Maybe it's because I've traveled so much the past six weeks, but it doesn't seem to me I've heard much about this year's Fortnight for Freedom which kicks off tomorrow at Baltimore's Basilica of the Assumption at 7 pm tomorrow (409 Cathedral St. Baltimore).
It's a two-week period between the feast of the English martyrs for religious liberty and Independence Day to be marked by prayer, fasting, education and action in defense of our first freedom. The
USCCB has an excellent (not pretty, but meaty) resources page. It includes
fact sheets about the status of religious liberty here and abroad, links to great articles and columns, plus
14 ways to observe the Fortnight in your parish, graphics and downloads for your blog and social media needs, prayers and prayers of the faithful to use, links to events planned all over the nation, a daily quotation from the Founders....everything in a neat package, so go scroll around and start spreading the word and figuring out how you will help.
One thing I hope you will
not do is assume the bishops have this covered. Ready for my
periodic rant against clericalism and how passive and imprudent American Catholics are? Hah! Don't need it, because here's
Chaput the Great saying it for me in an interview at the National Catholic Register. It's a really terrific interview -- I urge you to RTWT-- but here's the point.
Q. What responsibility do laypeople have to take action on behalf of
the Church’s religious liberty? Why can’t this responsibility rest
solely on the bishops’ shoulders?
The secular world is the place where laypeople exercise their
leadership most naturally. It’s the environment of their everyday lives
and their primary mission field. Bishops can counsel and teach, but
their role in practical political affairs like the fight for religious
liberty can only be indirect and secondary.
If laypeople don’t love their Catholic faith enough to struggle for it
in the public square, nothing the bishops do will finally matter.
This is straight out of the the
Vatican II document on the Apostolate of the Laity, by the way. Lay people aren't called to the sanctuary. They're called to be
nourished in the sanctuary and then go out to redeem the secular order through their prayer, their witness of personal holiness, and their active engagement with other people of good will in the political process. The redemption of the secular world is explicitly entrusted to you and me -- not to the clergy.
Mission ought to be sufficient, but there are practical reasons why this fight has to be the laity's. There's the ugly one:
In the wake of the abuse scandal, bishops are too easily caricatured and
marginalized by the mass media. The religious-freedom fight needs to be
owned and led by laypeople.
And there's the clear-eyed realism one:
Religious liberty as an ideal sounds lovely. But in the abstract, it
has very little power. It has political force only to the degree that
ordinary people believe and practice their faith — and refuse to
tolerate anyone or anything interfering with their faith. The current
White House has a clear track record of ignoring the traditional
American understanding of religious freedom and interfering with the
activity of religiously inspired organizations.
If lay Catholics accept that sort of government behavior without
inflicting a political cost on the officials responsible for it, then
they have no one to blame but themselves when they find that their
liberties have gone thin.
And, by the way, you don't need your anyone's permission to just be who you are and gather with other like-minded people.
Should the laity wait for the bishops to green-light their ideas,
or should they just go ahead and get involved? How do we work together?
Laypeople have the freedom and the obligation to actively witness their
faith, alone and together with other believers. Obviously, zeal should
be accompanied by common sense. That means keeping your local bishop
informed and seeking his blessing for any major apostolate.
But the missionary vocation belongs to all of us — clergy, religious
and lay — and we should commit ourselves to pursuing it as our
circumstances in life permit.
In case you are not convinced that religious liberty needs defending, behold a short list of grievances.
- The Administration "strongly objects" (page 4) to protecting the free speech and conscience rights of military chaplains, an amendment proposed because the Administration forbade military chaplains to obey their bishops and speak against the HHS mandate last year and because the freedom of chaplains to express their faith's understanding of the morality of homosexual acts is under fire.
- The IRS, in addition to targeting Conservatives, has been caught on tape advising pro-life groups to keep their faith to themselves. Additionally, it has been harassing people who adopt kids --for reasons unexplained, but presumably because they are likely to be pro-life and/or religious.
- This policy has been defeated, thank God, but in New Jersey Christian nurses were compelled to participate in abortions or lose their jobs. Their right not to be coerced was protected not because "C'mon, no one would ever infringe on conscience in such a way," but because of an aggressive protest and defense.
- In an excellent piece, Matthew Franck documents the fundamental incompatibility of same-sex marriage with religious liberty. Here are just some examples of ordinary citizens being deprived of their livelihoods because they are Christians: notaries, artists, inn owners, mom & pop businesses. and of course Catholic Charities in multiple dioceses have been forced to halt adoption services. (Got that? The Churches can't do adoption placements; the IRS torments you if you try to adopt; and then Planned Parenthood says we need abortion because people won't adopt.)
- Discrimination against what is universally recognized as the most effective anti-sex-trafficking program there is. This was done merely as retaliation for the bishops' opposition to the HHS Mandate.
- Christian groups increasingly kicked off college campuses.
- And none of that is even touching the contraception mandate which touched off this whole firestorm. You know, the policy by which Obamacare replaces actual health insurance with free contraception for everyone -- except McDonalds and unions and practically everyone "big" gets a waiver from it, so the policy turns out to be more about squelching the consciences of little people in a raw exercise of power than anyone's public health. Check the websites of the key religious liberty law firms to keep up with all the attacks on individual citizens there.
And these are just domestic threats. Around the world, it's the age of martyrs. More Christians (and with them Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, animists and others) are killed for their faith than at any time in all of human history and
Christians are the most persecuted. This is why Pope Francis has been calling attention to religious liberty with every world leader he speaks with (
here are
two examples):
In the world today freedom of religion is often
talked about rather than put into practice. Indeed, it
is forcibly subjected to threats of various kinds and
not seldom violated. The serious affronts inflicted on
this primary right are a source of grave concern and
must see the unanimous reaction of the world’s countries
in reaffirming the intangible dignity of the human
person, against every attack. One and all are duty bound
to defend religious freedom and to promote it for
everyone. The shared protection of this moral good is
also a guarantee of the entire community’s growth and
development.
and why at Pentecost he asked Christians to
keep their persecuted brothers and sisters in daily prayer.
