Defending religious freedom

It is appropriate that the U.S. Bishops chose the start of Respect Life Month to announce the formation of a new committee on religious freedom (see TLIC, Oct. 5). For it was really the explosion of the abortion issue in the late 1960s and early 1970s that brought this latest manifestation of religious intolerance — that of modern secularists — out in full force, with the Catholic Church its primary target.

The late Dr. Bernard Nathanson, in his book (“Aborting America”) chronicling his own journey from “abortion rights” to pro-life leadership, documented the deliberate pro-abortion strategy of stoking anti-Catholic sentiment to advance its cause. Catholics involved in the pro-life movement in those early years felt the sting of this emerging strain of anti-Catholic bigotry — engaged in by a cultural elite that at the same time presented itself as a paragon of tolerance and inclusion. Many pro-life Catholics warned at the time that we were headed exactly to where we find ourselves today: with our “basic right” to religious freedom “increasingly and in unprecedented ways under assault in America,” in the words of New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

As Archbishop Dolan explained, the attack on religious freedom has moved beyond efforts to marginalize religious voices from the public square, seeking now to coerce faith communities and their members to acquiesce — to the point of active participation — in public policies that violate our moral precepts. If Catholic institutions want to provide health care insurance for their employees, Obamacare’s new Health and Human Services mandate will require them to include payment for contraceptives and abortifacients. If Catholic relief agencies want to engage in AIDS prevention activities, the State Department may mandate that they also distribute condoms — disregarding not only the moral objections, but the highly questionable practical effectiveness of that approach. In a number of states, if Catholic agencies want to continue providing adoption and foster care services, they must agree to place children with same sex “married” couples.

We are reminded of King Henry VIII’s treatment of St. Thomas More. It was not enough that the king obtained the divorce and remarriage he sought (breaking with Rome and appointing himself head of the Church of England in the process); nor was Thomas More’s public silence on the matter enough. Instead, Henry — doubtless troubled in conscience despite all his legal and ecclesial manipulations — demanded More’s public embrace of his actions, presumably believing that an endorsement from this man of God might put to rest his own moral discomfort.

Similarly with today’s moral relativists. It is no longer enough — and probably never was — for them to achieve the public policies they want. Nor is it enough for them simply to stifle any religious voices of opposition. Now the Catholic Church, and any other faith communities that oppose their agenda, must be brought to heel, coerced into actively participating in their secularist public policies.

And here too, we discern the role of conscience. For while our modern secularists generally eschew faith-based moral considerations, they are not immune to the natural law that God imprints on every human heart; a law that tells all of us — among other things — that human life is sacred, and that marriage is the natural fulfillment of God’s plan for man, woman and children.

Denying the existence of God’s natural law — or its effect on one’s conscience — will not make it disappear. But modern secularists might hope, as Henry VIII apparently did, that forcing the active compliance of the Catholic Church and others who seek to uphold the natural law might alleviate the moral discomfort they cannot escape.

For their sake as well as for ours — indeed, for the sake of all humanity — we must not let that happen. We must stand with our Church leaders in demanding respect for our religious freedom; a freedom that allows us to continue to assert the natural law of God on which our nation, and all our human freedoms, are based.

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