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<\/a><\/p>\nYou would have to have been living under a rock not to know that religious liberty has come under fire here in the United States. Those who believe that the Catholic Church is wrong to get involved in the politics surrounding the HHS Mandate, for instance, have unwittingly bought into the argument that there is a \u201cwall of separation\u201d between Church and State, and that one should be completely separate from the other.<\/p>\n
But the bishops, in a step that is unprecedented, have unanimously responded to the HHS Mandate, and other threats to religious liberty, with firm resolve. That fact alone should wake folks up to the idea that this time, it really is different. Or perhaps it just is, as Yogi Barra once said, d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu all over again.<\/p>\n
So regardless of where your own personal political beliefs lie upon the spectrum between the left and the right, the geography of blue states or red states, and between the chasm that yawns between the liberal viewpoint and the conservative position, perhaps you need to just be reminded of the history of religious freedom in this country.<\/p>\n
For to be ignorant of what we have, and how it came about, is to be ignorant of why what the government is attempting to do now is unprecedented, and why it must be fought. Ignorance of religious liberty, and whence it comes, is to be without a compass in a storm tossed sea.<\/p>\n
So the bishops, by way of the Ad-hoc Committee for Religious Liberty<\/em>, have put together a little current events brief on the state of religious liberty in America, complete with a history lesson, examples of where we are besieged, complete with footnotes, along with a prayer request issued to the faithful. Because ignorance is not bliss.<\/p>\n Here is a portion I found of special interest, as it dovetails with much of what I\u2019ve been sharing of late<\/a> from Bishop Thomas J. Curry\u2019s work,<\/p>\n Religious liberty is not only about our ability to go to Mass on Sunday or pray the Rosary at home. It is about whether we can make our contribution to the common good of all Americans. Can we do the good works our faith calls us to do, without having to compromise that very same faith? Without religious liberty properly understood, all Americans suffer, deprived of the essential contribution in education, health care, feeding the hungry, civil rights, and social services that religious Americans make every day, both here at home and overseas.<\/em><\/p>\n What is at stake is whether America will continue to have a free, creative, and robust civil society\u2014or whether the state alone will determine who gets to contribute to the common good, and how they get to do it. Religious believers are part of American civil society, which includes neighbors helping each other, community associations, fraternal service clubs, sports leagues, and youth groups. All these Americans make their contribution to our common life, and they do not need the permission of the government to do so. Restrictions on religious liberty are an attack on civil society and the American genius for voluntary associations.<\/em><\/p>\n The Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America issued a statement about the administration\u2019s contraception and sterilization mandate that captured exactly the danger that we face:<\/em><\/p>\n Most troubling, is the Administration\u2019s underlying rationale for its decision, which appears to be a view that if a religious entity is not insular, but engaged with broader society, it loses its \u201creligious\u201d character and liberties. Many faiths firmly believe in being open to and engaged with broader society and fellow citizens of other faiths. The Administration\u2019s ruling makes the price of such an outward approach the violation of an organization\u2019s religious principles. This is deeply disappointing.5<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n This is not a Catholic issue. This is not a Jewish issue. This is not an Orthodox, Mormon, or Muslim issue. It is an American issue. <\/em><\/p>\n In 1634, a mix of Catholic and Protestant settlers arrived at St. Clement\u2019s Island in Southern Maryland from England aboard the\u00a0Ark and the\u00a0Dove. They had come at the invitation of the Catholic Lord Baltimore, who had been granted Maryland by the Protestant King Charles I of England. While Catholics and Protestants were killing each other in Europe, Lord Baltimore imagined Maryland as a society where people of different faiths could live together peacefully. This vision was soon codified in Maryland\u2019s 1649 Act Concerning Religion (also called the \u201cToleration Act\u201d), which was the first law in our nation\u2019s history to protect an individual\u2019s right to freedom of conscience.<\/em><\/p>\n Maryland\u2019s early history teaches us that, like any freedom, religious liberty requires constant vigilance and protection, or it will disappear. Maryland\u2019s experiment in religious toleration ended within a few decades. The colony was placed under royal control, and the Church of England became the established religion. Discriminatory laws, including the loss of political rights, were enacted against those who refused to conform. Catholic chapels were closed, and Catholics were restricted to practicing their faith in their homes. The Catholic community lived under these conditions until the American Revolution.<\/em><\/p>\n By the end of the 18th century, our nation\u2019s founders embraced freedom of religion as an essential condition of a free and democratic society. James Madison, often called the Father of the Constitution, described conscience as \u201cthe most sacred of all property.\u201d6<\/a> He wrote that \u201cthe Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.\u201d7<\/a> George Washington wrote that \u201cthe establishment of Civil and Religious Liberty was the Motive that induced me to the field of battle.\u201d8<\/a> Thomas Jefferson assured the Ursuline Sisters\u2014who had been serving a mostly non-Catholic population by running a hospital, an orphanage, and schools in Louisiana since 1727\u2014that the principles of the Constitution were a \u201csure guarantee\u201d that their ministry would be free \u201cto govern itself according to its own voluntary rules, without interference from the civil authority.\u201d9<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n It is therefore fitting that when the Bill of Rights was ratified, religious freedom had the distinction of being the First Amendment. Religious liberty is indeed the first liberty. The First Amendment guarantees that \u201cCongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Recently, in a unanimous Supreme Court judgment affirming the importance of that first freedom, the Chief Justice of the United States explained that religious liberty is not just the first freedom for Americans; rather it is the first in the history of democratic freedom, tracing its origins back the first clauses of the Magna Carta of 1215 and beyond. In a telling example, Chief Justice Roberts illustrated our history of religious liberty in light of a Catholic issue decided upon by James Madison, who guided the Bill of Rights through Congress and is known as the architect of the First Amendment:<\/em><\/p>\n [In 1806] John Carroll, the first Catholic bishop in the United States, solicited the Executive\u2019s opinion on who should be appointed to direct the affairs of the Catholic Church in the territory newly acquired by the Louisiana Purchase. After consulting with President Jefferson, then-Secretary of State James Madison responded that the selection of church \u201cfunctionaries\u201d was an \u201centirely ecclesiastical\u201d matter left to the Church\u2019s own judgment. The \u201cscrupulous policy of the Constitution in guarding against a political interference with religious affairs,\u201d Madison explained, prevented the Government from rendering an opinion on the \u201cselection of ecclesiastical individuals.\u201d10<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n That is our American heritage, our most cherished freedom. It is the first freedom because if we are not free in our conscience and our practice of religion, all other freedoms are fragile. If citizens are not free in their own consciences, how can they be free in relation to others, or to the state? If our obligations and duties to God are impeded, or even worse, contradicted by the government, then we can no longer claim to be a land of the free, and a beacon of hope for the world.<\/em><\/p>\n During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Americans shone the light of the Gospel on a dark history of slavery, segregation, and racial bigotry. The civil rights movement was an essentially religious movement, a call to awaken consciences, not only an appeal to the Constitution for America to honor its heritage of liberty.<\/em><\/p>\n In his famous \u201cLetter from Birmingham Jail\u201d in 1963, Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. boldly said, \u201cThe goal of America is freedom.\u201d As a Christian pastor, he argued that to call America to the full measure of that freedom was the specific contribution Christians are obliged to make. He rooted his legal and constitutional arguments about justice in the long Christian tradition:<\/em><\/p>\n I would agree with Saint Augustine that \u201cAn unjust law is no law at all.\u201d Now what is the difference between the two? How does one determine when a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of Saint Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.11<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n It is a sobering thing to contemplate our government enacting an unjust law. An unjust law cannot be obeyed. In the face of an unjust law, an accommodation is not to be sought, especially by resorting to equivocal words and deceptive practices. If we face today the prospect of unjust laws, then Catholics in America, in solidarity with our fellow citizens, must have the courage not to obey them. No American desires this. No Catholic welcomes it. But if it should fall upon us, we must discharge it as a duty of citizenship and an obligation of faith.<\/em><\/p>\n It is essential to understand the distinction between conscientious objection and an unjust law. Conscientious objection permits some relief to those who object to a just law for reasons of conscience\u2014conscription being the most well-known example. An unjust law is \u201cno law at all.\u201d It cannot be obeyed, and therefore one does not seek relief from it, but rather its repeal.<\/em><\/p>\n The Christian church does not ask for a special treatment, simply the rights of religious freedom for all citizens. Rev. King also explained that the church is neither the master nor the servant of the state, but its conscience, guide, and critic.<\/em><\/p>\n As Catholics, we know that our history has shadows too in terms of religious liberty, when we did not extend to others the proper respect for this first freedom. But the teaching of the Church is absolutely clear about religious liberty:<\/em><\/p>\n The human person has a right to religious freedom. This freedom means that all men are to be immune from coercion on the part of individuals or of social groups and of any human power, in such wise that in matters religious no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs \u2026 whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits. . . . This right of the human person to religious freedom is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed. Thus it is to become a civil right.12<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
Religious Liberty Is More Than Freedom of Worship<\/h3>\n
The Most Cherished of American Freedoms<\/h3>\n
Our Christian Teaching<\/h3>\n