American Catholics must resist unjust laws “as a duty of citizenship and an obligation of faith,” the U.S. bishops Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, wrote in a statement released on April 12. The document, titled “Our First, Most Cherished Liberty,” calls for “a fortnight for freedom” from June 21, the vigil of the feasts of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More, to July 4, Independence Day, as a “special period of prayer, study, catechesis and public action.” The statement cited a number of clashes over religious liberty currently confronting the church—most notably the continuing dispute with the Department of Health and Human Services over a new mandate on contraception. Among other examples of “religious liberty under attack,” the bishops named immigration laws in Alabama and other states that “forbid...what the church deems Christian charity and pastoral care to those immigrants” and new government regulations across the country that have “driven local Catholic Charities out of the business of providing adoption or foster care services” because the agencies would not place children with same-sex or unmarried heterosexual couples.
Demand Liberty
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
I use a motorized wheelchair and communication device because of my disability, cerebral palsy. Parishes were not prepared to accommodate my needs nor were they always willing to recognize my abilities.
Age and its relationship to stardom is the animating subject of “Sunset Blvd,” “Tammy Faye” and “Death Becomes Her.”
What separates “Bonhoeffer” from the myriad instructive Holocaust biographies and melodramas is its timing.
“Wicked” arrives on a whirlwind of eager (and anxious) anticipation among fans of the musical.