding of truth that establishes some things as good and others as evil; some things as life-giving and others that are destructive.

Here’s why that’s important.  The truth about our sexuality is that infidelity, promiscuity, sexual confusion and mass pornography create human wreckage.  Multiply that wreckage by tens of millions of persons over five decades.  Then compound it with media nonsense about the innocence of casual sex and the “happy” children of friendly divorces.  What you get is what we have now: a dysfunctional culture of frustrated and wounded people increasingly incapable of permanent commitments, self-sacrifice and sustained intimacy, and unwilling to face the reality of their own problems.

This has political consequences.  People unwilling to rule their appetites will inevitably be ruled by them — and eventually, they’ll be ruled by someone else.  People too weak to sustain faithful relationships are also too weak to be free.  Sooner or later they surrender themselves to a state that compensates for their narcissism and immaturity with its own forms of social control.

People too worried or self-focused to welcome new life, to bear and raise children in a loving family, and to form them in virtue and moral character, are writing themselves out of the human story.  They’re extinguishing their own future.  This is what makes the resistance of so many millennials to having children so troubling.[1]

The future belongs to people who believe in something beyond themselves, and who live and sacrifice accordingly.  It belongs to people who think and hope inter-generationally.  If you want a portrait of what I mean, consider this:  The most common name given to newborn male babies in London for the past four years in a row is Muhammad.  This, in the city of Thomas More.

Weak and selfish individuals make weak and selfish marriages.  Weak and selfish marriages make broken families.  And broken families continue and spread the cycle of dysfunction.  They do it by creating more and more wounded individuals.  A vast amount of social data shows that children from broken families are much more likely to live in poverty, to be poorly educated, and to have more emotional and physical health issues than children from intact families.  In other words, when healthy marriages and families decline, the social costs rise.

The family is where children discover how to be human.  It’s where they learn how to respect and love other people; where they see their parents sacrificing for the common good of the household; and where they discover their place in a family story larger than themselves.  Raising children is beautiful but also hard work.  It’s a task for unselfish, devoted parents.  And parents need the friendship and support of other likeminded parents.  It takes parents to raise a child, not a legion of professional experts, as helpful as they can sometimes be.

Only a mother and father can provide the intimacy of maternal and paternal love.  Many single parents do a heroic job of raising good children, and they deserve our admiration and praise.  But only a mother and father can offer the unique kind of human love rooted in flesh and blood; the kind that comes from mutual submission and self-giving; the kind that comes from the complementarity of sexual difference.

No parents do this perfectly.  Some fail badly.  Too often the nature of modern American life helps and encourages them to fail.  But in trying, parents pass along to the next generation an absolutely basic truth.  It’s the truth that things like love, faith, trust, patience, understanding, tenderness, fidelity and courage really do matter, and they provide the foundation for a fully human life.

Of course some of the worst pressures on family life come from outside the home.  They come in the form of unemployment, low pay, crime, poor housing, chronic illness and bad schools.

These are vitally important issues with real human consequences.  And in Catholic thought, government has a role to play in easing such problems – but not if a government works from a crippled idea of who man is, what marriage is, and what a family is.  And not if a government deliberately shapes its policies to interfere with and control the mediating institutions in civil society that already serve the public well.  Yet this could arguably describe many of the current administration’s actions over the past seven years.

The counterweight to intrusive government is a populace of mature citizens who push back and defend the autonomy of their civil space.  The problem with a consumer economy though – as Christopher Lasch saw nearly 40 years ago — is that it creates and relies on dependent, self-absorbed consumers.  It needs and breeds what Lasch called a “culture of narcissism,” forgetful of the past, addicted to the present and disinterested in the future.  And it’s hard to argue with the evidence.  In his inaugural speech of 1961, John F. Kennedy could still tell Americans, quite confidently, to “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  Today I wonder how many of us might find his words not only naïve and annoying, but an inversion of priorities.

If we want strong families, we need strong men and women to create and sustain them with maturity and love.  And as a family of families, the Church is no different.  The Church is strong when her families and individual sons and daughters are strong; when they believe what she teaches, and then witness her message with courage and zeal.

She’s weak when her people are too tepid or comfortable, too eager to “fit in” or frankly too afraid of public disapproval, to see the world as it really is.  The Church is “ours” only in the sense that we belong to her as our mother and teacher in the family of God.  The Church does not belong to us.  We belong to her.  And the Church in turn belongs to Jesus Christ who guarantees her freedom whether Caesar likes it or not.

The Church is free even in the worst persecution.  She’s free even when many of her children desert her.  She’s free because God does exist, and the Church depends not on numbers or resources but on her fidelity to God’s Word.  But her practical liberty — her credibility and effectiveness, here and now, in our wider society — depends on us.  So we should turn to that issue in the time remaining.

(Continue reading here)

USCCB Chairmen Urge Support for the “First Amendment Defense Act”

Urging support for the First Amendment Defense Act Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone of San Francisco, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Subcommittee for the Promotion and Defense of Marriage and Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, issued the following statement on July 12, 2016:

Today the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee will hold a hearing on the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA). The USCCB has been vocal in support of this legislation, as it would provide a measure of protection for religious freedom at the federal level. FADA is a modest but important step in ensuring conscience protection to faith-based organizations and people of all faiths and of no faith who believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman, protecting them from discrimination by the federal government. The increasing intolerance toward religious belief and belief in the conjugal meaning of marriage makes these protections essential for continuing faith-based charitable work, which supports the common good of our society. Faith-based agencies and schools should not lose their licenses or accreditation simply because they hold reasonable views on marriage that differ from the federal government’s view.

The definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, universally held for centuries, has nothing to do with disrespect for others, nor does it depend on religious belief. Rather, it is based on truths about the human person that are understandable by reason. Faithful to its commitment to serve the best interests of society, the Catholic Church will continue to promote and protect the truth of marriage as foundational to the common good. The Church will also continue to stand for the ability of all to exercise their religious beliefs and moral convictions in public life without fear, and to witness to the truth.

We are pleased to support the First Amendment Defense Act, and we urge Congress to pass this important legislation.

Made for Freedom

Check out the newest video in the MUR series on marriage and religious freedom! Please share it and spread the word.

Archbishop Naumann on Life, Marriage, and Religious Freedom

Echoing the themes of the Bishops’ Call to Prayer, Archbishop Naumann of the Archdiocese of Kansas City, Kansas wrote an article in the diocesan paper about the current threats to life, marriage and religious freedom– particularly the latter in light of the former!

Whole text: “In a representative system, we get the government we deserve”

Bishop Conley: Martyrs, Witnesses and Public Life

_{Bishop James D. Conley of Lincoln, Neb., discusses the key to evangelization Sept. 27 during the Catholic Medical Association’s 83rd annual educational conference in Orlando, Fla. Bishop Conley is the association’s newly appointed spiritual adviser. (CNS photo/Jacque Brund) See CMA-ROUNDUP Oct. 1, 2014.}

This past March, Bishop Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska gave an address for the “Catholics in the Capitol” annual Legislative Advocacy Day at the Nebraska State Capitol. It is entitled: “Martyrs, Witnesses and Public Life: Catholics at the Capitol”

Here are a few sections from his address that are pertinent to the work of the USCCB in promoting and defending marriage. He says, “The freedom to practice the faith is threatened by aggressive unchecked secularism, which stops at almost nothing to establish what Pope Benedict XVI called the ‘dictatorship of relativism.’ Relativism today is veiled by words like ‘tolerance’ and ‘non-discrimination’ and ‘progressivism.'”  Indeed, the truth about marriage is currently being portrayed as bigoted or discriminatory.

Bishop Conley notes, “Today, our lives are not threatened in the state of Nebraska. But our liberties are. But in our state, faithful Christians face threats to their livelihood, to the education of their children, and to their family life.”  These will only continue and become more serious as time goes by if we do not have the courage to stand up for our religious freedom now.

He reminds us that it is the call of the laity to bring Christ into the public sphere. “The Second Vatican Council said that your [lay] task is to ‘animate the temporal order’ with the Spirit of Jesus Christ. This means that our civil laws should reflect truth: the truth about the dignity of every human person; the truth about the sovereignty of families; the truth about the rights of children, and the disabled, and the elderly.” Catholic laypersons cannot sit on the sidelines on the debate about marriage. 

Marriage is part of the common good for society. Bishop Conley notes, “Promoting human dignity is the common good. Promoting the family is the common good. Protecting truth and preserving justice is why we make law.”

And finally, Bishop Conley reminds us that we are in a spiritual battle with demons, “minions of the evil one,” and must fight  for the good of all souls, including those who disagree with us. “We need to remember that those who disagree with us are created by God for salvation with him—and we are called to be missionaries to them, in order to invite them to a transformative religious relationship with Jesus Christ.”

Amen!

Archbishop Gomez on Marriage and Religious Freedom

This Easter, as we celebrate the Resurrection, we may also contemplate the gift of religious freedom; a gift that sometimes requires vigilance.

Archbishop Gomez of Los Angeles wrote an article for The Tidings Newspaper in which he highlighted the importance of marriage and family to the plan of God, and the necessity of all citizens to be able to express their views about it. He noted, “Those who govern and shape the way Americans think and behave — in politics and law, education, entertainment and the popular media — form an increasingly secularized elite that has little tolerance for religious institutions or values.”

Regarding marriage, Archbishop Gomez reminded us that, “In his own teaching, Jesus pointed us back to this “beginning.” He told us that the marriage covenant between man and woman is at the heart of God’s design for creation — and that no one has the power to change that design.”

He encouraged us to pray for our country, and said, “But I’m sad to say that right now across the country, others are trying to impose their  “faith” — a secularized ideology and an anti-religious morality — on religious believers and it is our rights that are at risk of being denied.”

Cardinal Wuerl: Silencing the Church’s Voice

On March 2, Cardinal Wuerl sent out an email to his people about being courageous in the face of the government’s increasing encroachment on religious freedom.

He writes, “We are being told that in our schools, social service ministries and other Church programs we may not insist that those who teach the Catholic faith and carry out Catholic ministry should do so in word and the manner they live their lives.”

The two laws the Cardinal draws our attention to are:

1. The  Reproductive Health Non-Discrimination Act of 2014 (RHNDA) which would deprive the Church of its right to ensure that those whom it entrusts to carry out its mission are faithful to its teachings on human life and sexuality, and
2. The Human Rights Amendment of 2014 (HRAA) which would require Catholic schools to formally recognize, endorse, and support student groups dedicated to promoting homosexual behavior.

The Cardinal connects all of this activity back to Lent, writing, “This Lent we all need to ask ourselves if we are prepared to stand up for our beliefs and to speak up on behalf of our schools, parishes and charities.”