MINNESOTA
Star Tribune
Article by: JOHN C. NIENSTEDT and HARRY J. FLYNN
Updated: June 18, 2012
Linking abuse and freedom confuses equally important but separate issues.
Susan Hogan’s commentary “Bishops seek religious liberty but suppress a religion’s shame” (June 7) links two unrelated issues — the Church’s current efforts to protect religious freedom, and the grievous clergy sex abuse scandal. It uses that link to reach an unwarranted, unfair and illogical conclusion.
To demonstrate the unrelated linkage she uses, Fortnight for Freedom is quite simply an effort to call attention to the growing need to protect the religious freedom of all faiths guaranteed by the Constitution. Indeed, this proposed intrusion on religious freedom is alarming citizens of all faiths. Catholics are not the only faith group challenging it.
On April 12, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops called for the observance of a Fortnight for Freedom, a two-week period from June 21 until July 4 in which prayer, fasting and catechesis could be observed to raise awareness of the present threats to religious freedom and conscience protection.
Besides the HHS mandate on contraceptive coverage, these threats also include state immigration laws that make it a crime to assist undocumented workers, laws seeking to entangle the state in Church structure and governance, laws that force Catholic foster care and adoption services out of business, and discriminatory policies against small church congregations and Catholic humanitarian services.
Hogan’s assertion that U.S. bishops have chosen the 10-year anniversary of the Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People to play the victim card is wholly unwarranted and just plain wrong. We did not impose the mandate, but the Catholic Church has no choice but to stand against it and other infringements of our religious liberty.
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