Maintaining our Religious Freedom - Lessons we must learn: Do we give ourselves wholly to Jesus Christ and then bring Jesus Christ to the world? "Here’s the first lesson: Our faith needs to be more than a nostalgic habit; more than a sentimental exercise in good will; and the Church needs to be more than a religious institution. Christianity, as C.S. Lewis once famously wrote, is a “fighting religion” – not in the sense of belligerence or ill will, but as a struggle against our own sins and complacency; a struggle to give ourselves wholly to Jesus Christ, and then bring Jesus Christ to the world. As individuals and as a Church, if we don’t have a restlessness for God, a passion for Jesus Christ and the poor and needy he loves, then we should stop telling ourselves that we’re Christians. A religion of words and habit, a religion without daily inner repentance and commitment, hollows out from the inside. And it can evaporate overnight. Here’s the second lesson. If we don’t live our Catholic faith and defend our religious liberty vigorously, then sooner or later we’ll lose both. For more than a year, America’s bishops have repeatedly stressed the coercive – even vindictive – nature of the current administration’s HHS contraceptive mandate. No one “needs” this mandate as a matter of health. It’s purely an imposition of ideology on the freedom of religious communities and individuals to live their convictions in their public work. If Catholics fail to resist this coercion, then more coercion will follow. It’s that simple. No one grasps the nature of this issue better than New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, and we should consider his words in closing this week’s column: “The Catholic Church in America has long been a leader in providing affordable health care, and in advocating for policies that advance that goal. The bishops on a national level have been at it for almost one hundred years, and our heroic women and men religious have done so even longer. Yet, instead of spending our time, energy, and treasure on increasing access to health care, as we have done for many decades, we’re now forced to spend those resources on determining how to respond to recently enacted government regulations that restrict and burden our religious freedom. Catholics – our parents and grandparents, religious sisters, brothers and priests – were among the first at the table to advance and provide health care, and now we are being burdened because of the same Catholic values that compel us into these ministries! All this in a country that puts religious liberty first on the list of its most cherished freedoms. As I’ve said before, this is a fight that we didn’t ask for, and would rather not be in, but it’s certainly one that we won’t run from.” Amen." by Archbishop Charles Chaput
Posted on: Sat, 21 Sep 2013 12:38:09 +0000