For Religious Liberty?

For Religious Liberty
 
As our nation prepares to celebrate its birth and its many freedoms on the Fourth of July, we find ourselves living in an increasingly volatile and divisive political climate. With rising inflation, high gas prices, food shortages, the injustice of abortion, wars and rumors of war, violence with guns and other weapons, pandemics, and constant arguments over the right political solutions to the problems facing our society, it would be easy for us to grow cynical about our country or sarcastic toward our elected leaders. While this may be a challenging time, we cannot let the loud voices around us distract us from our civic responsibility as Catholics to defend and promote religious liberty in our nation.
In 2012, the USCCB Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty released, Our First, Most Cherished Liberty: A Statement on Religious Liberty. The opening paragraph explains the importance of the relationship between our faith and our citizenship:
We are Catholics. We are Americans. We are proud to be both, grateful for the gift of faith which is ours as Christian disciples, and grateful for the gift of liberty which is ours as American citizens. To be Catholic and American should mean not having to choose one over the other. Our allegiances are distinct, but they need not be contradictory, and should instead be complementary. That is the teaching of our Catholic faith, which obliges us to work together with fellow citizens for the common good of all who live in this land. That is the vision of our founding and our Constitution, which guarantees citizens of all religious faiths the right to contribute to our common life together.
After considering ways that Catholics have guarded religious liberty for all Americans throughout our nation’s history, the bishops reflected on Pope Benedict XVI’s concerns about the growing limitations and restrictions on religious liberty in the United States. The bishops agreed with Pope Benedict’s assessment, citing examples such as the HHS mandate for contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs, state immigration laws that restrict pastoral care for undocumented immigrants, discrimination against Catholic humanitarian services, and the revocation of licenses for Catholic foster care and adoption services because they refused to place children with same-sex couples or unmarried opposite-sex couples who cohabit.
At the time, political leaders, legislatures, courts and bureaucracies had been increasingly infringing on the freedom of Catholics as well as other Christians to act according to their conscience. The bishops suspected that the bureaucrats and politicians in the government and even our fellow citizens had forgotten or overlooked the fact that religious liberty was the first freedom mentioned when the Bill of Rights was ratified. The bishops stressed that the First Amendment guarantees that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
In the decade since this document was released, the issues surrounding religious liberty persist as a challenge for the faithful in our country. There remains an active push from political entities to force Catholic agencies to participate in the moral evils of contraception, sterilization, abortion, and euthanasia. Foundational Catholic beliefs on matters of marriage, family, and gender are considered threatening, or at least problematic, by an increasingly secular culture and many of our leaders in government. Today, many of the threats to religious liberty come from bureaucratic rule making by the various cabinet-level and lower branches of the government. These people are not elected, so citizens have little recourse and must remain vigilant against their encroachment. 
It has been nearly 250 years since the Declaration of Independence, but the promises of this country in its founding and early years of formation continue to inspire the hearts and minds of people throughout the world. Religious liberty is foundational to our American heritage. It is a God-given right, not dependent on government permission. The founding fathers considered freedom of religion to be foundational for the future success of the American Republic. John Adams went so far as to state, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Traditional morality is not a nice extra, a social grace if we have it; morality is essential to the future flourishing of our nation.
If religious liberty is restricted, limited, impeded or denied, then the very being of this republic is threatened. As the bishops wrote, “If citizens are not free in their own consciences, how can they be free in relation to others, or to the state? If our obligations and duties to God are impeded, or even worse, contradicted by the government or its bureaucracies, then we can no longer claim to be a land of the free, and a beacon of hope for the world.”
We know that our religious liberty comes with responsibilities. We have the responsibility to refuse unjust laws. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, agreed with St. Augustine that “An unjust law is no law at all” and wrote, “A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas, an unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.” If a law is unjust, Catholics are called to have the courage to refuse it and work to change it “as a duty of citizenship and an obligation of faith.”
We also have the responsibility to use our civil liberty and freedom to foster truths of faith within the public life of the country. We should actively protect and defend our God-given rights to religious liberty, which are clearly stated in the founding documents of our country. We have the responsibility to promote laws that protect life and allow people to make a living. Each of us has a responsibility for our own moral agency in how we live our lives, raise our children, care for our neighbors, seek the common good, participate responsibly in civic life and how we vote. As the bishops stated, “There is an urgent need for the lay faithful, in cooperation with Christians, Jews, and others, to impress upon our elected representatives the importance of continued protection of religious liberty in a free society.”
While we certainly live in challenging times, we can find strength and comfort in our Lord Jesus Christ. He faced hostile politicians and religious leaders, all seeking to destroy Him for their own reasons. Yet in His infinite love for humanity, He humbled Himself and suffered crucifixion and death for our salvation. And by His resurrection, He defeated sin, death and the grave for us. Our ascended Lord Jesus Christ has established an eternal Kingdom that He now rules over with love, grace and mercy. Through the faith of our baptism, we are members of that Kingdom and able to share His love and grace with those around us living in fear and uncertainty.
So as we try to navigate the troubled waters of our own time, we can be confident that “nothing can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.” (Rom 8:39) This sure love of Christ should give us the courage to act according to our Catholic faith with a clear conscience, promoting and defending religious liberty for all people. It also gives us the freedom to live out our faith in our homes and communities, sharing that same love of Jesus Christ with our families, friends and neighbors.
As we approach this Fourth of July, let us join in this prayer for religious liberty:
 
Almighty God, Father of all nations,
For freedom you have set us free in Christ Jesus (Gal 5:1)
We praise and bless you for the gift of religious liberty,
The foundation of human rights, justice, and the common good.
Grant to our leaders the wisdom to protect and promote our liberties;
By your grace may we have the courage to defend them, for ourselves and for all those who live in this blessed land.
We ask this through the intercession of Mary Immaculate, our patroness, and in the name of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, in the unity of the holy Spirit, with whom you live and reign, one God, forever and ever. Amen.