Cardinal Dolan: “Let Freedom Ring”

No one has spoken more forcefully and eloquently on the abominable Obama/HHS mandate than Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB),.

Speaking to The John Carroll Society (“an organization of Catholic professionals united in their desire for an ever deepening and enriching knowledge of their Faith and in service to the Archbishop of Washington”), Dolan delivered an eloquent speech with the eminently appropriate title of “Let Freedom Ring.” Tracing the history of American freedom of religion, Dolan described this freedom as the “first line in the defense of and protection of human rights.”

Noting that people of faith have been a vital part of every major reform effort in America, he offered a chilling warning of what he called a “second omen”—the “direct intrusion of the government into the very definition of a church’s minister, ministries, message, and meaning.” He was, of course, referring to the HHS/Obama mandate which orders religious institutions to comply with policies which violate the very core of their religious conscience.

Cardinal Dolan quoted Cardinal Wuerl who noted, “The mandates’ definition of a religious organization contradicts decades of precedent and practice. Republicans and Democrats alike have long agreed that the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious liberty includes not only what goes on within the four walls of a church, but also the religiously motivated acts of service that fulfill the mission of that church. Only now . . . has the government said that we must leave our conscience behind when we step into the public square.”

Cardinal Dolan did not use this occasion to talk about other direct assaults on religious liberties from the Obama Administration that include filing a brief with the Supreme Court arguing that churches had no special protection in the hiring and firing of their pastors (the Court unanimously disagreed), and denying a grant to the well-regarded bishops’ conference program to help the victims of human trafficking.

Cardinal Dolan reminded that the debate is not about a “war on women.” And “the defense of religious freedom is not some evangelical Christian polemic, or wily strategy of discredited Catholic bishops, but the quintessential American cause, the first line in the defense of and protection of human rights.”

He concluded, “So, my proposition is that, in ‘letting freedom ring,’ we citizens of any and all faiths, or none at all, are not just paranoid and self-serving in defending what we hoard as ‘ours,’ but we are, in fact, protecting America. We act not as sectarians, but as responsible citizens. We act on behalf of the truth about the human person.”

Barbara Lyons