Newsflash


Write Your Congress Person about this issue Read More about conscience protection at USCCB

In 1634, a mix of Catholic and Protestant settlers arrived in Southern Maryland from England aboard the Ark and the Dove.  They had come at the invitation of the Catholic Lord Baltimore,who had been granted the land by the Protestant King Charles I of England.  While Catholics and Protestants were killing each other in Europe, Lord Baltimore imagined Marylandas a society where people of different faiths could live together peacefully.  This vision was soon codified in Maryland’s 1649 Act Concerning Religion (also called the “Toleration Act”), which was the first law in our nation’s history to protect an individual’s right to freedom of conscience.

Maryland’s early history teaches us that, like any freedom, religious liberty requires constant vigilance and protection, or it will disappear.  Maryland’s experiment in religious toleration ended within a few decades.  The colony was placed under royal control and the Church of England became the established religion.  Discriminatory laws, including the loss of political rights, were enacted against those who refused to conform.  Catholic chapels were closed and Catholics were restricted to practicing their faith in their homes.  The Catholic community lived under this coercion until the American Revolution.

By the end of the 18th century our nation’s founders embraced freedom of religion as an essential condition of a free and democratic society.  So when the Bill of Rights was ratified, religious freedom had the distinction of being the First Amendment.  Religious liberty is indeed the first liberty.

This is our American heritage, our most cherished freedom. If we are not free in our conscience and our practice of religion, all other freedoms are fragile.  If our obligations and duties to God are impeded, or even worse, contradicted by the government, then we can no longer claim to be a land of the free. Is our most cherished freedom truly under threat?

Among many current challenges, consider the recent Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate requiring almost all private health plans to cover contraception, sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs.  For the first time in our history, the federal government will force religious institutions to facilitate drugs and procedures contrary to our moral teaching, and purport to define which religious institutions are “religious enough” to merit an exemption.  This is not a matter of whether contraception may be prohibited by the government. It is not even a matter of whether contraception may be supported by the government.  It is a matter of whether religious people and institutions may be forced by the government to provide coverage for contraception and sterilization, even when it violates our religious beliefs.

Taken from the USCCB Conscience protection initiative- READ MORE.

What You Can Do!

1) PRAY - Follow the following links to guided prayer cards to our Lord with the intercession of our Blessed Mother and St. Thomas More.

Our Lady of Guadalupe, Patroness of the Americas

Mary Immaculate, Patroness of Our Country

St. Thomas More, Patron of Religious Freedom

2) Write to Congress & HHS opposing the mandate and calling for conscience protections. !!!Deadline = June 19!!!

Click HERE to electronically write Congress (with an optional pre-written letter) voicing your conscience protection concerns.

3) Read more about the issue and decide what action is best for you.

USCCB CONSCIENCE PROTECTION WEBSITE

 

 

 
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Religious Liberty, What is at stake?

Sustainability

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Have you heard the topic of the IU Fall Themester: SUSTAINABILITY.  There is a convergence of factors that are raising questions about the “costs” of our consumptive habits.  Can the earth sustain our present lifestyle for very long?  Can the earth endure adding another billion or two persons with our type of consumptive habits (e.g., India, China)?  Earthly nature has some pliability in its ecological bounds, but this pliability is not infinite.  When certain conditions accumulate, a critical threshold will be passed and all kinds of devastating results will ensue, none of which can be reversed.

The sustainability notion takes this earth science calculus into account and seeks to adjust how we use material resources today in order to assure future generations enough resources for a “good life”…or for life at all. 

As Catholics we ought to be actively engaged in this global conversation and project.  It is a matter of Christian stewardship.  In the Genesis 1 Creation Account it says that humanity has been given “dominion” over the earth and all of its beings.  Godly dominion in a spiritual love of creation; it is not a despotic, egoistical domination. That is blatantly not Judeo-Christian!  Therefore, let us analyze how we live, how we use goods, how we make waste and what we do with waste.

November 2009-January 2010 St. Paul Catholic Center engaged the assistance of a group called EarthCare to do an energy audit of our building.  We were hoping to gain two things: (1) ideas of what we could do now to save energy, and (2) what things we would incorporate in any future renovation of the facilities.  One result is that we are learning how to pay better attention to heating and cooling of spaces in the building—notably when they are not being used.  We are purchasing a localized heating/cooling unit for the back chapel.  That will save us using energy to heat/cool the whole church just to make the back chapel pleasant enough for morning Mass.  We are using energy efficient lights as much as possible.  We are installing ceiling fans for the basement rooms for comfort and energy savings.

At St. Paul we recycle: plastics (#1-7), cardboard, glass, aluminum, steel.  Whenever you are throwing out a waste product of these types, look for a recycling basket, especially for plastics (e.g., water bottles)!! 

You can do these things in your homes.  And what about Residence Halls?  Recycle, recycle, recycle.  I am amazed at the litter I see on campus or all of the plastics that are tossed into regular trash bins.  I thought that most young adults were raised with recycling consciousness, but I have yet to see evidence of this.

Sustainability is also a matter of spiritual concern for us.  Our contemporary culture reinforces pushing ourselves to the edge in all affairs: being busy, being sexual, eating, drinking, being angry.  We are tired, distracted, and not very happy, and, more and more, we seek relief by “medicating” ourselves (e.g., alcohol, drugs use).  It IS a culture of dying!  Let’s not go there. 

Our Catholic faith does not reject good things of the earth, but it provides us with soul food: prayer, silence, worship and loving sacrifice.  If you are unaware of this, let us help you find it!  Take stock: When have I meditated for 20 minutes?  When have I studied my faith (since Confirmation)?  Do I celebrate Sunday Mass weekly?  Without these things my faith cannot be sustained…without these things my human spirit won’t be sustained!  That’s a dire option.  Let’s restore the balance!...and rediscover the joy.

 

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