In response to attacks on religious liberty around the world, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops declared a second annual “Fortnight for Freedom,” running from June 21 through July 4. Over these14 days, the Fortnight calls on Catholics to learn about threats to religious liberty here and abroad, pray for the protection of religious freedom, and act to preserve this essential human right.
The best place to access Fortnight resources is online at www.fortnight4freedom.org, where you’ll find educational videos, written prayer services and reflections, and legislative action alerts.
My job here is to convince you to log on to the Web site and observe the Fortnight in your home and your faith community. Here are three reasons you should get involved.
1. The Fortnight is all about who we are as Catholics.
If you read about the USCCB’s efforts to protect religious freedom in the secular press, you might think that the Fortnight is just about contraception. There is a kernel of truth in this – the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ mandate that almost all employers provide their employees with access to contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs was a major inspiration for the Fortnight.
But the real problem is that the mandate exempts only a narrow range of religious institutions from having to provide these products and services. To be exempt, a religious organization must only employ members of that particular faith tradition, and can only serve members of that tradition.
Of course, we know that so many of our cherished Catholic institutions employ and serve non-Catholics: Catholic Charities. Catholic schools and universities. Catholic hospitals. As our diocesan vicar general Msrr. Roger McGrath recently reminded us at a meeting, “We don’t care for people because they’re Catholic. We do it because we’re Catholic.”
By enforcing such a narrow exemption, the government is attempting to define what Catholicism is. This is not the government’s job. And it is a gross violation of our right to practice our faith freely and fully.
2. The Fortnight is “Ampersandy.”
If you’ve read any of my columns before, or visited the Life & Justice Ministries blog, you know I’m really into the ampersand – & – in the title of this office. It’s my favorite punctuation mark.
Why? John Carr, my boss when I interned at the USCCB during college, liked to say that the most important word in Catholic social teaching is “and”: we’re about human life and dignity, family and community, human rights and responsibilities.
The Fortnight for Freedom sits right on that ampersand between Life & Justice. The USCCB designated the Fortnight primarily in response to the HHS mandate, which undermines the sanctity of human life. But www.fortnight4freedom.org also criticizes other domestic attacks on religious liberty, like certain state immigration laws, which forbid what they deem as the “harboring” of undocumented immigrants. The church uses other terms for this sort of activity – like Christian charity and pastoral care.
The priorities of the Fortnight for Freedom call us to renew our own commitments to the protection of human life and the promotion of justice for those who are on the margins of society.
3. Religious freedom is literally a matter of life and death in many places around the world – especially for Christians.
John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter wrote the following in his Sept. 7, 2012 column: “Most people, most of the time, are fundamentally decent. Hence if they knew that there’s a minority facing an epidemic of persecution – a staggering total of 150,000 martyrs every year, meaning 17 deaths every hour – there would almost certainly be a groundswell of moral and political outrage.
“There is such a minority in the world today, and it’s Christianity. The fact that there isn’t yet a broad-based movement to fight anti-Christian persecution suggests something is missing in public understanding.”
In a talk to the USCCB, Georgetown professor Robert F. Farr reported that 70 percent of the world’s population lives in countries in which religious freedom is either highly or very highly restricted. Religious minorities most subject to persecution are Christians, who were harassed in 130 countries between 2006 and 2009.
Religious freedom concerns here at home are important, to be sure. But the Fortnight for Freedom is a reminder that so many millions of our Christian sisters and brothers around the world are suffering and often literally dying for what they believe.
How can we respond to the needs of these Christians overseas? Consider making a donation to Catholic Relief Services at www.crs.org, which works with victims of violence and persecution around the world, and partners with individual communities abroad to help them become places of stability and opportunity.
Then, head over to www.fortnight4freedom.org and see how else you can get involved in the protection of one of the most fundamental human rights.
Mike Jordan Laskey is director, Life & Justice Ministries, Diocese of Camden.
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