I wrote this very brief reflection for our parish bulletin. It was published this past Sunday, July 2nd.
This didn't occur to me when I wrote it, but upon reading through it in the bulletin on Sunday morning, I realized I had landed more or less in the same spot as the American bishops on the question of religious liberty. I'm fine with that: I've never thought the bishops were wrong to raise these concerns in the wake of the Obamacare contraceptive mandate. I should add that my little reflection doesn't touch on any current events.
At any rate, here it is:
The blessings and duties of citizenship
Some early European settlers, including Catholics, crossed the ocean to escape religious conflict and persecution. This European heritage of religious persecution led to one of the foundational principles of our country: religious liberty, as enshrined in the 1st Amendment to our Constitution. The federal government may not establish an official church, nor prohibit the free exercise of religion by its citizens.
This religious liberty has been a blessing for American Catholics. We are free to worship God, follow Jesus and be guided by the Holy Spirit, without the government restricting or interfering with us. Catholics always have been a minority in the US, and we rely on these legal protections to live out our faith as we wish. That is not something to take for granted! Throughout world history, and even today, there have been nations where religious liberty is restricted. On July 4th, it is good for us Americans to give thanks for the great blessing of religious liberty.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church names some principal duties of citizenship: paying taxes, voting, and defending our country. We’re also obligated to resist immoral or unjust demands from civic leaders, to work for the common good, and to welcome strangers to our prosperous land. Citizenship in the US can be as demanding as citizenship in God’s Kingdom!
We American Catholics are blessed to be free to proclaim God’s kingdom. We’re also obligated to work for liberty and human flourishing in the United States.
It is well to remember that before Vatican II, the hierarchy of the Catholic Church did not accept religious liberty for others. The American Catholic experience of religious liberty not just for ourselves but for others was very helpful in getting the Vatican II to accept the notion of religious liberty for non-Catholics.
ReplyDeleteWhile American bishops and clergy seem to be willing to accept religious liberties for other faiths, they seem to be less tolerant of accepting freedom from religion.
For example, when statistics come out on the decline in church attendance, they never point to the many people including Catholics who pray daily but don't go to church regularly. They seem unwilling to admit there are many people who still have faith in God but have lost faith in the clergy.
The America bishops have overreacted to perceived threats to Catholic religious liberty. I don't think that we are anywhere near what Catholics experienced under Soviet rule or in many places in the world today.
Unfortunately the American bishops are also perfectly willing to impose their beliefs on Americans who don’t share them via legislation and a judiciary that goes along with it rather than protecting the religious freedom of All Americans.
Delete"The American Catholic experience of religious liberty not just for ourselves but for others was very helpful in getting the Vatican II to accept the notion of religious liberty for non-Catholics."
DeleteJack, good point. And I think the laity kind of led the way in accepting religious liberty for others. Of course there were also people like. Archbishop John Carroll and others who practiced and preached tolerance.
But pre VII I do remember nuns and priests who stuck to the "no salvation outside the church" line. .
Katherine, I remember the No Salvation outside the Church teachings also.
DeleteArchbishop Carroll was the first Catholic bishop in the US, in Baltimore. Maryland was the Catholic colony. However many Catholics in Maryland and elsewhere eventually lost some of their civil rights because the state and country were dominated by Protestant rulers. Now it seems that some Americans are in danger of losing some of their civil rights due to Catholics in legislatures and the judiciary. I’m not sure that religious freedom for all will ever be achieved.
"Now it seems that some Americans are in danger of losing some of their civil rights due to Catholics in legislatures and the judiciary."
DeleteTo what are you referring? Presumably not the Supreme Court: it defended religious freedom in the Little Sisters of the Poor case, and defended the free-speech rights of providers of creative content in the Smith case.
With the case of the Little Sisters of the Poor, it depends on whose viewpoint you look at it from. Yes SCOTUS defended their right not to provide contraception as part of the insurance for their employees. But left their employees, whether or not they were Catholic, in an awkward position. There was a work-around that the Sisters could have passed the cost to their insurers, who would have had to cover it. But they would have had to fill out some paperwork. Which was apparently unacceptable to them. I don't know how it finally ended up, presumably the employees are on their own with it. They might feel that their civil rights were curtailed. This situation was not due to having Catholics in the judiciary, it was due to having a Catholic organization as an employer. There is a case to be made for not having health insurance be employer based, but right now employers are part of the large messy package for the majority of Americans who have health insurance.
DeleteUniversal health care taking the employer out of the loop is certainly the fix for this problem. But the insurance companies and their rented politicians don't want it. Abortion is one thing but, for me, artificial birth control is to the Catholic Church as blood transfusions are to the Jehovah's Witnesses. I just don't get either one.
DeleteFWIW - I think, if it wasn't believed in some quarters that some contraception serves as an abortifacient, the objections to contraception would be significantly more muted. That said: the church's teaching in Humanae Vitae hasn't changed, and there always be some Catholics, even if it's just a tiny minority, who abide by the teaching. Perhaps those Little Sisters of the Poor are an example. I respect that spirituality.
DeleteI respect that spirituality too. But the thing is, nuns , by definition are never going to have to personally deal with getting pregnant or not getting pregnant. Neither did St. Pope Paul VI ever have to worry about fathering any children or providing for them when he wrote Humanae Vitae. Incidentally Humanae Vitae was right about a whole lot of things. But for the bottom line conclusion, he ignored the input of the lay people and many of the clergy who were brought in to advise and consult.
DeleteI think you are right that the idea that some contraception acts as an abortifacient is what makes the discussion considerably more fraught. But I haven't seen anyone argue that the embryos frozen in fertility treatment but not used, amount to abortion.
"But the thing is, nuns , by definition are never going to have to personally deal with getting pregnant or not getting pregnant."
DeleteI know this isn't common, but: I do happen to know a religious sister who also is a mom. It's not unheard-of. These days, I think sisters, like priests, are considerably less likely to go into religious life immediately after high school.
I also think that, even within the universe of religious sisters, those Little Sisters of the Poor are at least fairly unusual; I suspect many religious sisters these days are in favor of contraception, at least in some/many circumstances.
I do know of a nun who is a widow with adult children who went into her order (Benedictine) as a second vocation.
DeleteI think sisters who favor contraception are more likely to be the ones who work in areas of the world with a lot of poverty, and where women don't have a lot of rights, including the right to consent to sex, or not, within marriage.
In general, I find sisters to be hard-headed realists - much more so than some laypeople I know who sort of wrap themselves in their preferred ideological bubbles. (Not thinking of anyone here, but people I know in "real life" :-)). As an example of their realism, the sisters I know have no delusions about the men in charge of the church.
DeleteYet the sisters I've known also have genuine spirituality. They show that one can be both a realist and spiritual. Really, I suspect the most spiritual people are, in some ways, the most realistic about people.