Once upon a time, the U.S. bishops tackled important social issues like war and peace and economic injustice, rightly earning accolades for their prophetic witness. Now, according to an emerging narrative advanced in recent media coverage of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ 2011 fall meeting in Baltimore, the bishops have “turned inward.” Instead of making the needs of the poor a key priority, they have expended their energies with a defense of the free exercise of religion by Catholic universities, social agencies and hospitals.
On Nov. 14, readers of The Baltimore Sun learned that “Catholic leaders, had fail[ed] to put society’s main problems front and center,” according to a widely circulated commentary by Francis Doyle, a former top staffer at the USCCB.
But Archbishop Timothy Dolan rejects the notion that a robust defense of religious liberty is a dangerous distraction from more important work. As noted elsewhere in these pages, he contends that strong First Amendment rights are needed to protect and secure the legacy of Catholic institutions that serve the poor in Church schools, hospitals and social agencies.
The future of those services actually depends on an effective defense of the Church’s freedom to run its institutions in a way that secures the fullness of Catholic witness to the dignity of the human person.
Exhibit A: This fall, the USCCB failed to receive a new federal grant to maintain its top-rated services for trafficking victims, after the Department of Health and Human Services changed the criteria for approving grant proposals and gave preference to agencies that provide the “full range” of reproductive services. The denial of the USCCB grant proposal triggered an internal investigation at HHS, and the former director of the HHS anti-trafficking program contends that contraception and abortion services may actually facilitate the sexual exploitation of teenaged trafficking victims.
There’s also another way to interpret the emergence of this new narrative about a supposedly inward-looking Catholic hierarchy. The country is heading into a bruising election year, and partisan forces aren’t eager to witness U.S. bishops defending Church programs from a bully in the White House. This problem can be easily resolved, of course, if and when the administration backs off from its campaign.
But however the media spins this fight, we should be clear that the bishops’ defense of religious liberty serves a larger good by limiting the encroachment of the state in every aspect of national life. Indeed, as the bishops wrapped up their meeting in Baltimore, Michael McConnell, the noted constitutional scholar at Stanford University, debated the question, “What’s so special about religious freedom?” at Georgetown University and offered this cogent summary: “Religious freedom is the ‘first freedom’ not because of its location in the Bill of Rights … but because the separation of church and state was the genesis of liberalism. The struggle between spiritual and temporal authorities laid the groundwork for the … limited state.”
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Archbishop Dolan is right. Fighting a new battle on a new front does not mean that the old battles are forgotten. It just makes it tougher. It is sheer hypocracy on the part of the US adminstration which loudly condemns other countries for curbing freedom when it is responsible for the same thing being done - increasingly - in the USA.
Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi have attacked the Catholic Church like no politicians have in the history of our country. The church has an internal problem as well. It is Liberal Bishops and priests. They are on the side of Obama, Reid, and Pelosi. This is the quandary that the faithful finds themselves in.
Religious liberty -the social and moral right to choose what to believe- is a Freemasonic teaching calculated to destroy true religion and dogma. Religious liberty by definition is the opposite of Dogma. Dogma is a divinely revealed truth that all are bound to believe. RL states you can believe whatever you want. The proof that Religious Liberty is a deadly error is the Catholic dogma that outside the Church there is no salvation. One cannot show up at the judgement and hope RL will protect them. God expects we believe what he reveals. Christ is the King of Kings to whom every knee must bend, not only the individual knee, but the state. Obama, like Herod and Pilot has an obligation before God to bend his knee to Christ. If the does not, he will go to hell despite the claim to irreligious liberty. The worse punishment is reserved for bishops promulgating this teaching when they should be putting forth Catholocism as the only Truth and Way of salvation.
Religious liberty was one of the principle errors and evils to come from Vatican II. For those sincerely interested it the truth, read Leo XIII’s Liberetas.
Rick, I think you are confused. I think you need to read the catechism paragraphs 836-848 about invincible ignorance of salvation and outside the Church there is no salvation. This web site is also helpful: http://www.ewtn.com/expert/answers/outside_the_church.htm
Betty, Thank you so much for trying to clear up my confusion. I’ve read the ccc from cover to cover and it causes more confusion in this area. I’ve also read the documents of VII multiple times as well as the sources and have found that it is a blatent contradiction of previous teaching. Let me give you an example:
VII: The Vatican Council declares that the human person has a right to religious freedom…The Council further delcares that the right to religious freedom is based on the very dignity of the human person as known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself.
-Dec RL, Para 2
Pius IX Condemened: Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true.
-The Syllabus of Errors, #9
Invincible ignorance can excuse a person from sin, but it can not engender the life of grace. It is also important to understand the Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and the Catholic Church is the only one who teaches this truth without error. Jews and Moslums outright deny that Jesus is the Son of God and by the definition of St. John, anyone who does this is the Anti-Christ.
Gregory XVI suscinctly puts it:
Finalyy some of the misguided people attemt to persuade themselves and others that men are not saved only in the Catholic religion, but that even heretics may attain eternal salvation.
-On Mixed Marriages, Gregory XVI, Para 2
My definition of religious liberty is that conversion from one faith to another should not be coerced. Other world religions force conversions at gunpoint. One is free to live a lie, but will face the eternal consequences for it. One still has the responsibility to seek and follow the faith. If one is completely ignorant of Christ and the necessity of receiving sacraments through no fault of their own, then it is the fault of those who have failed to evangelize them properly.
There are two extremes on this question - those who are indifferent about what faith is true and the opposite: those who think God is limited in the ways He can save us. We are obligated to receive sacraments, but God, who is omnipotent, is not limited to them alone.
If you are a Protestant, you have to remember that the encyclical Unam Sanctam (1302) of Pope Boniface VIII was written before the Protestant schism started in 1517.
Though God is just, he is also merciful. We are not to judge whether others are in heaven or not. God is able to save anyone he chooses. We trust that he often does this is ways that are not obvious to us, within the hearts of individuals who are sincerely seeking the truth. I don’t think God, who is all loving, created billions of people because He wanted to populate hell. 1 Timothy 2:4 says that God “wills everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.” How can they do that if they are coerced to be some other faith than the Catholic faith?
Try this site: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/600515/posts
In the US, I think religious liberty means the government should not coerce the Bishops to violate their doctrines.
Betty,
1) Your definition of RL is irrelevant. According to both the Church and Freemasons, RL is directly opposed to dogma!
2) the Church has always taught that there should not be forced conversions. At the same time it has taught that the state has a responsibility to protect the common good and that false religions detract from the common good and that their public practice should be suppressed as far as possible.
3) Being in error and sin is not freedom, but slavery.
4) allowing religious liberty is as harmful to religion as reproductive liberty is to life. Asking for religious liberty is asking for the right for all people to believe whatever they want outside of an objective truth. Therefore, if someone believes they have they right to an abortion, then Religious liberty demands that they be allowed to have one. According to religious liberty, you have no right to impose your beliefs on anyone else.
I am not a Protestant, for a Protestant is a heretic because they deny the truths of Christ and his Church. The VII Chruch is also heretical because they deny the truths of Christ and his Church. Your statement saying that Boniface’s statement should not include Protestants is further evidence of this. Moreover Protestantism is not a schism, but a HERESY!
This last paragraph is confusing and irrelevant. God desires that all have the truth of the Catholic Faith and the sacraments. He hates that the devil has led Protestants, Jews, Muslims, and schismatics into error. He asks his apostles to preach the truth and to baptize. He never asked for us to tolerate error and sin!
To suggest religious liberty as a right is a special form of hatred of souls that is willing to allow them to exist in error and go to hell. It is also a cowardness that is unwilling to inform someone that they are in error and wants to just get along with people. It is also a complete lack in faith in the truth and necessity of the Catholic Church. It is also a coldness of heart towards Jesus and Mary who suffered so much for this truth. It is also a denial that Christ is King of Kings.
You are being faithful to the teachings of the Vatican II church, but are in complete opposition to the teachings of the Catholic Church. Please read the pre Vatican II popes and councils and catechisms to verify this truth. VII and it’s false popes are in heresy and in opposition to the truth.
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