continue at WSJReligious freedom is the lifeblood of the American people, the cornerstone of American government. When the Founding Fathers determined that the innate rights of men and women should be enshrined in our Constitution, they so esteemed religious liberty that they made it the first freedom in the Bill of Rights.
In particular, the Founding Fathers fiercely defended the right of conscience. George Washington himself declared: "The conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with great delicacy and tenderness; and it is my wish and desire, that the laws may always be extensively accommodated to them." James Madison, a key defender of religious freedom and author of the First Amendment, said: "Conscience is the most sacred of all property."
Scarcely two weeks ago, in its Hosanna-Tabor decision upholding the right of churches to make ministerial hiring decisions, the Supreme Court unanimously and enthusiastically reaffirmed these longstanding and foundational principles of religious freedom. The court made clear that they include the right of religious institutions to control their internal affairs.
Yet the Obama administration has veered in the opposite direction.
Abp. Dolan in Wall St. Journal: How about some respect for Catholics and others who object to treating pregnancy as a disease?
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Someone once said that trying to defend America by using the Constitution is like trying to defend Catholicism by using the Book of Mormon.
What was meant by that is the simple fact that the Constitution is the cause of the problem, not the solution. And unfortunately, Archbishop Dolan's appeals to the Constitution to protest Catholicism, using the "religious freedom" argument will do nothing but generate laughs in government: it is the very concept of "religious freedom" that has gotten us into this horrendous mess in the first place. Once you deny that there is a single truth you open the door to every crazy opinion that fallen mankind can come up with, and you end up with America. In the Constitution are buried the very seeds which have brought us to the brink of national madness, a country that murders innocents in the womb, that exalts the unspeakable filth of homosexuality as a "good", that thinks nothing of letting Capitalism and Finance run amuck causing untold misery for the human race, that now passes legislation that allows it to round up Americans without trial, without evidence, without nothing and send then to an unnamed gulag (see the "indefinite detention" news on the net).
We are all still so patriotic that we believe that America is some kind of force for good in the world, a divinely-inspired nation (as one benighted soul once told me) superior to everything that ever was. Sorry, no. We have become a tinpot tyranny, and we have brought it upon ourselves.
If the Archbishop would stop being an American first and a Catholic second, if he would reverse that, then perhaps he would have a much better chance of influencing opinion. He must be a strong, firm, even fiery Catholic, not an Americanist too anxious to prove that Catholics are after all, just "good Americans".
You've made some good remarks, Your Excellency; it's now time to take the gloves off and begin teaching the hard Catholic truths.
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