Friday, November 18, 2011

And about the U.S. Catholic Bishops' Religious Liberty Initiative



And about the recent USCCB meeting and the U.S. Catholic bishops' religious liberty initiative: at the Franciscan spirituality blog site Dating God, Bro. Daniel P. Horan takes apart the U.S. bishops' arguments undergirding this initiative, and finds them significantly lacking in cogency.  They contain "a host of contradictions and ill-fitting arguments."  


And they purport to be all about serving religious freedom when their goal is actually to deny freedom to some citizens and some groups in American society:

Religious liberty is not a theme that is appropriately invoked to justify denial of other rights, which is what the USCCB argument under the guise of “religious liberty” is all about. 

And if the Catholic bishops really wanted to make a significant and meaningful impact on American culture vis-a-vis marital values and the ethic of life, they'd concern themselves with educating their own flock and then society at large--and they'd do so first of all by embodying in their own actions and their relationship to their flock the values they want to communicate to the public.

But instead:

The Church leaders here are fixated on legislating morality instead of working to both address the more systemic issue of injustice in our society and help the faithful develop a well-informed conscience. 

Indeed.  Horan seems right on target to me.

(A note of thanks to Jim McCrea for emailing the Dating God posting to me and others, and one to Phil Ewing in the comments section below, for alerting me to the fact that Dan Horan wrote the Dating God posting--information for which I searched in vain as I uploaded this posting.)

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