That's José H. Gomez, Archbishop of Los Angeles, the largest archdiocese in the United States. He wrote this article yesterday on the Blog of First Things.
The Fortnight for Freedom is not just a "Catholic thing," it's for all who believe that governments should not dictate to citizens in matters of conscience, and that includes the citizens of every country on this planet who believe in religious liberty.On June 21, the night before the Catholic Church traditionally remembers the martyrdom of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More at the hands of King Henry VIII, American Catholics will begin a unique two-week vigil of prayer, sacrifice, and public witness for the cause of religious liberty.The “Fortnight for Freedom” was called by my brothers in the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and it will conclude with the ringing of bells in churches all across the country on July 4, the memorial of our country’s independence. The bishops aren’t comparing the conditions of the American church in the early 21st century with that of Catholics persecuted during the English Reformation. We’re blessed in our country with a religious liberty that, sadly, most people in the world today do not enjoy. According to the Pew Center, three out of four people worldwide live in a country where the government doesn’t protect their right to worship and serve the God they believe in.This global context puts the Catholic Church’s current conflict with the U.S. government in some perspective. But just because believers today aren’t executed for their beliefs and are free to go to church on Sundays, that doesn’t mean freedom of religion isn’t in jeopardy in America.For our country’s founders—and for every American generation until now—freedom of religion has meant much more than the freedom to worship. Freedom of religion has meant the freedom to establish institutions to help us live out our faith and carry out our religious duties. Freedom of religion has meant the freedom to express our faith and values in political debates—and the freedom to try to persuade others to share our convictions.
LifeNews,com published this piece on the subject yesterday:
On this, the feast day of St. Thomas More, and the very day that St. John Fisher (his feast day is tomorrow) was martyred in 1535 for refusing to acknowledge King Henry VIII as the Supreme Head of the Church in England, it is almost ironic that free people are still having to stand up to governments bent on placing themselves above God.This August, the HHS regulations that require religious non-profits to provide contraception, abortifacients and sterilization to their employees are scheduled to go into effect.Since the proposed regulations were announced in February, HHS and its supporters have tried to depict opposition to the regulations as merely a Catholic concern. The issue, they would have us believe, is the Catholic Church’s position on artificial birth control, not the abridgment of religious freedom.Chuck Colson worked tirelessly to refute this nonsense. In the last few months of his life, he pointed out that the HHS regulations were part of a larger pattern. They were an example of what the Manhattan Declaration calls the “[trampling] upon the freedom…to express [one’s] religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage.”They’re of a piece with “the effort to weaken or eliminate conscience clauses, and therefore to compel pro-life institutions…and pro-life physicians, surgeons, nurses, and other health care professionals, to refer for abortions and, in certain cases, even to perform or participate in abortions.”
The War for Religious Freedom in 2012 in on, and, although not initiated by Christians, it will be won by them.
Adjutorium nostrum in nomine Domini, qui fecit caelum et terram.
¡Viva Cristo Rey!
