Years ago, on the same weekend as the Right to Life Mass and March, I preached at a parish youth Mass. I wanted the young people there to reflect upon the Catholic commitment to the sanctity of human life. As many of the young people were from the local high school, I looked up the statistics from the year that the high school seniors were born. I was shocked to learn that one third of the pregnancies in that town ended in termination that year. In my remarks to those young people, I spoke in the homily about their missing classmates who never enjoyed the chance for life. I did not speak much about theology, I simply mourned the loss and asked everyone to remember the true cost of that seemingly innocuous word “choice.”
The homily provoked strong reactions. The young people were full of questions and comments after the Mass, but some of the adults present became enraged by the homily and insisted that I had manufactured the statistics. When I directed them to the government website where I found the statistics, it did not calm their anger. One person told me that I should be “put in jail” for saying such things.
That last comment was borne of frustration. I do not think that the parishioner truly wanted to jail me. If anything, I think that the message of the homily may have provoked the first stage of a painful change of heart. Nonetheless, the experience taught me about the high emotions involved in political divisions. That reality has only intensified in the last decade. In my first column on faithful citizenship, I urged us to recognize the unhealthy state of our culture’s divisions and obsessions. I hope, as Catholics, that we strive to honor what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.”
We also need to be aware that Catholic moral teaching is provoking increasing anger in secular society. In the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, there is a guarantee of the free exercise of religion. This language is important to the Catholic faith. Our faith summons us to worship God, but it also turns us outward in the exercise of compassion and solidarity. We have from God and the law the right to organize ourselves and participate in society. We worship in our churches, but we also practice our faith in our schools, health care institutions, immigration services, pregnancy centers, Catholic charities, and in so many other ways and settings.
I mention this because political leaders in the U.S. have been shifting the language in the last two decades to speak of the “freedom of worship” rather than the constitutional language of the freedom of religion. The implication is that people of faith should be free in how they wish to worship God inside their churches, synagogues, and mosques, but that we do not have the right to bring that faith outside the walls and into society. You see that shifting attitude at work in the many demands that Catholic institutions abandon Catholic moral teaching if they wish to facilitate adoptions or practice health care. The problem extends to the rights of individuals as well. Radicals demand the removal of individual conscience protections for people who hold sincere religious convictions.
The shift in language is also alarming because it is reminiscent of oppressive regimes who seek to control or diminish the exercise of religion. The Soviet constitution guaranteed “freedom of worship” while ferociously restricting the exercise of religion. Contemporary examples may be found in places like North Korea, China, and Nicaragua. When political candidates or leaders in the United States speak of “freedom of worship,” we need to remind them early and often that our constitutional rights expressly protect the “freedom of religion,” and that our worship of God is not limited to our sanctuaries. Rather, our faith compels us to carry that faith into society by our charitable and educational endeavors. And we need to remind ourselves that we have a sacred duty, whatever our political opinion or affiliation, to defend the rights of our fellow Catholics. There are enough ideologues in this world that want to put Catholics “in jail.” It should never be a fellow Catholic joining in that chorus.
