UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Michael Sean Winters | Jun. 14, 2016
As the bishops of the United States gather this week for their annual spring meeting and retreat, I invite them to ask themselves some questions that pertain to their place in the public square. I hope they will be honest with themselves about the answers to these questions because some of us believe that our country and our culture desperately need the voice of the church, and especially the insights of her social doctrine, at this moment in history, and that hope is endangered by the bishops’ inability or unwillingness to consider honestly if their public stance is effective and if it is true to the fullness of the Gospel. In other words, I pose these questions not as someone who hates the church, but someone who is worried that her leaders have gone down a wrong side street in many ways, been pulled further to the right than they seem to realize themselves, and are less and less relevant to the culture they are called to evangelize. After each set of questions, I shall offer a brief lesson.
Religious liberty
Since you formed an Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, have your actions furthered that cause or harmed it? Has the Fortnight for Freedom achieved anything tangible or has it been a colossal waste of funds? Who has made money from all those expenditures? Which consultants and which PR companies? Were the promises for success or goals for your various religious freedom campaigns, those coming from your own staff, were these born out by the facts? When the Republican Governor of Georgia vetoes a religious liberty bill, do you think that marks the success of your efforts or not?
Do you think that the video prepared by the Knights of Columbus and highlighted on the USCCB website is well done? Do you think the decision to highlight former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in that video, for no apparent reason, will make it more likely or less likely that you will be able to get a fair hearing from her should she be elected next November? Do you think the contraception mandate is really like the beheading of Christians in the Mideas, or do you think the equation of the two qualifies as emotional blackmail?
Will you denounce Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim statements and proposals with the same vehemence with which you denounced the Obama administration’s contraception mandate? Or do you think the requirement of filing a form to register your objection to the mandate is an equal or greater infringement of religious liberty than being barred entry to the country in the first place? Have you participated in a public event with Muslim leaders to highlight their concerns?
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