"Students of Faith" Video
"It's the duty of everyone to defend religious freedom and promote it for all people." ~Pope Francis
Recent court filings uncovered by the Catholic Benefits Association show the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is working to establish sweeping sex-discrimination regulations to dismantle the religious-liberty protections in health-care law. "Discovery of a 74-page legal memorandum attached to a court filing ... revealed that HHS has promised to revise its mandates on health plan coverage and performance to include surgical abortion, cross-sex hormones, gender-transition surgeries, gender-affirming cosmetic surgeries and voice modification ... contraception, abortion drugs and sterilizations," wrote Tom Tracy, Catholic News Service.(1) The new mandate "would not only disallow religious exemptions but would have a broad cost and compliance impact on all U.S. employers." (2)
"The forthcoming HHS regulation presents an existential threat to Catholic health care because the penalties to noncompliance will include private enforcement, class-action lawsuits ... The penalties may also include loss of Medicare and Medicaid funding and even imprisonment for noncomplying health care executives," said attorney Mark Nussbaum, advisor to CO - Catholic Benefits Association.(3) "Such sanctions can shut down any hospital network. ... Such performance mandates will harm health care in the U.S. overall, given that Catholic hospitals provide an estimated 1/6 of hospital beds nationally." (4)
"Until November, 2021, when our attorneys discovered it in a 74-page court filing, nobody knew about it," said Doug Wilson, CEO of CO-based Catholic Benefits Association. "The general public has almost no awareness of what may be coming. It is written to end Catholic health care. The requirements are so beyond Catholic teaching that Catholic employers of every sort would be faced with complying or shutting down," Wilson said. (5)
(catholicnews.com, 4/5/22(1)(2); americamagazine.org, 4/5/22(3)(4); ncregister.com, 11/17/21; cruxnow.com, 4/5/22(5)
"Religious freedom is the lifeblood of the American people, the cornerstone of American government." ~Cardinal Timothy Dolan
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN A MINUTE
Proposed Health and Human Services Rule Could End All Catholic Healthcare
O God, by whose mercy the faithful departed find rest, look kindly on your departed veterans who gave their lives in the service of their country. Grant that through the passion, death, and resurrection of your Son they may share in the
joy of your heavenly kingdom and
rejoice in you with your saints forever.
We ask this through Christ our Lord.
"Greater love has no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."
John 15:13
“There is a certain enthusiasm in liberty that makes human nature rise above itself, in acts of bravery and heroism.” Alexander Hamilton
STUDENTS MAY PRAY IN SCHOOL
PUBLIC SCHOOLS
ARE NOT “GOD-FREE ZONES”
America’s children need not leave their faith outside the school house door.
For students to be silenced or disciplined by a school authority for appropriate religious expression should never happen. Sadly, young students may well conclude…
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Educational resources for parish members who work to support Religious Freedoms.
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AT WORLD MEETING OF FAMILIES: DEFENDING FREEDOM OF RELIGION
Barbara Samuells, president of Catholics for Freedom of Religion and a parishioner at St. Matthew’s, Dix Hills, shares her experience at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RALLY 2018
IN SERVICE TO THE CHURCH
Click here to watch Barbara on TeleCare TV.
Pope Francis has observed that “religion [cannot] be relegated to the inner sanctum of personal life, without influence on societal and national life.” Evangelii Gaudium. . . , no. 183. In insisting that our liberties as Americans be respected, Pope Benedict XVI said that this work belongs to “an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity endowed with a strong critical sense vis-à-vis the dominant culture.” Therefore, catechesis on religious liberty is not the work of priests alone. If religious liberty is not properly understood, all people suffer and are deprived of the essential contribution to the common good, be it in education, health care, feeding the hungry, civil rights, and social services that individuals make every day, both here at home and overseas.
CATHOLICS FOR FREEDOM OF RELIGION
MISSION STATEMENT
America’s First Amendment guarantees its citizens five freedoms, the first of which is Freedom of Religion. Freedom of Religion includes the freedom to worship according to one’s beliefs as well as the freedom to practice that faith in everyday life according to one’s conscience.
So that this First Amendment freedom may be practiced and preserved for generations yet unborn it is essential that Americans understand this freedom and the circumstances from which it came. A fitting place for the development of this understanding and protection of Religious Freedom is inside all faith communities.
Catholics for Freedom of Religion offers resources to parish members who work to support Religious Freedom by initiating parish laity groups with these suggested goals:
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To educate and inspire for Freedom of Religion
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To remain non-partisan, advocating for no candidate or party
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To invite and include other faith communities
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To become a permanent group within each parish to educate every generation of Catholics about our Freedom of Religion…how rare it is, how dearly it was purchased for us and how certainly it is being lost.
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To recognize and oppose attacks on Freedom of Religion from any source
“We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, that religion, or the duty we owe our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right.” James Madison
“While Americans presume that the Constitution guarantees their rights, in practice our rights survive or disappear based on how firmly we defend them.” Archbishop Charles J. Chaput
