Our nation's founding charter, the Declaration of Independence, states:
"we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,
that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,
that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness - that to
secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving
their just powers from the consent of the governed...."
Our basic human rights to life and liberty, that this declaration
acknowledges are gifts from our God and thus clearly predate any
institution of government created by men, cannot therefore be
conditioned or forfeited merely by the dictates of an overlord or even
by the collective will of the people. Strong arguments were made at the
time of this nation's birth that it was not necessary to list any of these
key individual human rights, since the government to be established in
this nation would be one of limited and specified powers, and could not
legitimately venture beyond its authorized areas of concern. But these
foundational rights, among others, were included in the Bill of Rights
because our Founders - studying human nature as keenly as they did were concerned that a future generation might one day abandon the
self-evident nature of these God-given rights and transgress their
primacy in the pursuit of lesser objects of convenience or desire. Out of
an abundance of caution, even though this potential was virtually
unimaginable, they reinforced these specific rights by repetition in the
Bill of Rights, and built a bulwark of prohibitions around them to
protect them from being trespassed or diluted. And despite the
remoteness of their concern about this eventuality, it appears that
unimaginable day has now arrived.
Our government has in recent years steadily eroded the protections of
conscience and attempted to redefine this liberty narrowly in term of
religious belief alone – and not in the concrete expressions of that
belief. I believe we can trace the gradual but steady undermining of
individual rights, including those of religious expression, back to the
tragic judicial error that first placed the convenience or desire of one
person as more important than the very right to life of another person
in Roe v. Wade nearly 43 years ago.
And so the Church, its faithful members and leaders, its inspired service
organizations, and many others of good will and right conscience, have
advocated tirelessly for the reversal of this error since its very
inception. As monumental as this tragic case is, it was not the first time
an error by government overreach violated the foundational religious
liberties of the people of this great nation. Protecting the rights of
parents in this country to educate their children in religious schools was
preserved by the efforts of the Knights of Columbus in the 1920s.
The prime challenge facing us today is the Health and Human Services
mandate implementing provisions of the Affordable Care Act – a
Congressional overreach that threatens with devastating financial
penalties those who would resist its demands to participate in morally
unacceptable practices – most notably facilitating the killing of innocent
lives.
In urging the adoption of the Health Care Conscience Rights Act (S
1919), recently introduced by Senator James Lankford of OK with 14 cosponsors, Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore and Cardinal Sean
O’Malley of Boston wrote: “Congress should act to reaffirm a principle
that has long enjoyed broad bipartisan support: Government should
not force anyone to stop offering or covering much-needed legitimate
health care because they cannot in conscience participate in destroying
a developing human life or violate their conscience in other ways. We
strongly urge you to support and co-sponsor (this bill).
The second major challenge we face is the recent Supreme Court
decision that redefines “marriage” to include relationships outside of
the norms established by nature, societal traditions and faith. The
social upheavals that will be wrought by this judicial overreach are only
beginning to be discovered. We are obliged by our Christian faith to
protect the precious gift of marriage as the permanent, faithful, fruitful
union of one man and one woman. It is the gift upon which our society
is built. And so we must remain free to affirm that uniquely valuable
gift in a unique way, without risk of government sanction.
Archbishop Lori recently said this: “When people seek to put their
religious convictions into practice, especially those that pertain to the
nature of marriage and the family, then they are often labeled as
bigots, as devotees of discrimination. Indeed, religious liberty is not real
if we are not free to proclaim and live by views that are culturally
unpopular; or if it is said that we are free to advocate for such views,
but we are fined, taxed, jailed, or otherwise marginalized when we try
to act upon our convictions.”
The primacy of religious liberty and rights of conscience are self-evident
- they are contained in the very first amendment to the Constitution.
Our Congress in its law-making function, and our courts in interpreting
those laws, have a rich history of finding the required balance and even
fashioning accommodations when needed to maintain the primacy of
these fundamental human rights - rights that predate law itself – rights
that find their source in the essential dignity of the human person made
in God’s image.
Surely a government that has found a way to respect the dietary,
grooming and religious expression needs of even those persons
incarcerated for violence against the community can find a way to
respect the life-affirming religious values of those persons committed
to meeting the most critical needs of the poorest members of our
community. Thank God for the Little Sisters of the Poor and hundreds
of other faith-based organizations who provide loving personal service
based on a firm belief that our God is alive in each of us and we serve
Him by service to each other – especially those most in need.
Every day, across this nation and even this world, the Church feeds,
clothes and shelters more people; educates and trains more people;
counsels, motivates and assists more people to change their lives for
the better; and tends to the medical needs of more sick, injured and
aged people than any other institution in the world today, and has been
doing so for centuries longer than any institution in all of human
history. Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York said it well: “America is at
its best when religion has a place at the table.”
“The stakes are high,” Archbishop Joseph Kurtz of Louisville said; “We
cannot stand by and allow anyone to force us to separate our acts of
service from the living faith that motivates these acts, and we cannot
allow anyone to force us to facilitate immoral acts that go against our
clearly demonstrated living faith.”
Pope Francis has told us of the great dangers in too narrow an
understanding of religious freedom. In his apostolic exhortation,
Evangelii Gaudium (255), he says this: “(a) healthy pluralism… does not
entail privatizing religions in an attempt to reduce them to the quiet
obscurity of the individual’s conscience or to relegate them to the
enclosed precincts of churches, synagogues or mosques.”
In Pope Francis’ recent visit to America, he said: “Religious liberty
remains one of America’s most precious possessions” and he
encouraged us to be good citizens who are vigilant, ready “to preserve
and defend that freedom from everything that would threaten or
compromise it.”
We need a robust and healthy religious freedom in our nation. We
need laws like the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act to protect
people of deep faith convictions when their practice is threatened. This
act rightly holds our government to very high standards. It ensures that,
when authorities would impose a practice that conflicts with the deeply
held religious beliefs of some, the government must make a special
showing to justify both the ends and the means. The government’s
ends must be compelling, and it must choose the means, among all
those available, that is the least restrictive of religious exercise.”
It is not asking too much for us to demand of our government to find a
way to allow those committed to lives of faithful service to not be
forced to violate the same beliefs which motivate their service.
We can do it...we know it is possible...and we expect it. We will not
stop until we have achieved it. Viva Cristo Rey!
Douglas E. Oldmixon Texas State Secretary Knights of Columbus