Religious Liberty commissioners met for the final scheduled meeting and urged that the commission continue to \u201cpersevere in monitoring\u201d threats to religious liberty.<\/p>\n
Chair Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Vice Chair Ben Carson hosted the April 13 meeting with members Ryan Anderson; Bishop Robert Barron of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota; and Allyson Ho among others on the panel that was created by President Donald Trump to advocate for freedom of religious belief.<\/p>\n
They discussed recommendations to Trump on how to protect religious freedom and reflected on the past year of sessions. While the hearing was the last scheduled meeting, many proposed that it continue to meet in some capacity as \u201cthreats to religious freedom both at home and abroad are not disappearing anytime soon,\u201d Barron said.<\/p>\n
Reiterating a statement he said at the first hearing, Barron said: \u201cThe principal enemy of religious liberty in our country is what I call the ideology of self invention.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is the philosophical program that denies the objectivity of moral values and the stability of human nature, and which proposes consequently that individual choice alone is the determiner of purpose and meaning,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis dictatorship of relativism has taken hold in many of our institutions of government, education, and health care and its advocates correctly recognize that their most important intellectual opponents are precisely those who subscribe to traditional religion,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u02bcs no exaggeration to say that the proponents of the culture of self invention want religion out of the pivotal institutions of our society,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis philosophical opposition manifests itself in a number of concrete ways,\u201d Barron said. He detailed \u201cthe anti-religious violence that\u02bcs been increasing dramatically in our country over the past five to 10 years,\u201d including attacks on churches, statues, and religious peoples.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn regard to health care, the culture of self invention expresses itself in an aggressive attitude toward those physicians and nurses who refuse on religious grounds to participate in certain medical procedures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n It is seen in \u201cmandates regarding abortion and contraception, IVF insurance mandates to which Catholics strenuously object, and the requirement to perform so-called gender transition surgeries,” Barron said.<\/p>\n Also, \u201cunder this health care rubric, we should continue to advocate for pro-life demonstrators who simply want the right to pray at sites where abortions are being performed,\u201d Barron said. Criminalizing such righteous activity is a gross violation of religious liberty, he said.<\/p>\n Barron detailed the need to protect religious social service organizations, including Catholic Charities, promote parents as most important educators of their children, and never require priests to break the seal of confession because it is a \u201cgross violation of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment.\u201d<\/p>\n Barron also noted the need to continue to work against the rise of antisemitism, which is \u201cencouraged by figures on both the left and the right sides of the political spectrum.\u201d<\/p>\n The bishop concluded by addressing immigration, saying the Church “insists that those Catholics who are incarcerated in connection to immigration violations have a right to humane treatment and access to the sacraments,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Catholics who are incarcerated in connection to immigration violations have a right to humane treatment and access to the sacraments.<\/p>\n\n