Fr. Roger J. Landry
The Anchor
Editorial
October,14, 2011
The United States bishops have long spoken up in defense of religious freedom abroad when Communists, Islamicists, fundamentalist Hindus or militant secularists either in the government or among the local religious majorities have sought to restrict or suppress this most basic of human rights.
Two weeks ago, however, the U.S. bishops formed an Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty to focus specifically on attacks against freedom of religion here at home. The president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York, established the committee in response to what he described as “the urgent need we face to safeguard religious liberty inherent in the dignity of the human person.”
In a remarkably candid September 29 letter to his brother bishops, Archbishop Dolan wrote that despite the fact that religious liberty is a “foundational principle of our country, one that has been enshrined in the United States Constitution, further enumerated in the First Amendment and explicitly extended to all U.S. citizens,” it is now “increasingly and in unprecedented ways under assault in America.”
Those strong words were just the beginning.
He specified that the attacks were coming from “an increasing number of federal government programs or policies” that infringe upon conscience and religious freedom. He named six such programs that have arisen in just the few months since the bishops last met in June.
The first comes from the new regulations from the federal Department of Health and Human Services mandating that all private insurance plans, including those for the vast majority of Church institutions, fully pay for contraception, abortifacient morning-after pills and sterilizations. As we wrote concerning these regulations in our August 12 editorial, there is a narrow religious exemption for certain non-profit religious organizations whose purpose is the “inculcation of religious values” and that primarily employs and serves those who share its religious tenets; this wording, however, would mean most Catholic institutions — like hospitals, universities, schools, and social service programs — would not qualify because they do not serve exclusively or primarily Catholics. Quoting from the president of the Catholic Health Association, Sister Carol Keehan, Archbishop Dolan said that the exemption would cover “only the parish housekeeper” and do “nothing” to protect individuals or institutions with religious or moral objections to paying for abortions, sterilizations or contraception.
The second offense is far less known. HHS is trying to force the bishops’ department of Migration and Refugee Services, as a condition of continuing to receive government contracts, to provide the “full range of reproductive services” to unaccompanied minors and trafficking victims. “We all know what that means,” Archbishop Dolan said, calling out the “reproductive services” euphemism for abortion and contraception that many abortion advocates refuse for reasons of unpopularity to make explicit. Either Church workers must violate their conscience and Church teaching to offer abortions to these young migrants and refugees or it will effectively need to get the money to continue its exemplary care for them out of the Sunday collection — something that obviously will dramatically reduce the care given to people in these desperate circumstances.
The third issue refers to a similar coercion. USAID, which is under the U.S. State Department, is now beginning to pressure Catholic Relief Services, one of the most effective disaster relief agencies in the world, to offer comprehensive HIV prevention activities, including the distribution of condoms, if it’s going to receive a penny from tax payers to do its front-line work after earthquakes, floods, hurricanes and more. As with the machinations of HHS mentioned above, the government is prioritizing passing out condoms and providing free abortions as more important than rebuilding lives in Port-au-Prince, New Orleans, Indonesia, Darfur and Somalia.
Fourth, Archbishop Dolan noted that the federal Department of Justice has “ratcheted up its attack on the Defense of Marriage Act as an act of bigotry.” We focused on this in last Friday’s editorial. The attack began in February when the Justice Department stopped fulfilling its constitutional duty to defend DOMA against constitutional challenges, but it reached a new stage in July when the department filed a brief attacking DOMA’s constitutionality, claiming that supporters of DOMA and traditional marriage can only be motivated by unconstitutional bias and prejudice. “If the label of ‘bigot’ sticks to us, especially in court, because of our teaching on marriage,” the archbishop warned, “we’ll have church-state conflicts for years to come as a result.”
Fifth, he called attention to the position that President Obama’s Justice Department took against the “ministerial exception” in a case being heard before the Supreme Court this year (see article on page four). This exception allows religious groups to choose their ministers without government interference according to their own criteria apart from normal employment laws. To attack the exception means that the government believes that it, rather than churches, should have the ultimate say as to whether people who do not meet religious criteria must be hired or can’t be fired.
Finally, Archbishop Dolan highlighted the push to redefine marriage to embrace same-sex unions that recently was passed by the New York State legislature as part of a national push. “Already, county clerks face legal action for refusing to participate in same-sex unions,” he wrote, “and gay rights advocates are publicly emphasizing how little religious freedom protection people and groups will enjoy under the new law.” Once same-sex unions become considered marriage, many of those who promoted it under the guise of tolerance become intransigently intolerant of anyone who seeks to resist, even if religious freedom or conscience claims are involved.
“As shepherds of over 70 million U.S. citizens,” Archbishop Dolan wrote to his fellow bishops, “we share a common and compelling responsibility to proclaim the truth of religious freedom for all, and so to protect our people from this assault.” He stressed that the attacks are now growing “at an ever-accelerating pace in ways most of us could never have imagined.” That’s why he wanted the bishops and the Church as a whole to begin to respond immediately because “we cannot waste time in this vital area.”
To head the new Ad-Hoc Committee, Archbishop Dolan appointed Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., who has many battle scars from his defending the Church in Connecticut from intrusions against religious liberty not only with regard to conscience and health care but also with respect to the attempt of some in the Connecticut legislature literally to have the Church surrender its organizational model in favor of a Congregationalist one. The committee will immediately begin to make alliances with other organizations, charities, ecumenical and interreligious partners to “form a united and forceful front in defense of religious freedom in our nation.” He said that the establishment of the new Ad Hoc Committee is a “new moment in the history of the conference. … Never before have we faced this kind of challenge to our ability to engage in the public square as people of faith and as a service provider. If we do not act now, the consequence will be grave.”
Archbishop Dolan’s letter was released to the public because, obviously, he wanted all Catholics in America to be as informed as the bishops about what is going on so that, as citizens, we, too, may form part of the “united and forceful front” in defense of religious liberty. It is a “new moment” in the history of the Church in our country that many Catholics, along with Archbishop Dolan, “could never have imagined.” It’s time for Catholics and all those who love the values of our country enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to rise up and defend those rights against those in positions of authority and movements who are trying to trample on those rights.