Newman Society President: Fight Threats to Religious Liberty by Renewing Catholic Identity

• Justice Department and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) efforts to convince the Supreme Court to eliminate the “ministerial exception,” a longtime principle in the federal courts which protects religious institutions from discrimination lawsuits related to clergy and other employees engaged in ministry;
  
  
• threatened restrictions on federal grants that would forbid faith-based recipients to hire employees based on religious beliefs;
  
  
• the EEOC’s abuse of federal civil rights laws, claiming that a Catholic college’s refusal to cover contraceptives in its employee health plan is “pregnancy discrimination;”
  
  
• Department of Health and Human Services regulations forcing Catholic institutions to cover sterilization and contraceptives (including some that cause abortion) in health plans for employees and students; and
  

• the National Labor Relations Board’s assertion of authority over labor relations at Catholic colleges, in violation of Supreme Court and other federal court rulings.

“The federal government has no constitutional basis for determining what makes an entity truly Catholic—that decision belongs with the Church and her bishops,” Reilly said. “We must stand firmly against government encroachment into religious belief and practice.

“But there is little question that the apparent hypocrisy of some Catholic colleges, charities, schools and other entities—which may dissent from church teachings, or may have watered down their religious identity in search of state and federal funds—reduces public sympathy for groups whose rights are threatened.

“...What an increasingly secular society sees as the hypocrisy of religious people and organizations is only going to increase the pressure on government to ignore and violate our religious freedoms. If these matters are so important to us that we require special exemptions or even the overturning of laws under the First Amendment, then we had better act like they are important.

“There is no question that the threats to Catholics’ religious liberty are wrong. But it is the failure of the Church to respond adequately to dissent, to clearly distinguish Catholic from secular identity, that endangers even the most faithful Catholic apostolates by feeding suspicion in a culture already suspicious of the Church.”

Reilly added that the Church needs the sort of Catholic leaders emerging from faithful Catholic colleges to help preserve Catholic freedoms into the future.

“We need young men and women who are formed intellectually, spiritually and socially to be as convinced of the truth and courageous in their faith as was Saint Thomas More,” Reilly said. “We need businessmen, politicians, educators, doctors, parents who will joyfully challenge a secular culture and face the prospect of persecution.”

Over the past few years, The Cardinal Newman Society has been heavily engaged in promoting and defending the religious liberties of Catholic colleges and universities. Last month, CNS commissioned a legal analysis of the Obama Administration’s health insurance mandate for sterilization and contraceptives and organized 18 Catholic colleges and universities to join in an appeal to the Department of Health and Human Services against the mandate. CNS has also defended CUA’s single-sex dorm policy and published materials to help Catholic colleges and universities protect their religious liberty.

Tools for the defense of religious liberty published by CNS this year include a step-by-step plan for Catholic colleges to protect religious freedoms by enhancing Catholic identity; a comprehensive legal background describing assaults from the NLRB; and a handbook for Catholic college leaders helping them conform to the Church’s vision for Catholic higher education.

For an overview of the work of CNS to defend religious liberty, click here.

Founded in 1992, the purpose of SCSS, according to its website, “is to bring Catholic scholars, professors, teachers, researchers, practitioners, writers, and others in the social and related disciplines into association to produce objective knowledge and analysis about the political, social, and economic orders which can assist the Catholic Church in fulfilling her various apostolic efforts, and which can bring the Church’s social and other teaching and the Natural Law to bear on addressing the challenges and problems of modern culture.”