John
Adams, author of the Bill of Rights and the United States Constitution, wrote:
“The doctrine of human equality is founded entirely in the Christian doctrine
that we are all children of the same Father, all accountable to Him for our
conduct to one another, all equally bound to respect each other’s self love”[1]
This
means, Archbishop Chaput says below, that “religious freedom is not a privilege
granted by the state. It is our birthright as children of God… We need to
become people worthy of it, which means we need to change the way we live.
Radically change. Both as individual Catholics and as the Church.”
This
means that the equality as citizens of the United States is not self-evident
outside of the religious experience of the 150 year founding of the country. It
means that democracy as we experience and understand it is a result of a
religious conscious written into the Constitution and Bill of Rights. This is
the mind of the author of the American Constitution and Bill of Rights as it
was approved on September 17th in Philadelphia at the Constitutional
Convention.
* * * * * * * * *
Archbishop Charles Chaput: “We will lose religious
freedom if we don't fight for it”
National Catholic Reporter Jun. 21, 2012
Archbishop
Charles J. Chaput at his Mass of installation in Philadelphia in 2011
(CNS/Nancy Wiechec)
INDIANAPOLIS --
"Unless we work hard to keep our religious liberty, we are going to lose
it," Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia told members of the
Catholic Press Association on the eve of the Fortnight for Freedom, the 14-day
period beginning Thursday that will focus the attention of the Catholic
community on what the bishops say is government intrusion on religious
conscience, beliefs and practices.
"Nothing guarantees
our freedoms except our willingness to fight for them," Chaput said,
saying that "means fighting politically and through the courts without
tiring and without apology."
The Fortnight for Freedom
was introduced in a March document from the bishops' conference administrative
committee titled "Our First, Most Cherished Liberty" in which they
urge laity to work to protect religious freedom in the United States.
The document lists some
examples of religious practice and beliefs under attack, including:
- The
recent mandate by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that
requires employers, including most religious organizations, to provide
contraceptive coverage in employee health care plans. In May, 43 Catholic
organizations, including a dozen dioceses, filed a lawsuit in federal
court against the mandate.
- The
loss of government contracts for Catholic charities to provide foster care
and adoption services in a number of states because the agencies refused
to place children with same-sex couples or unmarried opposite-sex couples.
- The
denial of contracts to Catholic humanitarian service agencies because they
refuse to provide or refer clients to contraception or abortion services.
"Tomorrow we start a Fortnight
for Freedom," Chaput said Wednesday, delivering the first keynote address
at the 2012 Catholic Media Conference. "It is a moment for each of us to
be grateful to our bishops for doing the right thing ... at the right time. If
we don't press now and vigorously for our religious liberty in the public
arena, we will lose it. Not overnight, not with a thunderclap, but step by
step."
"Each of you plays a
key role, a vital role in this effort, because our prestigious news media, with
a very few exceptions, won't cover this issue in a fair and comprehensive
way," he said.
Chaput made five points:
- "Religious
freedom is a cornerstone of the American experience. This is so obvious
that once upon a time, no one needed to say it. Times have changed."
Almost all the founding fathers saw religious faith as vital to a free
people, Chaput said. Liberty and happiness grow organically out of virtue,
and virtue needs grounding in religious faith, he said.
- "Freedom
of religion is more than freedom of worship." He added, "Real
faith always bears fruit in public witness and public action. Otherwise,
it is just empty words." The founders understood this, he said.
"They created a nation designed in advance to depend on the moral
conviction of moral believers and to welcome their participation in public
life."
- "Threats
to our religious freedom are not imaginary. They are happening right now.
They are immediate, serious and real." Chaput cited examples of what
he called "a pattern of government coercion" over religious
practice and belief, including the HHS mandate. He also cited the recent
Supreme Court decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. EEOC,
which recognized a religious ministerial exemption from some employment
laws, which he said was a victory for religious liberty. "What is stunning
in this case is the disregard for religious liberty shown by the
government's arguments against the Lutheran church and school."
Chaput said the hostility
stems from the church's teaching on the sanctity of life and sexuality. He said
critics of the church reduce all these moral convictions to an expression of a
subjective religious belief, and if they are purely religious beliefs, critics
say they can't be rationally defended. And because they are not rationally
defensible, they should be treated as a form of prejudice.
Go
behind the scenes with NCR
In this video, staff writer Zoe Ryan discusses the selection
process for her story, "12 Catholic women making a difference."
"In effect, 2,000
years of moral tradition and religious belief become a species of bias,"
Chaput said. "Opposing same-sex marriage thus becomes religious-blessed
homophobia."
When religious belief gets
redefined as a private bias, religious identity and institutional ministry have
no public value other than the utility of getting otherwise incredulous people
to do good things, he said. So exempting Catholic adoption agencies with gay
couples becomes a concession to private prejudice, and that becomes bigotry
that hurts the public, "or so the reasoning goes."
"This is how moral
teaching and religious belief gets counted as hate speech," he said.
- "Unless
we work hard to keep our religious liberty, we are going to lose it. This
has already happened in other developed nations, like Britain and Canada.
Nothing guarantees our freedoms except our willingness to fight for
them."
- "Politics
and the courts are important [but] our religious freedom ultimately
depends on the vividness of our own Catholic faith. In other words, how
deeply we believe and how honestly we live it. Religious liberty is an
empty shell if the spiritual core of a people is weak."
"That is the reason
Pope Benedict calls us a year of faith this October," he said. "The
worst enemies of religious freedom aren't out there among the legion of critics
that hate Christ or the Gospel or the church or all three -- the worst enemies
are in here. It is us. All of us. It is the clergy, religious and lay when we
live our faith in tepidness, routine and hypocrisy."
"Religious
freedom is not a privilege granted by the state," Chaput said. "It is
our birthright as children of God. ... We need to become people worthy of it,
which means we need to change the way we live. Radically change. Both as
individual Catholics and as the church."[2]
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