Bishop Malloy’s column this week is the homily delivered at the closing Mass for the 2014 Fortnight for Freedom delivered at St. Thomas the Apostle Parish in Crystal Lake on July 4.

For the last several years, the Bishops and the Church in the United States have celebrated a Fortnight — two weeks, 14 days — of Freedom.

The Fortnight for Freedom began in response to the fallout from our current social and political battles. In particular, society and the federal administration have aggressively worked to implement a secular view of society, the world and of the human person.

In various ways, it has centered particularly on a view of freedom that is, as one Catholic author described it, preoccupied with sexual expression divorced from children. As a result, the role of religious freedom is being curtailed and made to seem a lesser value or even an unnecessary concession from government that is impeding government’s expansion and its view of progress.

Every July 4, and not just during the last few years, our country has celebrated freedom — hard won and expensively paid for by sacrifices we recall.

All of our parades and our fireworks are not just a summertime pleasantry for the gathering of friends and family. They are to remind us of how beautiful but fragile is human freedom. In many ways, our Founding Fathers got it right.

Do we recall those lines from the Declaration of Independence that we celebrate today? “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, … . That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Later, as we know, to add a further clarification, a Bill of Rights to protect citizens was added. And first up, the First Amendment says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

These concepts relating to freedom and especially the freedom of religion cannot be taken for granted.

Freedom and the balance of rights and powers that respects the human person are hard to maintain.
Abraham Lincoln recognized this when, in the Gettysburg Address, referring to our country conceived in liberty and the equality of persons, he asked, “...whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure?”

Well the question is, obviously, why is all of this important to us? In the context of the challenges to our freedom of religion, there is a vital reason:

Our deepest freedom is to love God and to do His will so that we get to heaven. In doing so, we are to work in this world to carry out God’s plan and to make the world better.

That task and the freedom to carry it out are given to us by God. They are part of the dignity of the human person and this freedom is what separates us from the rest of creation. It is not something granted to us by government.

In recent times, our government has moved to challenge and limit religious freedom. At the beginning, we heard government officials acknowledge freedom of worship, but not freedom of religion.

That means they recognize that we can gather together in our parishes or places of worship and do whatever curious things we find interesting. But don’t think that same freedom extends outside the door, in the public square.

Then came the government mandates, especially those associated with the Affordable Health Care Act. In essence, government is now saying that we must do what government tells us, even when our faith tells us it violates God’s Law, Church teaching and our conscience. If we do not obey, we will be subject to the power of government to weaken and even destroy our institutions.

We find ourselves placed in the situation of Peter and John recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. After the Ascension, their leaders told them not to mention the name of Jesus. Their response was, “Do you think God wants us to obey you rather than Him?”

As a result, the government is starting to define what is religious and, for us, what is Catholic. On that basis, the government tells us that it may grant us exemptions and accommodations to its law.

Of course, exemptions and accommodations are dangerous because they are understood as a gift from the government, not recognition of our rights received from God.

Pope Francis has described threats to religious freedom this way: “A healthy pluralism, one which genuinely respects differences and values them as such, does not entail privatizing religions in an attempt to reduce them to the quiet obscurity of the individual’s conscience or to relegate them to the enclosed precincts of churches, synagogues or mosques. This would represent, in effect, a new form of discrimination and authoritarianism.”

And he went on to say, “Who would claim to lock up in a church and silence the message of St. Francis of Assisi or Blessed Teresa of Calcutta? They themselves would have found this unacceptable.”

To show how far we have fallen as a country and a society, the Little Sisters of the Poor are seeking protection from the government’s threat to fine them ruinously for tending to the sick and the dying, as they have done for centuries, in a manner that is faithful to our Catholic principles and teaching. Has it really come to this?

Last week the Supreme Court recognized in a limited way that people in business can conduct their business in keeping with the principles of their faith. That was the Hobby Lobby case. Next year at this time religious institutions associates with the Catholic Church should get a decision from the Court regarding our freedom of religion. What is sad is that this is a needless fight that was intentionally picked with us. The fact is, our teaching and belief have not changed. Hobby Lobby is doing nothing different than it has done for years. Instead it is the expansion of government and its secular views that come closer and close to us and so attempts to restrict our religious freedom.

So what are we to do?

1. As always, we must approach problems first through prayer. We must see all problems from the point of view of faith. Christ is close to us and He knows our challenges. So we must begin with confidence. And we must be positive in our outlook and in our response.

2. We must recognize the challenge for what it is. This problem of our age did not arise overnight and it will not be resolved quickly. We are in a marathon. And in a marathon it is easy to look away, to grow tired or distracted. We can’t let that happen. We must also recognize that threats to the freedom of religion are unlikely to recede on their own. When government takes to itself a moral authority that it was never intended to have, there are no logical limits. If it limits our freedom on these issues of conscience, what issues will be next? Abortion? Marriage?

3. The third point is that we must witness to the truth and to goodness in religion. We have to speak up about this, to our family members and friends, in our business, and especially to our politicians. We cannot be intimidated. But we must be positive.

Pope Francis has reminded us time and again of the witness of charity in the world. From the earliest days of the Church those have been our roots. The poor came to the early believers because they found love and comfort. Others came because they were touched by the witness of goodness. And as a consequence they asked to learn the full message of Jesus. Historically, that is our origin as a Church.

That is why the Little Sisters of the Poor and Mother Teresa’s Sisters are so compelling.

Every Fouth of July we recalled how blessed we have been and are. We love our country. We are grateful for our freedom. We celebrate our United States. We pray for our country and for her protection. But we pray also that we recover individually and collectively our respect for religious freedom. We are free not because our founding fathers so decreed, but because God has made us so.