Catholic leaders press their cause with 2 weeks of events
‘Fortnight for Freedom’ puts health care law in sights
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says government should not decide who is religious enough to be exempt from federal mandates.
U.S. Catholic leaders, claiming religious liberty is under assault from the Obama administration, are launching two weeks of non-stop nationwide teaching, preaching and public events to press their cause.
The campaign kicks off today. Government, they say, should not decide who is religious enough to be exempt from government mandates — particularly a requirement to provide free contraception insurance coverage — that would force the faithful to violate church doctrine.
Nearly half of the nation’s 195 dioceses have announced events from prayer breakfasts to town-hall-style meetings to readings of the Constitution. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is providing resources including a dramatic special prayer for strength and courage.
They have dubbed this a “Fortnight for Freedom,” set to stretch from the feast day of two saints, martyrs who were murdered for refusing to bend Catholic doctrine to meet a king’s demands, to Independence Day.
The kickoff is in Baltimore, the first American diocese, led by Archbishop William Lori, who heads the bishops’ committee on religious liberty. Lori told his brethren last week, “It will not be easy, and we may well suf- fer, as we are called to do, but we will not fail.”
The national events wrap up at Washington’s Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, the largest Catholic church in the nation, with Cardinal Donald Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, celebrating Mass and outspoken traditionalist Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput giving the homily.
The bishops organized the campaign after the Depart- ment of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued the requirements under the president’s 2010 health care law, the Affordable Care Act.
Critics, however, say the liberty banner is being waved to cover up a war on free choice in a nation of many faiths. The Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, calls the campaign a “clerical power grab” that redefines religious freedom to mean “the right to force their dogma on the unwilling.”
The bishops say their deep objection is rooted in the HHS requirements’ language that says religious organizations and institutions would be exempt from the insurance rule only under a very narrow definition that excludes faith-based schools, colleges, hospitals, charities and social services that employ and serve people outside their religion.
Modifications were made to allow organizations that object to contraception as a matter of conscience to be hands-off, requiring their insurers to provide the contraceptive coverage instead. Lori called that “an accounting shell game.” In a new e-book, True Free
dom, Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the bishops conference, argues it is a religious duty to defend the Catholic perspective of human life as sacred from conception to death.
So far, 43 Catholic organizations, individuals and dioceses have sued in federal court challenging the mandate. Last week, 149 religious conservative evangelical leaders, in tandem with the bishops, sent a letter to HHS calling for a wider religious exemption.
The target audience is as much within the church as outside it, says political scientist and Jesuit priest Thomas Reese. Although bishops can call on every priest in every diocese to participate in Fortnight events, “those priests who agree and who don’t like Obama will preach on it every Sunday. And the ones who don’t agree will throw (the bishops’ materials) in the circular file.”
The bishops are not exclusively critical of Obama. They cheered Obama’s Friday announcement of an executive order to allow some young illegal immigrants opportunities to remain legally in the USA.