Let Freedom Ring!

Archbishop Lori delivers an address on the Obama administration's assault on religious liberty.

The Archbishop of Baltimore, William Lori, chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, delivered the keynote address at the Ethics and Public Policy Center’s National Religious Freedom Gala Reception and Award Dinner in Washington May 24. 

It has now been just over a week since I became the archbishop of Baltimore, and I find myself surrounded by history there. I live near the Basilica of the Assumption, the oldest cathedral in the U.S. The cornerstone was laid in 1806. The nation’s first bishop, John Carroll, is buried beneath the basilica, as are many of my predecessors.

John Carroll was a cousin of Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Charles Carroll’s story — and indeed Maryland’s early history — teaches us about the fragility of religious liberty and the importance of exercising vigilance in protecting it.

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US Catholic Bishops Establish Religious Liberty Committee

Several weeks ago, in response to the Obama administration mandating that Catholic institutions include coverage of contraception (including abortifacients) and sterilization in all private health insurance plans, Archbishop Timothy Dolan threatened "a national conflict between church and state of enormous proportions."

Bishop William Lori

Today Archbishop Dolan announced that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is forming an Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty.  Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut will chair the new committee.  

We are underwhelmed.  If another committee at the corrupt, staff-run, inept United States Conference of Catholic Bishops is to be the bishops' response to immoral and tyrannical actions by the Obama administration, we are doomed.  Do they think they can bore their adversaries into surrender with another staff document?

We hope this is just window dressing prior to the real "national conflict."  For the battle itself, we would suggest that it be commanded by someone who knows what he is doing in public policy and the political sphere and is untouched by scandal -- Governor Frank Keating or Father Frank Pavone come to mind.

It's a shame the 300 old men represented by the USCCB have squandered their moral authority, not on the great moral issues of our time, but on details of public policy better left to the laity, and on which Catholics have every right to disagree.  That a majority of bishops protected perpetrators rather than victims in the sexual abuse of young people, further erodes their ability to counter the Obama administration's assault on Catholic institutions.