Religious Freedom Week Is a Call to Gratitude and Action| National Catholic Register

This is Religious Freedom Week, during which America’s Catholic bishops call on us to pray, reflect and act to promote religious freedom. But it’s also a time to give thanks.  

As Catholics, we can look to the richness of teaching to understand how our personal relationship with God relates to religious freedom. In his address to members of the International Inter-Parliamentary Union this past Saturday, Pope Leo XIV eloquently explained that “political life can achieve much by encouraging the conditions for there to be authentic religious freedom and that a respectful and constructive encounter between different religious communities may develop.” 

The Holy Father added, “In order to have a shared point of reference in political activity, and not exclude a priori any consideration of the transcendent in decision-making processes, it would be helpful to seek an element that unites everyone. To this end, an essential reference point is the natural law, written not by human hands, but acknowledged as valid in all times and places, and finding its most plausible and convincing argument in nature itself.”  

Pope Leo’s words echo those of the Second Vatican Council’s declaration on religious freedom, Dignitatis Humanae, which explains that all men and women instinctively seek the truth, which is revealed in its fullness in the teachings of God’s Holy Catholic Church. Religious freedom, said the Council fathers, also safeguards the Church’s mission of evangelization. For the fulfillment of her divine mission — the salvation of souls — religious freedom must not only be proclaimed in words and incorporated in law but also be given sincere and practical application.

One of Pope Leo’s predecessors, Pope Benedict XVI, similarly advanced a robust understanding and protection of religious freedom. In his 2008 address before the General Assembly of the United Nations, he referred to the “public dimension of religion and hence the possibility of believers playing their part in building the social order.” As professor Brad Lewis of The Catholic University of America and I explained for the Register in reflecting on Benedict’s religious-freedom legacy, by this he “meant that the Church, through its members, must inform culture and political morality — not juridically, but in an apostolic way, by boldly articulating and living out the Gospel.”

In addition to rejoicing in the richness of our Catholic teaching on religious freedom, we can also give thanks for the protections we enjoy as Americans.

The First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States contains two clauses relating to religious freedom. The Establishment Clause says the government can’t interfere in religious matters. The Free Exercise Clause, meanwhile, protects our right to worship and behave in ways that are consistent with our beliefs. To put it another way, the religion clauses of the First Amendment not only protect the right of Catholics to practice the faith, but also create the space in which we can evangelize.

Of course, having a right recognized under the law is not the same as having one respected by the government. Ours is a nation that has a blemished history of anti-Catholic bias, some of which lingers on in the 21st century. Here too, however, we can give thanks for those courageous Catholics and other Americans of faith who came before us to defend religious liberty.

Take, for example, the staunch defense of the right of parents and the Church to educate children consistent with the faith. June 1 marked the 100th anniversary of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, a unanimous Supreme Court decision safeguarding the rights of parents to choose to send their children to Catholic school. As the author of the Court’s opinion, Associate Justice James Clark McReynolds, wrote, “The child is not the mere creature of the state; those who nurture him and direct his destiny have the right, coupled with the high duty, to recognize and prepare him for additional obligations.”

The interconnectivity of parental rights and religious freedom is again before the Supreme Court this term in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case brought by parents of a variety of faith traditions with children in Montgomery County, Maryland, public schools. They seek to opt their young children out of exposure to sexually explicit and ideologically driven storybooks. 

In papers filed with the court, the parents note that “public schools have long recognized the primacy of parents in instructing their children on sensitive matters of gender and sexuality.” They add that “this history and tradition compel the conclusion that forced instruction on such religiously sensitive matters would substantially interfere with children’s religious formation and their parents’ own religious exercise of guiding that development.” Severing the parent-child relationship, they forcefully argue, “is incompatible with the Free Exercise’s guarantee that parents’ right to control the religious upbringing of their children is ‘beyond debate.’”

Lest we think that religious freedom is something that is safeguarded only by the Church and the Supreme Court, the executive branch has taken bold steps under the current administration to stand up for America’s first freedom. 

Earlier this year, President Trump issued an executive order, Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias, “to protect the religious freedoms of Americans and end the anti-Christian weaponization of government.” Applying to all major departments and agencies, the order directs a comprehensive review of the administrative state to root out anti-Christian bias and develop strategies to protect religious freedom for all Americans.

Trump followed up on May 1 with another executive order establishing the Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty. The 14-member group of experts will spend the next year conducting hearings and then reporting back to the president “on the foundations of religious liberty in America, the impact of religious liberty on American society, current threats to domestic religious liberty, strategies to preserve and enhance religious liberty protections for future generations, and programs to increase awareness of and celebrate America’s peaceful religious pluralism.” 

As I explained for the Register after the commission’s inaugural hearing last week, “we can be thankful that the conversation about our nation’s rich tradition of religious liberty and the crucial need to stand up for faith and freedom has already begun.”
It can be easy to take for granted the deep respect given to religious freedom in both Church teaching and in our laws. We need only look to the history of those gravely persecuted for their faith as a reminder to give thanks for the blessings we enjoy. 

For example, in his latest column for the Register, Father Raymond de Souza rightly notes that this year Religious Freedom Week “has a liturgical setting.” Starting with the feasts of Sts. John Fisher and Thomas More, the week includes the Nativity of St. John the Baptist and ends with the solemn feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. 

“All were martyrs at the hands of state power,” remarks Father de Souza. The bishops are also well aware of modern-day martyrs, reminding Catholics to increase our prayers for Christians persecuted for their faith in Nigeria as Religious Freedom Week comes to a close.

A perfect companion to the specific considerations of each day this week is the bishops’ challenge to each member of the faithful “to live out their faith in public and to serve the good of all” — a challenge that will continue for a lifetime.