Jan 16

Obama declares Religious Freedom Day

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In another twist on news that doesn’t square with other news, and words by the president that don’t match actions by the president…

Mr. Obama declared January 16th Religious Freedom Day. Here’s the Proclamation:

Foremost among the rights Americans hold sacred is the freedom to worship as we choose.

Right there is a tip off to where his administration has been going with religious liberty in America, transitioning it to the freedom to worship.

But immediately afterward he makes this fine set of points:

Today, we celebrate one of our Nation’s first laws to protect that right — the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. Written by Thomas Jefferson and guided through the Virginia legislature by James Madison, the Statute affirmed that “Almighty God hath created the mind free” and “all men shall be free to profess . . . their opinions in matters of religion.” Years later, our Founders looked to the Statute as a model when they enshrined the principle of religious liberty in the Bill of Rights.

Because of the protections guaranteed by our Constitution, each of us has the right to practice our faith openly and as we choose…Americans of every faith have molded the character of our Nation. They were pilgrims who sought refuge from persecution; pioneers who pursued brighter horizons; protesters who fought for abolition, women’s suffrage, and civil rights. Each generation has seen people of different faiths join together to advance peace, justice, and dignity for all.

Define “all,” because different faiths have joined together over several decades to advance rights that don’t apply to the entire class of human beings who exist in the mothers’ wombs but are as yet unborn, and over most of 2012 to advance rights that are being denied employers who morally object to his HHS mandate. People who are battling in courts across the country to defend “the right to practice our faith openly and as we choose”.

The president continues:

As we observe Religious Freedom Day, let us remember the legacy of faith and independence we have inherited, and let us honor it by forever upholding our right to exercise our beliefs free from prejudice or persecution.

Indeed.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty issued this statement soon after the Proclamation was released.

“Today we welcome the President’s Proclamation on Religious Freedom Day. However, we deeply regret that the President does not mention the HHS mandate, which was issued by his administration and which is now trampling the religious freedom of millions of individuals, schools, hospitals, charities, and businesses throughout our nation.  Perhaps this mismatch between words and deeds can be explained by the phrase “freedom of worship,” which the President uses in the first sentence of his proclamation. Religious freedom certainly includes worship, but it extends beyond the four walls of a church. If it is not to be an empty promise, religious freedom must also include acting on one’s deepest religious beliefs when one is feeding the poor, caring for the sick, educating the young, or running a business. The HHS mandate ignores that simple truth and is therefore out of step with our traditions and our laws, which promise religious freedom for all.”  — Kyle Duncan, General Counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty

So again I’m left wondering whether the president hears his own statements and considers them. Because actions speak louder than words, and his are saying contradictory things.

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Dec 19

Obamacare HHS mandate gets judicial correction

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It was always wrong. But because it was issued by executive fiat, its violation of law had to go through the process of being tried, and there are many lawsuits standing against it.

This one scored a victory.

Today, a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. handed Wheaton College and Belmont Abbey College a major victory in their challenges to the HHS mandate.  Last summer, two lower courts had dismissed the Colleges’ cases as premature.  Today, the appellate court reinstated those cases, and ordered the Obama Administration to report back every 60 days—starting in mid-February—until the Administration makes good on its promise to issue a new rule that protects the Colleges’ religious freedom.

This is major.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius cannot enforce the Obamacare contraception mandate as it is written, but must follow through on a promise to rewrite the rule to accommodate religious liberty, a federal appeals court ordered.

The Obama administration “represented to the court that it would never enforce [the mandate] in its current form against the appellants or those similarly situated as regards contraceptive services,” the three judges hearing the case wrote in their order.  The Obama team made that promise during oral arguments against Wheaton College and The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which sued over the contraception mandate but lost at the lower court level.

“There will, the government said, be a different rule for entities like the appellants .  .  . We take the government at its word and will hold it to it,” the judges wrote.

They ruled that the Obama administration must rewrite the regulation by August 2013 and provide updates to the court every 60 days. If the government fails to do so, the lawsuits may proceed.

The court also noted that the Obama administration had not made such an expansive pledge outside the courtroom.

“The D.C. Circuit has now made it clear that government promises and press conferences are not enough to protect religious freedom,” The Becket Fund’s Kyle Duncan, who argued the case, said in a statement.  “The court is not going to let the government slide by on non-binding promises to fix the problem down the road.”

Yesterday’s ruling marks the second time in two weeks that a judge has decided that Obama’s promise to change the rule eventually is an insufficient remedy to the religious liberty issues raised by opponents of the mandate.

“There is no, ‘Trust us, changes are coming’ clause in the Constitution,” Judge Brian Cogan wrote in his ruling in favor of the Archdiocese of New York two weeks ago. “To the contrary, the Bill of Rights itself, and the First Amendment in particular, reflect a degree of skepticism towards governmental self-restraint and self-correction.”

It’s about time it gets applied.

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Sep 09

God and Israel and the Democrats

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That floor fiasco over the party platform was reported as the Democrats ‘booing God.’ Which is only partially true.

Some of the booing was over the platform amendment changing the reference to Israel, though the amendment covered both and caused a floor fight. Which, as everyone paying attention to this stuff at this point knows well by now, went weirdly through multiple stages of negative statements, followed by denial and charges of misreporting, followed by evidence that the reporting was accurate which led to spin of the original point all along. Followed by the floor vote on the amended wording in the platform.

Here’s just one snip from CNN:

Anderson Cooper openly mocked the Democrats’ attempts to brush past the controversy surrounding changes to its platform on Wednesday night.

Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz appeared on the network to discuss the rancorous opposition to the insertion of new language about God and Jerusalem into the platform. Wasserman-Schultz told her interviewer Brianna Keilar that there had been “no discord” when the platform was amended. It was an audacious statement to anyone who had seen the footage of the boos and shouts that came when the amendments were proposed — as well as the fact that convention chair Antonio Villaraigosa had to try three times before he got a result he was satisfied with.

After Wasserman-Schultz’s interview, Cooper did a verbal double-take. “That’s an alternate reality,” he said. “From a reality standpoint … to say flat-out, there was no discord, is just not true.”

Right. The party doesn’t entirely know what it stands for, but in its official statement it claims to stand for more radical ideology than Democrats in recent history ever did.

Connect the dots. The week opened with that welcoming video saying that “government is the only thing we all belong to.”  It was Orwellian.

Fast forward through all the celebration of abortion, with all the shouting and yelling about reproductive rights, and the sanctimonious spin about gay marriage and the complete lack of reference to the battle for religious freedom, and you get to the platform fight over adding the mention of God. That’s directly connected to the rest.

First thought I had was of the EU hammering out a constitution and two popes imploring Europeans and their leaders not to rewrite history and deny their Christian heritage and reject their very identity. Fortunately, Dr. Paul Kengor had the same thought and expressed it with keen insight.

The God opponents were the predictable Western European progressives: leftist Eurocrats in Brussels, Labor Party atheists in Britain, German socialists, Scandinavian secularists, and, naturally, the French leadership. The God supporters included new EU member states that survived godless communism—with Poland in the forefront—and the continent’s preeminent religious figure: Pope John Paul II.

The pope, suffering from advanced Parkinson’s, took up the fight with vigor. In the summer of 2003, he devoted a series of Sunday Angelus addresses to this political issue that transcended politics. He made arguments akin to those made by the American Founding Fathers: It is crucial for citizens living under a constitution to understand the ultimate source from which their rights derive. Their rights come not from government but from God. What government gives, government can take away. What God gives, government cannot take away.

So to the point of contention at the DNC in Charlotte:

That the Democrats, in 2012, would find themselves in a similar battle is no surprise.

Now this is interesting…

I’ll never forget the night Barack Obama won the 2008 election, when I turned on CNN and glimpsed an unknown Republican congressman from Wisconsin named Paul Ryan. When asked about Obama’s victory, Ryan said he was most concerned about “the Europeanization of America.”

“That’s it!” I said to myself. “That’s exactly it. Who is this guy? He nailed it.”

A further “Europeanization” of America is the best description of what has transpired under the Obama administration, especially its first two years under a fully supportive Democratic Congress. In 2009-10, we witnessed incredibly wasteful Keynesian-style prime-the-pump “stimulus,” partial nationalizations, “Obama-care,” explosive public-sector growth and unionization, demonization of the banking and investment and oil industries, stagnant unemployment, class-warfare rhetoric unlike anything I’ve ever heard in this country, and debt-to-GDP ratios approaching Greece standards. We’ve experienced a record-long non-recovering recovery reminiscent not of the American experience but of Western Europe…

Here in America, the staunchest liberal-Democrat areas, such as California, Massachusetts, and New England, all have European-level birthrates, divorce rates, abortion rates, and even church attendance. New England, in many ways, is a microcosm of Western Europe.

By the time of the 2012 Democratic convention, party delegates had already (following Barack Obama’s lead) embraced everything from unlimited taxpayer-funding of abortion to gay marriage. How does one get to these positions? Answer: by removing God. Fittingly, then, the delegates merely need to take the next evolutionary step: exclude God.

The heads of that party have been making strident moves to do that in a number of ways, but nothing as brazen and sweeping as the HHS mandate that by federal fiat relegates religiously informed consciences to powerlessness, and religiously run businesses, insititutions and social ministries to the morally bankrupt position of being neither able to practice or preach what they believe.

The fact that the practially non-existent ‘accommodation’ is so narrow it wouldn’t even apply to Jesus is not an unintended consquence.

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Aug 07

What August 1st meant

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The HHS mandate went into effect. Religious institutions have a year ‘to figure out how they’re going to violate their consciences’, as NY Cardinal Timothy Dolan put it. Other employers have to do it now. And on the same day, Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day was held across America. How are they connected?

Both events represented a line crossed with new limits on the ability to hold and express personal beliefs without government restriction.

The Becket Fund went to court that day filing an appeal for injunctive relief, and said this:

“Remember August 1, 2012.  Today begins a violation of American conscience like we have never seen before in our country, and Wheaton College personifies it,” said Kyle Duncan, General Counsel for The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.  “Everyone knows Wheaton is a school that lives out its faith.  But today our government is telling Wheaton it is not ‘religious enough’ to have a conscience, and so can be forced to participate in abortions or face heavy fines.  Wheaton’s only recourse is to ask the federal courts for emergency relief.”

Wheaton does not qualify for the one-year “safe harbor,” which the government offered to certain religious organizations as a temporary reprieve from the HHS mandate.  So, in a few short months, Wheaton faces the prospect of over a million dollars per year in fines and other penalties—unless it agrees to violate its core religious beliefs by providing insurance coverage for “emergency contraceptives” that they believe cause abortion.

“Wheaton’s employees are standing with the school but they are afraid,” said Duncan.  “Many employees have said that, if Wheaton is forced to terminate insurance coverage, they will not be able to afford health care for their families.  Wheaton has always provided generous employee benefits, but now the government is forcing it to choose between caring for its employees and honoring its faith.  The government should never be able to put anyone in that position.”

But by fiat, they are, defying previous boundaries to government intrustion into religious liberty and conscience rights.

The American Life League issued this warning on August 1st:

The president’s HHS Mandate redefines and marginalizes religious freedom in favor of government ideology. History tragically teaches us that if our government can abolish one constitutional right, then all constitutional rights are put in jeopardy.   This path sets a dangerous and foolish precedent that First Amendments rights such as freedom of speech, association, freedom of the press, and the rights to assemble and petition the government may be just as easily curtailed in the future.

The other big event that day was different in scope and scale and historic precedent, sort of. But it became a benchmark in American life and culture, as unlikely as the Chick-fil-A fiasco seemed when it first erupted.

Remember that heady time not so long ago when Americans concerned about the unintended consequences of same-sex marriage were told that we had nothing to fear because the redefinition of marriage to accommodate gays and lesbians would not affect our families or our freedoms? You and your churches and businesses can go on believing what you want about marriage, we were told; just let us do our thing and we’ll let you do yours.

How times have changed. In just a few short years, a movement once known for championing tolerance has become the epitome of intolerance. Using their culturally sanctioned victim status as cover, America’s gay-rights leaders have become the iron-fisted enforcers of a strict new speech code in which anyone who questions same-sex marriage is denounced as a hateful, homophobic bigot. Erstwhile pleas for “dialogue” about the best way to protect both the institution of marriage and gay and lesbian interests have been replaced by blatant bullying and vicious personal attacks.

She’s right.

Mayors in Chicago, Boston and San Francisco pronounced Chick-fil-A unwelcome in their communities…

The marriage views that prompted Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to denounce Chick-fil-A and its jobs as unwelcome in a city plagued by crime and unemployment apparently did not bother Emanuel when spouted by his former boss, President Barack Obama, who embraced same-sex marriage only three months ago. As for those “Chicago values” of which Chick-fil-A ran afoul, don’t ask Emanuel to explain how a family-owned company that graciously serves gays and lesbians along with anyone else willing to buy its chicken sandwiches offends Windy City ideals but anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan — whom Emanuel embraced the same week he was chiding Chick-fil-A —does not.

Consistency never has been the strong suit of the marriage redefinition crowd. Nor has respect for diversity — if by the term one means ideological, not simply sexual, difference.

Still, the hostility, contempt and even outright bullying directed at those who oppose same-sex marriage has exploded…

That’s not an exaggeration.

One example:

As police and store employees grappled with graffiti that appeared overnight on the back wall of a Torrance Chick-fil-A, online supporters and protesters alike criticized the vandalism.

“Tastes like hate” was scrawled in large black lettering on the wall of the restaurant, mimicking the chain’s advertising.

“The Chick-Fil-A stores are all independently owned. Vandalism, like that in L.A., hurts the local owner who may not share Cathy’s views,”  a Twitter user…posted, referring to company President Dan Cathy’s recent public stand against same-sex marriage that has sparked a national uproar.

And btw…Dan Cathy didn’t take a public stand against same-sex marriage, which few have taken the time or trouble of researching the story to point out. He responded to a question by a Baptist press outlet whether he believed in the Biblical definition of marriage, and he replied that he did. Media have been irresponsible in their handling of this story.

But back to the vandalism on the outside of a LA franchise, spray-painted “Tastes like hate.”

“wow really?

(my sentiments exactly)

it’s one thing to protest Chick-fil-A but vandalism? im all for freedom of speech but this has gone too far,” (someone) wrote on Twitter. “Wow. So 2 wrongs make a right now days?” wrote another Twitter user from North Carolina.

Many wrongs. Here’s another.

A vandal spray painted an anti-hate message on a Des Peres [Missouri] Chick-Fil-A on Saturday in what appeared to be a response to the fast-food chain owners’ opposition to same-sex unions.

According to the store, someone spray painted “don’t hate” one of the store’s brick walls and “tastes like hate” on the drive-through path.

I’m embarrassed for all the good and upright citizens in the gay community who would never stoop to these low-grade intimidation tactics.

So here’s a learning moment, brought to us by someone who both stooped to the level of harrassment without thinking it through, and learned something from the response on the other side of the provocation.

A minor Internet sensation erupted this week when Adam Smith, former CFO and treasurer of medical supplies manufacturer Vante, videotaped himself bullying a Chick-fil-A drive-thru employee. Smith was fired by his company because of his behavior, but the young woman he harassed provided a model in how to respond to hateful speech.

In the video, initially titled “Reduce $’s to Chick-Fil-A’s Hate Groups,” Smith orders a “free water” from the Chick-fil-A drive thru for the purpose of insulting and harassing the young service worker. “I don’t know how you live with yourself and work here,” he tells the employee at the window. “I don’t understand it. This is a horrible corporation with horrible values. You deserve better.”

“I’m a nice guy, by the way . . . totally heterosexual,” he continues. “Not a gay in me, I just can’t stand the hate.”

Hate. Where do people get these ideas? They manufacture them. They generate them. Then they believe them.

The company that Smith works for issued a press release announcing that Smith is “no longer an employee of our company” and that they expect their “company officers to behave in a manner commensurate with their position and in a respectful fashion that conveys these values of civility with others.”

So the piece continues…

Such behavior has become all too common among those who support homosexual rights and will likely occur with increasing frequency in the future. But what makes the video noteworthy is the gentle and kind response of the Chick-fil-A employee.

I don’t know if, Rachel, the young woman in the video, is a Christian, but her response provides a helpful model for believers. Caught off guard in an uncomfortable and demeaning situation, she responds with civility and gentleness, expressing a desire to serve others. There’s a time to respond with arguments and persuasion and there are times when all that you can do is respond with kindness. Rachel has obviously developed the type of character that would allow her to quickly realize what response was needed.

And it was effective.

UPDATE: Mr. Smith apologized to Rachel and answered questions about his actions.

Look at both videos. It’s a remarkable transformation, the initial provocation and the effect of this young woman’s witness to dignity and respect. That update should be at least the same Internet sensation, but deservedly more.

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Jul 22

Movie theater violence: we’ve seen this before

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Columbine, Virginia Tech, Ft. Hood, Tucson, Aurora…and shooting sprees outside the US just as stunningly random and horrible and evil…each and all leave us speechless.

Not that there hasn’t been plenty of running commentary on these massacres from the moment they erupted, much of it irresponsible and politically motivated. Disregard that, it’s worthless. These massacres assault human sensibilities and draw us together and force us – again – to dig deep and go inside to a place usually left unchecked, badly shaken and afraid and in search of comfort and safety and meaning.

How do we process and cope with this horror? Each time it happens, communities and nations and disparate groups of people not usually in contact much less sympathy, draw in and band together somehow. But what is the bond? How is it expressed? It must be expressed.

At a time like this, when words like ‘horrific’ even seem inadequate for something inexpressible, we need pause…

President Obama cancelled his campaign events Friday, telling supporters “there will be other days for politics…This will be a day for prayer and reflection.”

“While we will never know fully what causes somebody to take the life of another, we do know what makes life worth living,” the president said. “The people lost in Aurora loved and they were loved. They were mothers and fathers, they were husbands and wives, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, friends and neighbors. They had hopes for the future and they had dreams that were not yet fulfilled.”

Obama said if there is anything to take away from the tragedy, it is the importance of how people treat and love one another.

All true. We have a deep and instinctive need for prayer and reflection. We have to consider what causes a person to take the life of another. The people whose lives were taken were sisters and brothers, sons and daughters. They had a future and potential that will not be realized and never fulfilled. We must learn from this how people treat and love other human beings.

On my radio show that day, I reflected on all this. Respectfully, I wondered aloud how these sincere sentiments square with an ideology that affirms the right to willfully end the life of human beings in their youngest, most vulnerable times of growth. It was brief, this little soliloquy, but sincere also.

One of my guests was National Review Online editor Kathryn Jean Lopez, who made the good point that some politicians call on us to integrate faith at times they deem appropriate. But faith’s full integration is always appropriate, she said. We’re called to prayer as a nation by the president, but at the same time we’re in a national battle for the right to express morally informed voices in the public square, or live public life as fully integrated religious actors in the arena of exchange and ideas.

“We no longer have a common language,” she said, and she’s right. “The lack of understanding of our first freedom makes it impossible to have a coherent conversation.”

Frankly speaking, our first, most cherished liberty is the right of conscience. Media people and regular citizens wondered aloud, a lot, how someone could do what the shooter did last week in Colorado, as if there were no conscience.

Meanwhile, we’re in a national battle over the right to live according to conscience. We have to get this right.

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Jul 05

Independence Day 2012

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What will Independence Day 2013 look like in America?

That thought crossed my mind in the middle of the day, seeing coverage of both celebrations of the Fourth across the country and deliberations of the ObamaCare ruling across the news networks. I’ve been traveling a lot lately and maybe it’s a good thing not to try keeping pace with the onslaught of analysis pouring out over the past week of what Chief Justice John Roberts might have been thinking when he issued the decisive and historic opinion in upholding ObamaCare as constitutional, as a tax. Especially in its implications for the integrity of the Supreme Court.

Had a majority of the justices struck down Obamacare, the court — fairly or unfairly — would have become a bigger issue in the presidential campaign than usual and in ways that could have been damaging to its authority.

Everything has become political. Even the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

Americans know that the Declaration of Independence proclaims as a matter of fact that they “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” But when Obama recites this line, he omits the word “Creator.”

Listen carefully to how Obama censors that famous line. Here are his own words: “all men are created equal, that each of us are endowed with certain inalienable rights.” He doesn’t say who endowed us.

Obama has done this so often that it can’t be a slip of the tongue or a glitch of the teleprompter. Changing the words of the Declaration of Independence is part of Obama’s determination to remove everything religious and every mention of God from every aspect of our public life in order to fundamentally transform us from “one nation under God” into one nation under the Federal Government, especially the executive branch, with no higher power recognized.

The US Bishops called the Fortnight for Freedom for that reason, and though the event closed with a liturgy and addresses on Independence Day, it really served as a rocket booster to propel the movement to defend constitutional liberties forward.

No government should tell religious organizations either what to believe or how to put their beliefs into practice. We indeed hold this to be an unalienable, constitutional right. If freedom of religion is a constitutional value to be protected, then institutions developed by religious groups to implement their core beliefs in education, in care for the sick or suffering, and in other tasks must also be protected. Only by doing so can the free exercise of religion have any meaning.

This is a year of historic consequence in America. The president, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, elected representatives of the republic and citizens who may have taken liberty for granted all have a new – and very different – stake in it.

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Jun 24

‘Fortnight for Freedom’ launches

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Never have the US bishops been so unified and fully engaged over one issue in this nation. But the HHS mandate was the bridge too far in this administration’s push to expand its control over the nation and its citizens. ‘It put our usual work on steroids’, one bishop told me on radio. It also ramped up the nation’s Catholics and their involvement in public policy like nothing has since the civil rights movement.

Some Catholics complain that it took this long for the bishops to engage crucial social policy battles and ask where they were when this or that happened, naming any number of issues. But they are here and now, an impressive force, and they’re gathering momentum and strength. If unpaid bills of the past have come due now, they are being reckoned with at present.

The Fortnight for Freedoom has begun. Because freedom is under siege.

What are the bishops up to with this “great national campaign of teaching and witness for religious liberty”? In keeping with their responsibilities as shepherds of the faith, they are calling their people—and anyone else who pays heed—to a heightened awareness of the centrality of religious freedom for any civilized society that claims to recognize the equal dignity of human beings.

But why now? Why should the bishops pick this season for a campaign of public education and advocacy on the subject of religious liberty? For religious-freedom watchers, that’s an easy question to answer. Under President Obama, religious freedom has been directly attacked when it has not been simply neglected or disregarded.

Count the ways. Several are listed there.

The Obama administration, especially with its HHS mandate, poses the largest and most immediate threat to religious freedom in America today. But in the Easter week statement of their Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, titled “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty,” the bishops also notice other threats to which we should be alert. Among them are ill-considered state laws on immigration that would make it illegal for churches to assist poor people, or even celebrate the sacraments with them, if they are illegal immigrants…

In short, the defense of religious freedom is more needed now than it has been for many years, and the confrontations between freedom and authority run deeply through layers of other political debates, over sexuality, marriage, health-care policy, discrimination law, humanitarian relief, and foreign affairs. New confrontations are bound to occur as long as our political system fails to restore and preserve a proper understanding of religious freedom.

Such a restorative effort is the purpose of the Fortnight for Freedom. As Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee, said at the bishops’ annual conference in Atlanta on June 13, the Fortnight “is not about parties, candidates, or elections . . . it is about the issue of religious freedom.” Religious freedom knows no party. The bishops are responding to an aggressive secularism that happens to be led by a Democratic administration. “Responding” is the key word here, for the bishops are not starting a fight, but neither are they backing away from one.

Right on.

Archbishop Charles Chaput, author of Render Unto Caesar among other credits, says religious liberty is “an urgent concern” at this moment in US history, and sums up the issue “in five simple points.”

First, religious freedom is a cornerstone of the American experience. This is so obvious that once upon a time, nobody needed to say it. But times have changed. So it’s worth recalling that Madison, Adams, Washington, Hamilton, Franklin, Jefferson–in fact, nearly all the American founders–saw religious faith as vital to the life of a free people. Liberty and happiness grow organically out of virtue. And virtue needs grounding in religious faith…

Here’s my second point: Freedom of religion is more than freedom of worship. The right to worship is a necessary but not sufficient part of religious liberty. Christian faith requires community. It begins in worship, but it also demands preaching, teaching, and service. It’s always personal but never private. And it involves more than prayer at home and Mass on Sunday–though these things are vitally important. Real faith always bears fruit in public witness and public action. Otherwise it’s just empty words.

The founders saw the value of publicly engaged religious faith because they experienced its influence themselves. They created a nation designed in advance to depend on the moral convictions of religious believers, and to welcome their active role in public life.

Here’s my third point: Threats against religious freedom in our country are not imaginary. They’re happening right now. They’re immediate, serious, and real. Earlier this year religious liberty advocates won a big Supreme Court victory in the 9-0 Hosanna-Tabor v EEOC decision. That’s the good news. Here’s the bad news: What’s stunning in that case is the disregard for religious freedom shown by the government’s arguments against the Lutheran church and school.

And Hosanna-Tabor is not an isolated case. It belongs to a pattern of government coercion that includes the current administration’s HHS mandate; interfering with the conscience rights of medical providers and private employers, as well as individual citizens; and attacks on the policies, hiring practices, and tax statuses of religious charities and ministries.

It’s amazing that about 11 days after the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously in Hosanna-Tabor that government has no right to define religious ministry, the government announced the HHS mandate.

Here’s my fourth point: Unless we work hard to keep our religious liberty, we’ll lose it. It’s already happening in other developed countries like Britain and Canada. The U.S. Constitution is a great document–historically unique for its fusion of high ideals with the realism of very practical checks and balances. But in the end, it’s just an elegant piece of paper. In practice, nothing guarantees our freedoms except our willingness to fight for them. That means fighting politically and through the courts, without tiring and without apologies.

That’s certainly happening now.

Here’s my fifth and final point: Politics and the courts are important. But our religious freedom ultimately depends on the vividness of our own Christian faith–in other words, how deeply we believe it, and how honestly we live it. Religious liberty is an empty shell if the spiritual core of a people is weak. Or to put it more bluntly, if people don’t believe in God, religious liberty isn’t a value. That’s the heart of the matter…

Religious liberty isn’t a privilege granted by the state. It’s our birthright as children of God. And even the worst bigotry can’t kill it in the face of a believing people. But if we value it and want to keep it, then 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.

Great message. Read the whole thing. And the other links. This is not going to end on the Fourth of July.

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Jun 10

What price religious freedom?

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Early in the film ‘For Greater Glory’ an elderly pastor, warned that Mexican federales were storming toward his church and he faced imminent danger if he did not hide in a nearby home, said he was a priest and was already home, that he belonged in the church. ”Who are you if you don’t stand up for what you believe?” That line was symbolic of the entire film and real life Cristeros War it revealed, and emblematic of the present time.

The Knights of Columbus played a significant role in the Cristiada, and they do today in the US, in defending religious liberty.

“For me, it’s more than something that happened 80 years ago,” [Producer Pablo] Barroso said. “This is something that really is the foundation not only of Mexico, but I think also of the whole continent. I don’t know what would have happened if these brave people had not stood up for their beliefs.”

That’s the theme that makes this film coming out at this time so…providential.

Although the film is about specific historical events, the filmmakers believe that its message about religious freedom is universal.

“We live in a time where religious freedom is as tenuous as it’s ever been,” said [Director Dean] Wright. “Whether it’s in the United States, the Middle East or Asia, people are standing up and saying, ‘You can’t do that. I have the right to say what I want, to believe what I want and to practice that faith.’”

After seeing an advanced screening of the movie, Supreme Knight Carl A. Anderson said, “For Greater Glory is a powerful film that provides a compelling account of a forgotten era of our continent’s history. In celebrating the centrality of religious freedom and man’s need for God, it tells a story of enduring relevance, and is ‘must-see’ viewing for all who care about faith and liberty today.”

This message is repeated over and over by each of the film’s prominent actors, including Cuban-born Andy Garcia.

“The first stimulus for me as an actor to be a part of this movie was the notion of the quest for absolute freedom,” said Garcia. “Coming from a country where religious freedom was also curtailed and abolished, I was very sensitive to that reality and those struggles.”

Same for Mauricio Kuri, who played the role of young martyr ‘Joselito’ Sanchez del Rio.

Looking back on the whole experience, Kuri sees Bl. Jose’s true strength as being rooted in his courage to stand up for what he believes in.
 
“I think I would do that,”Kuri said, “because to defend for what you believe is the most cool thing” you could ever do…

Kuri encourages Catholics everywhere to stand up for religious freedom like the faithful Catholics of Mexico did during the Cristero War.

They are, in astonishing numbers, at the Stand Up For Religious Freedom rallies that went from huge on March 23rd to larger and more passionate last Friday, June 8. From Maine to Miami and Alaska to Honolulu, Americans turned out in public squares to boldly affirm their belief in the constitutional right to religious liberty.

The second wave of religious freedom rallies took place on Friday, filling courthouse squares, federal buildings, and university centers from New York to Los Angeles with the Founding Fathers’ views of liberty and conscience.

Tens of thousands participated in the more than 150 events organized by the Pro-Life Action League and Citizens for a Pro-Life Society.

Actually, leaders of those two groups built a coalition of 65 religious and civil rights organizations, dedicated and determined to defend individuals and institutions from the federal HHS mandate that requires them to violate their consciences.

Interesting. Late in the film ‘For Greater Glory’, the Mexican president who launched the ruthless crackdown on religion and people of faith called for a meeting with the famous general who headed the Cristeros in defending religious rights. President Calles presented General Gorostieta with what he called a ‘compromise’, to which Gorostieta responded ‘there is no compromise of liberty.’ Freedom is absolute, he declared, and comes not from the state but from God.

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May 28

Media’s choice coverage

Abortion, Church, Law, Media, Politics, Society No Comments »

I’ve quoted Walter Lippmann for years on the ability to shape public opinion by feeding the public information chosen from a field of topics and presented in a calculated light with crafted language framed within fixed parameters. He’s getting more relevant all the time.

Here are two circumstances that call this to mind.

At the start of last week, a well-coordinated and darned near unprecedented legal challenge was launched by 43 Catholic institutions against the president and his administration over a federal mandate to purchase or provide something that violated their First Amendment right to religious liberty and fundamental right to human conscience.

In what had to be more willful and calculated than inept, the media largely ignored the story.

For the third night in a row the broadcast networks have refused to cover this correctly. This momentum is fueled by CBS Evening News’ outrageous decision not only to spike the Catholic lawsuits but instead to lead the news with yet another story about the Catholic sex abuse scandal. The broadcast devoted two minutes and 31 seconds to the accused abusers and allegations that occurred decades ago. That’s roughly eight times more coverage than CBS Evening News gave the historic lawsuit on Monday.

With all due respect to Brent Bozell and the Media Research Council, I have to say this is not surprising and deserves the jabs but only constitutes ‘more of same’ in the realm of news reporting these days. We know big media manipulate the news and don’t cover things like the massive March for Life rally each January filling the Mall of Washington with peaceful, young, cheerful and staunchly pro-life activists on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. They just don’t. Too bad. But what does it matter? The media have rendered themselves largely irrelevant and more so in recent years, so the more we express angst over their lack of coverage of big and obvious stories, the more weight we give them and their coverage in general.

Here’s the second situation.

On Friday morning, I caught a television interview with a former New York Times investigative journalist about the lack of media coverage on the plight of the doctor in Pakistan who helped US forces find Osama bin Laden. She said ‘though his treatment is shocking and outrageous, the media are concerned about making his plight worse.’

In other words, the media are making calculations, what to cover and what to ignore in coverage, according to the effect coverage may have on outcomes.

That’s not just managing the news, it’s manipulating the news.

So faith based leaders have stepped up to speak for themselves. Fox News Sunday’s Chris Wallace interviewed Washington Cardinal Donald Wuerl said the media has missed the boat on the major news story of the lawsuits, and he clarified.

“This lawsuit isn’t about contraception,” said Cardinal Wuerl. “It is about religious freedom. Embedded in the mandate is a radically new definition of what institutes a religious community, what constitutes religious ministry–brand new and never fortified in the federal level. That’s what we are arguing about.”

“The lawsuit said we have every right to serve in this community as we have served for decades and decades,” he continued. “The new definition says you are not really religious if you serve people other than your own and if you hire people other than your own. That wipes out all of the things that we have been doing, all the things that we contribute to the common good–our schools, our health care services, our Catholic charity and even parish soup kitchens and pantries.”

Wallace raised the question of the “accommodation” as some media keep doing, though time and again journalists who understand it point out there was no accommodation. Things were just stated in a different way to make it appear there was a change in the HHS mandate, like allegedly shifting the burden of providing drugs and procedures from Catholic institutions to insurers in nothing more than a verbal sleight-of-hand.

Criticizing the Obama administration’s “accommodation,” Cardinal Wuerl said that “so many of our institutions, certainly the archdiocese, is self insured. We are the insurer. So, when you say, don’t worry, we changed this and only the insurer has to pay. And we are the insurer, there is no accommodation.”

And the HHS mandate remains unchanged. Which is why this fiasco is becoming a train wreck. And sooner or later the media may take more interest in that.

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