by Carol Zimmermann

WASHINGTON (CNS) – Over the past several months, the U.S. Catholic bishops and other religious leaders have urged Americans to defend religious liberty in the United States in the face of what they see as threats to that freedom.

And the issue continues to gain momentum as the November election draws near.

It has been at the forefront for the Catholic bishops since the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced in January that it would require most religious employers to provide free contraceptive coverage against their moral objections. The bishops have repeatedly described the mandate, which violates Church teaching, as a restriction on religious liberty.

Theologians and Catholic leaders discussed the issue of religious freedom at recent seminars at The Catholic University of America and Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a forum at St. John’s University in New York.

At both of the national political conventions this summer, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, mentioned religious liberty in his closing prayers.

At the close of the Republican National Convention Aug. 30 in Tampa, Fla., he gave thanks for the “singular gift of liberty” and prayed for a renewed “respect for religious freedom” and a “new sense of responsibility for freedom’s cause.”

During a closing benediction Sept. 6 at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., the cardinal prayed that God would “renew in all our people a profound respect for religious liberty: the first, most cherished freedom bequeathed upon us at our founding.”

In April, the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Freedom issued a 12-page statement on threats to religious liberty, including the HHS mandate but highlighting other examples:

• Immigration laws in Alabama and other states that “forbid what the government deems ‘harboring’ of undocumented immigrants.”

• Government actions in Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia and the state of Illinois 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.

• Changes in federal contracts for human trafficking grants that require the U.S. bishops’ Migration and Refugee Services to refer clients “for contraceptive and abortion services in violation of Catholic teaching.”

On the state level, ballot measures dealing with religious freedom protections have emerged in North Dakota, Missouri and Florida.

In North Dakota’s June primary election, voters ultimately rejected a ballot measure to broaden state constitutional religious freedom provisions. Meanwhile, Missouri voters in their August primary approved a similar measure that guaranteed people could pray and worship in all private and public areas including schools as long as the activities are voluntary and subject to the same rules and regulations that apply to all other types of speech.

Missouri legislators voted to override the governor’s veto of a religious liberty bill specifying that no one should be forced to pay for abortion drugs and similar items in their health insurance when it violates their religious beliefs.

The Missouri law addresses the federal contraception mandate that became effective Aug. 1. The Missouri Catholic Conference noted that federal law supersedes state law. However, several lawsuits challenging the HHS mandate as unconstitutional have been filed in various federal courts, and if the mandate is ultimately found to be unconstitutional, the new Missouri law will stand.

In November, Florida will vote on a constitutional amendment to prohibit discrimination against individuals and institutions on the basis of religious beliefs and remove a long-standing ban on public funding “in aid of any church, sect, or religious denomination or in aid of any sectarian institution.”

Supporters of the amendment say it is necessary to ensure that social service organizations with religious affiliations can compete on an equal footing with other organizations providing similar services. Opponents have argued the amendment is an attempt to lay the groundwork for Catholic school vouchers when faith-based organizations already receive government funding for public services they provide.

Religious liberty is facing such grave threats in the United States that Catholics must take immediate and courageous action to defend fundamental values in the public forum and in the privacy of the voting booth, according to speakers at a Sept. 20 forum.

Almost 500 people assembled at St. John’s University, Jamaica, heard impassioned calls to educate themselves about the erosion of long-guaranteed rights, form their consciences to reflect basic moral issues and agitate with compassion and civility to protect religious freedom.

Speakers at the conference on religious liberty included, from second left, Eric Teetsel, Dr. Robert George, Marjorie Dannenfelser and Alan Sears. (Photo by Ed Wilkinson)

“Our religious liberty is under assault like never before in America, in ways that are chilling, that are alien and unimagined on these shores,” said Alan Sears, president of the Alliance Defending Freedom in Scottsdale, Ariz. “If we fail to stand, if we fail to fight, if we fail to refuse to comply, our God-given liberty … will be but a distant memory.”

The forum, titled “The Manhattan Declaration Crosses the River,” was based on the Manhattan Declaration, a 4,700-word joint statement signed in November, 2009 by more than 140 Christian leaders, many evangelical and Catholic, pledging renewed zeal in defending the unborn, defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman and protecting religious freedom. To date, more than 532,000 people have signed the declaration, including 52 Catholic cardinals and bishops.

Eric Teetsel, executive director of the Manhattan Declaration, said religious freedom was enshrined in the foundational documents of the country and guaranteed by leaders until recently. In urging listeners to sign the Manhattan Declaration, he said, “We will render to Caesar what is Caesar’s, but we will not render to Caesar what is God’s.”

Sears said legislative threats to religious liberty and the sanctity of life and marriage are an attempt to place “legal limits on the love of God.” He called the Obama administration’s health plan “a dictatorial mandate, unprecedented in our nation’s history.”

He said policies enforced by myriad czars at all levels of government make people choose “between God and their livelihood, between their education and their faith and between their family’s financial security and their beliefs.”

Sears said the debate about the definition of marriage is “a key to a legal Pandora’s Box,” whose opening will unleash demands for public support, silencing of the opposition and punishment for those who do not comply.

“We’ve already seen many heroics acts of courage by lay men and women, by bishops and religious leaders who have responded to the threats that are of our time,” Sears said.

Sears said that he and the signers of the Manhattan Declaration “will not comply with any edict that … will force us to bless immoral sexual relationships or treat them as marriages,” noting that New York state has redefined God’s creation of family and marriage.

“We must assure our families and neighbors that we will never allow any government to tell us the limits of God’s love,” Sears said.

In a nationwide poll conducted last summer by Alliance Defending Freedom, more than 60 percent of Americans believe that marriage is only between one man and one woman and should not be redefined.Sears said that based on these results, the cause for religious freedom is “still winning.”

William Mumma, president of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said the nation’s founders believed in the primacy of conscience but also were pragmatic men who recognized that any government set up in opposition to the religious convictions of its people “fatally loses its moral legitimacy.”

“If the law is not rooted in the moral law, the American people will not reject God, they will reject the law,” he said. “When the law sets out to destroy religion, it enters into a murder-suicide pact. The government may murder religious liberty, but it can’t kill religion.”

Mumma said the action of the current administration, as exemplified by its defense of the HHS mandate, shows “Religion is not the accidental victim of the government pursuing some other interest you might quarrel about. Religion is the target.”

Tipping Point in Life Movement

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the Susan B. Anthony List, said, “We are at a tipping point in this greatest human and civil rights movement of our day, the pro-life movement.”

She called election day the turning point between expanding or contracting the human community. Dannenfelser said the tradition of pro-life Democrats, such as the late Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey, has been eroded. “You can’t build human rights on the broken rights of other human beings,” she said.

She said President Barack Obama disappointed Catholic supporters who believed in 2008 he would respect and seek common ground among people of different beliefs.

“He (Obama) proceeded to march abortion through every department of the administration and made it clear he would do nothing to undermine reproductive rights,” she said. “He’s gone from seeking common ground to rejecting anything that a civilized human being would endorse.”

Dannenfelser said communities suffer from the loss of people whose lives are aborted. “If an individual does not show up, the community does not flourish. Even one missing person is a tragedy. Four thousand every day is inconceivable, as is the suffering of the mothers” of these unborn children.

She said public opinion can be moved toward a just cause if people make a connection to the victim and move an issue from theory to reality. “The Manhattan Declaration is important because it’s personal. We are now being required to pay for the deaths of unborn children (through the HHS mandate).” Moreover, she noted that the HHS mandate would further pare down the human family by requiring the church and pro-life groups to be complicit in abortion and other immoral acts.

Princeton University professor Dr. Robert P. George, a drafter of the Manhattan Declaration, said that if “religious freedom is a right, it’s a right for every human being. If religious freedom is in jeopardy for any person, it’s in jeopardy for all.”

While he acknowledged there are other key issues in today’s world, he explained that the declaration identifies those that are most pivotal.

If people don’t stand up in defense of “foundational, civilizational values” on issues such as abortion and euthanasia, “what will justify our care for the environment, or the economy or anything else,” he asked.

“We have to get the foundational issues right, on which everything else fundamentally depends,” he said.

He urged attendees to continue educating themselves, take their beliefs to the public sphere and use the power of the vote.

“It seems that there is one political party that wants to mandate controls over how we feel about God and people and all of the beliefs that we were brought up with, and there’s another party that seems to profess supporting that,” said Frank Hohenstein, a parishioner at Holy Trinity, Whitestone, for the last 10 years. “It’s a shame that politics has come to a point where people have to choose whether they want to support religious beliefs or not.”

Hohenstein said he hoped that the audience would walk away from the discussion with a better education in regard to religious freedom and religious liberty.

“I think that it’s time that every Catholic gets involved with the real meanings of what our faith is about and how it should play a role in day-to-day living when it affects so many people,” he said.

Haitian born Marie-Guilleme Elie, a parishioner and catechist at Our Lady of Refuge, Flatbush, said the day helped clarify issues on which she wanted “to be more educated. There are things we don’t understand that we have to tolerate.”

Chief among her concerns is the spiritual and emotional welfare of children being raised by persons in same-sex relationships.

She planned to take what she’d learned and “talk about it further” with her students, parishioners and fellow board members of Brooklyn Congregations United.

Ridgewood resident James Lam planned to spread awareness about the issues to friends and associates via e-mail.

“E-mail is the most powerful tool,” said Lam, a parishioner at St. Matthias. “The secular world uses it to promote garbage. Now we have to stand up and speak.”

“If more people learn about how our religious liberty is being stepped on, they’ll vote their conscience and vote … to keep our religious freedoms,” said Maryann Moran from St. Sebastian, Woodside.

She attended the conference to better understand the issues, especially as the presidential election approaches.

“We can’t continue the way our freedoms are being slowly but surely eroded,” Moran said.

Bishop DiMarzio was the main celebrant of a Mass at St. Thomas More Church at St. John’s University that opened the conference on religious liberty. (Photo by Ed Wilkinson)

In his homily at the opening Mass, Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn said, “We believe in divine revelation and recognize that we have an obligation to completely give ourselves over to the plan of God.

“For us to simply pick and choose what is convenient about the message of the church and Christ’s teaching would be inauthentic,” he said.

“Those who hold otherwise are wrong about the teaching of the church and about the development of our understanding of human life. They are wrong objectively. But to judge them is not our task.”

The bishop urged participants to “vote a Catholic and Christian conscience that is well-formed.”

He was a host of the event, sponsored by the diocese, the Becket Fund, Priests for Life and the Knights of Columbus New York Council.

Contributing to this article were Beth Griffin of Catholic News Service, and Marie Elena Giossi and Jim Mancari of The Tablet.

by Mark Pattison

WASHINGTON (CNS) – The increase of restrictions on religion are up worldwide, and, for the first time, those restrictions increased markedly in the U.S., according to a new Pew report.

For the United States, it was the first time in the study’s four-year history that both government restrictions and social hostility were up by at least one point on a scale of zero to 10, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, which issued the study Sept. 20. The United States was one of 16 countries with such large measurable increases in both criteria.

The increases pushed the U.S. from a ranking of “low” to “moderate” in terms of restrictions on religion, according to the study, “Rising Tide of Restrictions on Religion.”

The period studied was mid-2009 to mid-2010.

On the 10-point scale, social hostilities in the United States climbed from 2.0 to 3.4, while government restrictions jumped from 1.6 to 2.7. The government restrictions score in each of the past three years had been 1.6, while the social hostilities number fell between 1.8 and 2.0.

In terms of government restrictions, the Pew study found 51 cases of governments applying zoning laws or regulations to prevent religious groups from building houses of worship, schools or other facilities. Of those 51 instances, 31 involved Christian denominations.

Oklahoma voters approved a change to the state constitution restricting the use of Islamic law, or sharia, in the state in November, 2009, but a federal appeals court struck down the measure last January. The federal Justice Department had to intervene on behalf of a Sikh prisoner in California who was under threat of having his facial hair cut off.

High-profile incidents dominated the social hostilities category, including the November, 2009 shooting spree by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan that killed 13 people and wounded 32 others at Fort Hood, Texas; the “underwear bomber,” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried set off a bomb while aboard a Detroit-bound flight in December, 2009; and the May, 2010 bombing attempt in New York’s Times Square by Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani-born resident of Bridgeport, Conn.

Also, residents near Murfreesboro, Tenn., tried to block construction of a mosque; although the mosque opened in August, a federal court challenge remains.

Employment discrimination complaints to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rose more than 10 percent, from 3,386 to 3,790, but the number the EEOC determined had “reasonable cause” to suggest religious discrimination more than doubled.

ANTIETAM CREEK, Md. (CNS) – Three days and 30 miles into a 100-mile trek to Baltimore from the tiny central Maryland town of Hancock, Laura Dudich lost count of her blisters.

“My foot is covered in Band-Aids right now,” said the 17-year-old parishioner of St. Peter Church in Hancock, pausing briefly July 31 as she pounded the pavement along a farm-lined stretch of highway in Washington County.

“I’m determined not to quit,” Dudich insisted. “I want to go to the end. This is a cause I really want to stand up for.”

Supporting religious freedom was the goal of Dudich’s walk, which began July 29 at St. Peter and attracted 24 other Catholic pilgrims from throughout the area. Additional walkers joined the pilgrimage as it proceeded, swelling the group to 100 as it reached its final destination, the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore, Aug. 5.

Organized by Father John “Jack” Lombardi, administrator of St. Peter as well as St. Patrick in Little Orleans, the trek was designed to call attention to a new federal health care mandate requiring all employers, including most religious employers, to provide insurance coverage for sterilizations and contraceptives, including some that can cause abortions.

Led by a man carrying a flag emblazoned with “An Appeal to Heaven,” the pilgrims walked 13 miles a day – stopping at Catholic parishes and other locations along the way to sleep and refuel. They wore bright neon T-shirts with a message on the back: “We’re Walking for YOU!”

by Ed Wilkinson

This past week, some of the more unsavory parts of the Affordable Health Care Act (ObamaCare) went into effect.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius used the occasion to trumpet Aug. 1, 2012, as “a new day for women’s health in America.”

“Thanks to the new health care law, all insurance policies will be required to cover new vital care that women need to stay healthy and they’ll have to cover the care without charging women anything out of pocket,” she said during a press conference in Washington, D.C.

These vital health services include contraceptives for birth control, abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization procedures. You might think that Sebelius considers being pregnant to be an illness.

The Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, countered by calling for a vote on the repeal of ObamaCare.

His counterpart, Sen. Harry Reid, said that proposal was ridiculous because McConnell wanted the repeal attached to a cyber security bill. You might think that Reid was above attaching a totally unrelated amendment to a piece of legislation.

Matt Smith, director of Catholic Advocate, said it “will be remembered as the day our most cherished liberty was thrown in a government dumpster and hauled away. A day when family owned small businesses were forced to abandon their religious beliefs to provide certain products and services for free to comply with the HHS mandate. And if they don’t, they will be taxed and fined at a time when job creators are struggling with the costs and bureaucratic red-tape at every level of government barely allowing them to stay in business.”

This all happened on the same day that the House of Representatives voted on the District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act (H.R. 3803).

In the bill, Congress adopts findings that by 20 weeks after fertilization (if not earlier), the unborn child has the capacity to feel great pain.  The bill prohibits abortion after that point, except when an acute physical condition endangers the life of the mother. Seven states have already enacted similar legislation, and no court orders have blocked enforcement of any of those laws.

Congress has known about the HHS mandate for the past year and has done nothing to stop it, except give lip service when members stand up on the floor of the House and Senate and proclaim to be proponents of religious liberty.

Our representatives will be home in their districts for all of August, and they will be moving around trying to elicit support for their party’s nominee. I endorse Matt Smith’s suggestion that we show up at town hall meetings or even seek out our Congress people and ask them what they will do to repeal these unconscionable aspects of ObamaCare. Where do they stand on backing up our First Amendment rights to practice our religion?

Don’t be surprised if reactions break down according to party line. Democrats will support the Health Care Bill, and Republicans will oppose it. Which means that in Brooklyn and Queens, we are in deep trouble on this issue because we are almost entirely represented by Democrats. Our religious liberty is being taken away from us and the folks robbing us are constantly being sent back to do more of the same. Time to wake up!

by Francis X. Rocca

ROME (CNS) – On the same day that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the Obama administration’s health care law, Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore warned an audience in Rome about what he characterized as the law’s threat to religious freedom.

The archbishop, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Freedom, addressed a group called the Observatory on Religious Liberty, recently established by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the city of Rome.

Archbishop Lori, who spoke several hours before the announcement of the court’s decision, singled out the health care law’s planned “HHS mandate,” which would require the private health insurance plans of most Catholic institutions to cover surgical sterilization procedures and artificial birth control, in violation of the church’s moral doctrines.

“Embedded in the HHS mandate is an extremely narrow definition of religion put there as a litmus test to determine which religious organizations are religious enough – by the government’s definition – to deserve an exemption from providing services contrary to their teachings,” he said.

The archbishop described the administration’s effort in this case as part of a broader trend.

“Unless we stop it now, this narrow, governmental definition of what a church is will likely spread throughout our nation’s laws and policies,” he said.

“Something fundamental is being lost in American culture and law,” he said. “And this loss of freedom does not and will not serve the common good of our nation or other nations where bloody religious persecutions are under way.”

Archbishop Lori also told the group about the U.S. bishops’ “fortnight for freedom” campaign, a two-week period of prayer, education and action, which ended in Washington July 4 with Mass at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception.

In response to a reporter’s question after his speech, the archbishop dismissed suggestions that the U.S. bishops’ campaign amounts to an inappropriate intrusion by religious leaders in election-year politics. He stressed that the bishops have long supported universal health care, as long as it provides for conscientious objection and does not spend federal money for abortions.

“We did everything we could well in advance of this election to head off this train wreck,” he said. “We didn’t choose the timing; we didn’t choose the fight. It happens to occur in an election year, and just because it’s happening in an election year imposes no responsibility on us to remain silent.”

Archbishop Lori was in Rome to receive the pallium, a lamb’s wool stole that symbolize his leadership of an archdiocese, from Pope Benedict XVI at a June 29 ceremony in St. Peter’s Basilica.

It’s just the tip of the iceberg. This Aug. 1, the federal government will impose on us regulations that, if followed, not only would violate the consciences of many American citizens but attempts even to change the definition of a church. It is a direct attack on our civil liberties, our Faith and our values, and it must be vigorously opposed.

Recently, we celebrated the feast days of two English martyrs: St. Thomas More (a layman) and St. John Fisher (a bishop). They went to their deaths because they refused to sign an oath issued by an act of Parliament which would force them to betray their consciences by accepting the King as the head of the church of England, thereby severing their communion with the Holy Father. They were faced with a bold attempt by the government to change the definition of what the Church is. Both were deprived of their heads in 1635, as they refused to abandon their consciences.

The Second Vatican Council taught that “the right to religious freedom has its foundation in the very dignity of the human person as this dignity is known through the revealed word of God and by reason itself” (Dignitatis Humanae, 2).

The U.S. Constitution has long been held to protect not only freedom of “in-house” worship on Sunday but also public practice of our faith on Monday. It is as American as it is Catholic to assert the right to religious freedom for everyone. It is as anti-American as it is anti-faith to force anyone to follow a government mandate that restricts the public practice of one’s religion or imposes a burden that violates a believer’s conscience. Yet that is exactly what is about to happen across America in less than five weeks!

The burden is an HHS edict which wants to tell us how we are to practice our faith. It redefines for us the meaning of “church,” reducing it to what we do in our own church buildings with other Catholics. It dictates to us, in effect: if you want to practice your religion, go do it in the sacristy! This is not the way Christians are to live their faith. It’s not what most people of faith want. And it’s not the American way.

Everyone knows that from our country’s founding, Catholics have been involved in promoting the welfare of society. We have maintained hospitals and schools, cared for the aging and the orphaned, fought for justice in the workplace and the equality of human persons, welcomed immigrants and opened our hearts and resources to all through many charitable works and institutions. Never has it been our intent or practice to limit our humanitarian outreach to Catholics, let alone to those who enter a church building. Yet that is what a government mandate is now ordering us to do – or else.

Any of our religious institutions not serving Catholics only or not narrowly confined to church buildings will be forced to pay for immoral practices, including procedures that sterilize people and chemicals that induce abortion. And it’s only the first shot across the bow — an attempt to get a foot in the door. It will not stop here. Anyone who has ever had to deal with water damage knows how much destruction can be done by just a small but persistent leak. Such erosion must be stopped at once for it will only escalate.

As we approach the celebration of Independence Day on July 4, during this Fortnight for Freedom, we pray for the courage and wisdom to face up to the challenge to our human and constitutional rights dealt to us by a government which is bound to protect them.

In the words of Charles Carroll, one of our Founding Fathers and the only Catholic to sign the Declaration of Independence, we pray: “God grant that this religious liberty may be preserved in these states to the end of time, and that all who believe in the religion of Christ may practice the leading principle of charity, the basis of very other virtue” – for love of Faith and Country!

by Antonina Zielinska

Dr. Alveda King, director of African-American Outreach for Priests for Life and the niece of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., addresses demonstrators at the Lower Manhattan Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally. She started and finished her speech by leading the crowd in prayer.

Demonstrators from downstate New York gathered on the steps of the Federal Hall National Memorial in Lower Manhattan to protest the Affordable Health Care Act.

They demonstrated, at the site where the first U.S. Congress met to adopt the Bill of Rights over 200 years ago, to protest a mandate which they believe breaches their First Amendment right of religious freedom.

The rally was a coordinated effort led by Stand Up for Religious Rights, who organized rallies nationwide on June 8, at noon. This was the second such demonstration meant to show unified opposition to the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate that will require employers in all states to provide contraceptive services and abortifacient medications to employees, if it is upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Dr. Alveda King, director of African-American Outreach for Priests for Life and the niece of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., came as one of the seven speakers at the rally.

“The government wants us to trade in our First Amendment for birth control pills,” she told the crowd. “This is not the time to give up hope. We have an obligation to tell the truth.”

Among the reasons Dr. King gave for her opposition to the mandate is that it is detrimental to health care. She said this mandate would hurt religious charities that cater to the health needs of those who are most in need.

Dr. Anne Nolte, M.D., from the Gianna Catholic Healthcare Center, also said this mandate is harmful to health care during her speech at the rally.

“Hormonal contraception is not preventative health, and it is not even good healthcare for women,” she said. “They are telling us that pregnancy, a sign of health and normal function, is a disease that should be cured.”

Dr. Nolte said the health risks of hormonal contraception are a danger to women because they increase the risks of breast, cervical and liver cancer.

Maria McFadden Maffucci, editor of Human Life Review, told the demonstrators that their health is not the only thing women can risk, if this mandate goes into effect.

“I don’t want (my daughters) to think that fertility is something they have to get rid of so that they can be more like men,” she said.  “I want them to respect themselves as women.”

Sharla Cloutier, a demonstrator from Our Lady of Good Counsel, Manhattan, said she disagrees with the mandate not because it is detrimental to women, but because it is detrimental to her religious rights.

“I don’t think this is a women’s health issue because there is no problem with accessibility,” she said. “This is about the government trying to decide our religious beliefs.”

“We’re here to stand up for religious freedom,” said Father Agustino Torres, C.F.R., who served as the emcee of the event.  “We hope to raise awareness of the injustices going on.”

The Franciscan Friars of the Renewal brought a guitar to the rally to spread the message through music and to unite the demonstrators.  Father Torres said the friars led the crowd in religious and patriotic songs to help set a “mood that make us feel proud of our rights and a mood that makes us feel encouraged to defend our freedom.”

Rebecca Downs, who came to the rally from St. James, Setauket, L.I., said this mandate is a direct affront to the rights of the Catholic Church.

“This is a religious right issue,” she said.  “No one is taking away birth control. We are trying to not force people to pay for what they believe to be wrong.  It’s a religious rights issue.”

“This really is something that affects the whole nation, not only Catholics, but all people of conscience,” said Father Frank Pavone, national director of Priests for Life.

He said his organization has devoted resources to help in these rallies because it helps bring the issue to the forefront.

“We want to give the ordinary American the opportunity to say: ‘I stand with you, even if it’s just for an hour,’” he said.  “By coming together at these rallies, we hope that people will then speak about the issues they heard at the rallies in their schools, their work places and their communities.”

Ray Mooney, who organized a Stand Up For Religious Rights Rally in Bayside outside Congressman Gary Ackerman’s district office, said the most important aspect was education.

“Not only were we getting the public aware, but we were also able to get the people with us more informed,” he said.

Mooney said the group decided to stage a separate rally in Queens, instead of joining in the Manhattan rally, in part because holding demonstrations in various locations helps spread the message further. He said the demonstrators received positive reinforcement from people driving by.

The national effort was started by Dr. Monica Migliorino Miller, director of Citizens for a Pro-life Society in Wisconsin, and Eric Scheidler, executive director of Pro-Life Action League in Chicago. Local groups across the country took charge of organizing local rallies.

The Diocese of Brooklyn is also involved in this effort. In solidarity with the other dioceses in the United States, Brooklyn will join in 14 days of prayer for religious freedom leading up to the Fourth of July. St. Joseph Church, Prospect Heights, will host an overnight prayer vigil to observe the Fortnight for Religious Freedom beginning Friday, June 22, at 7 p.m. with a Mass.  The Blessed Sacrament will be exposed for adoration until the following morning at 8 a.m.

Set against the backdrop of the U.S. Capitol, a Stand Up for Religious Freedom rally drew hundreds of participants to a park in Washington D.C.

About 63,000 people rallied in an estimated 160 cities.

The mood was energetic and seemed to take on a political tone. As one protester called out, “Stand up and fight for religious freedom,” a passer-by quickly retorted, “I am a Catholic, and I support HHS.”

“Never before has the government forced taxpayers to buy products directly involved in sterilization and abortion causing pills,” said U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn.  The former presidential candidate was the first of a host of speakers to address the crowd.

She called attention to the special place religious freedom has in America’s roots. Bachmann told the crowd, “In the rotunda of the Capitol, I gazed upon my favorite painting, the ‘Embarkation of the Pilgrims.’  The pilgrims have their hands in prayer, and there is an open Bible in the center of the painting.”

She pointed to the central role religious freedom played in the pilgrims’ plight and journey to America. “Written on their sail is ‘God With Us,’” she continued, “and God is with us today in 2012.”

Other speakers drew comparisons between the HHS mandate and the anti-religious antagonism of former socialist nations. Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., son of Hungarian and Polish immigrants, said: “The government burned down my parents’ church. This government is burning down the churches not with a torch but with a pen.”

Speaking in Spanish, Father Jose Hoyos of the Diocese of Arlington, Va., talked about the Hispanic community’s need for love and compassion and its support for pro-life issues.

The next group of speakers took on a decidedly partisan tone, calling for a change in administration in the White House. Rep. Alan Nunnelee, R-Miss., said, “When government expands, freedom contracts. We ask you in November to send us help and replace a president.”

“We have approached dependence because of our great abundance,” said Robert Dornan, former U.S. representative from California who was a prominent pro-life voice when he served in Congress.

As a result, he said, he believes Americans were willing to lose their freedoms to be reliant on the government. “We have to change presidents because everything we love is at stake in this election.”

Contributing to this story was Daniel Linskey, a Catholic News Service reporter in Washington, D.C.

by Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio

My dear brothers and sisters in the Lord,

Over the last several years, it has become increasingly clear that our nation’s political elites are waging a war against religious freedom.  The most recent attack is from the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate, which is forcing all but narrowly defined religious organizations to provide contraceptives, sterilization and abortifacient drugs to employees, even if self-insured, as is the Diocese of Brooklyn.  This issue is not about contraception. Rather, it is about the violation of conscience and fundamental religious freedom, as well as the government’s intrusion into the moral tenets of a church organization.

Tragically, those hostile towards religion have succeeded in framing a narrative where people of faith are the perpetrators of all the evil and wars in human history. Yet, when people of faith are banished from having a voice in the public square or barred from living according to the dictates of their conscience, grotesque evil takes hold upon the broader society.  We witnessed the ill effects of such policies in the last century, which was perhaps the bloodiest in human history due in no small part to the banishment of God and religion from the public discourse.

During our recent Ad Limina visits, Pope Benedict XVI reflected the concerns of the American Bishops, saying, “Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion” and a “tendency to reduce religious freedom to mere freedom of worship without guarantees of respect for freedom of conscience.”

My guess is that President George Washington understood the possible trajectory of Enlightenment thinking, which he himself was heavily influenced by, when he observed, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness… Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? … Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

The fact is that the Church and people of faith have historically been at the forefront of advocacy for the rights and dignity of humankind.  It was people of faith who spearheaded the abolitionist movement in the 19th century and who were in the forefront of the civil rights movement in the 20th century.

Yet, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. also lamented the lack of action on the part of people of faith.  He wrote from a Birmingham jail cell, “So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound.”  How heavy-hearted he must have been by the divisions that he found among people of faith.

Dr. King’s indictment of people of faith might stand even today.  In that same letter which he wrote from prison, the great civil rights leader remarked, “There was a time when the church was very powerful – in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society… By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests.”

A couple of weeks ago, “For Greater Glory” opened in theaters.  It is a story about the war against religion that was waged by the Mexican government.  If you have the time, I would recommend that you see this excellent film.  It accurately captures how one’s “rights” are not initially seized at gunpoint.  Rather, one slowly surrenders freedoms until the world in which we find ourselves living seems to be a terrible nightmare.

As an American and a Catholic, I for one intend to fight for the rights that were bestowed upon me, not by any government or nation but by Almighty God.

On Friday, June 22, and again on Wednesday, July 4, at noon, I am asking our pastors to ring the bells in our churches for 10 minutes, the reasons for which will be publicized.  These bells shall be for you and for me a song of freedom.

As we put out into the deep, my hope is that these bells shall echo the cry of Blessed Padre Miguel Pro, “Viva Christo Rey!” which means “Long Live Christ the King!

by Congressman Bob Turner

On Memorial Day, the very day that we pause to honor the heroes who gave their lives in the name of freedom, The New York Times issued a scathing indictment of the Catholic Church for protecting its right to religious freedom through the federal courts. The lawsuits argue that it is unconstitutional for the Obama Administration to mandate that the Church provide services to its employees which violate the tenets of its faith such as contraception, sterilization and abortifacients.

The Times attacks the 43 Roman Catholic dioceses for challenging the Obama Administration’s contraception mandate as a violation of the Church’s First Amendment Rights to Freedom of Religion. It dismisses the lawsuits as “bogus” and “a dramatic stunt, full of indignation but built on air” and noted that “the vast majority of Americans do not agree with the Roman Catholic Church’s anti-contraception stance.”

In essence, The Times is making the claim that the Obama Administration is right to steam roll the Church simply because the majority of Americans agree with President Obama’s modern day stance on contraception.

Whatever your opinion of the Catholic Church’s teachings, the issue is not about contraception. The issue is religious freedom, an inherent Constitutional right, which is not subject to popular opinion.

We should never forget that freedom of religion is the very basic principle upon which our nation was founded. Many of the settlers who fled Europe to this continent 200-plus years ago were not among “the vast majority” either. They fled Europe because they refused to compromise deeply held religious convictions that were not accepted in their native countries. The Times blasted the Church, claiming… “The First Amendment is not a license for religious entities to impose their dogma on society through the law.”

This is a misleading statement because the Church is in no way trying to impose its dogma on society through the law. Quite to the contrary, it is the Obama Administration that is using the law to impose a one-size-fits-all policy upon society. The U.S. Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise (of religion).”

Religious freedom in the United States allows the churches, not the government, the authority to decide what is acceptable for its church members — membership within a church is, of course, voluntary and a benefit of freedom.

It must be pointed out too, that this law/mandate was not written by the U.S. Congress, but rather it was dictated from an unelected bureaucrat from the Health and Human Services Agency under President Obama’s direction.

Needless to say, this is not the way our government was designed to operate. Our founding fathers went to great lengths to call on the future generations to preserve and protect religious freedom. Thomas Jefferson once said, “No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.”

Our liberty today is under siege by an administration intent on forcing its own agenda on Americans at the price of individual liberty itself.

This Obamacare mandate is not only an affront to religious liberty, but an insult to those who have sacrificed for this country over the generations in the name of freedom.