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?

Awaken. Be Mindful

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Happy New Year!  Surprised?  Well today is the beginning of the new liturgical year in the Church (remember: in early September the Jewish community celebrated New Year—Rosh Hashanah).  This year we will hear gospel readings mostly from Matthew (Cycle A).  

The liturgical year begins with Advent (“coming”).  This refers to the coming of the Lord.  The determination of Advent is based on the first coming of Christ and his Incarnation (human birth) in Bethlehem: Christmas.  But Advent plays on our imagination because it begins with texts alluding to the glorious Second Coming of the Lord when he, who has been crucified and is risen, returns to usher in the fullness of God’s reign.  So the liturgy points simultaneously in two directions: toward that humble entry into the human condition and toward that glorified manifestation as Lord of all.  The point is: The Lord is coming.  Advent is an opportunity to school ourselves in the gospel manner of anticipation/preparation—wakefulness.

There are challenges to being spiritually awake and mindful.  Our particular dilemma is being self-absorbed.  The mechanism most commonly used is being ‘plugged in.”  Now, ‘plugging in’ inserts an artificial world in our consciousness in place of our surroundings.  Folks who have earbuds literally cannot hear their surroundings.  I have discovered that speaking to someone who is ‘plugged in’ is fruitless until they take out a bud to hear me (imagine: can one hear an emergency vehicle/siren coming?).  And cell phones have inserted another audible distraction to one’s surroundings.  In both cases, our level of consciousness is hijacked by the insertion of sound guided by our intrapersonal level only.  Our surroundings are mute, but also our inner soul is crowded out by sound (noise?).  Advent begs for our attention.

Awaken to the inner ‘sound’…’sound of silence,’ sound of the Lord.  In order to do this, plan (yes, determine exact time and place) where you can spend ten or fifteen minutes of your day in undisturbed time in meditation.  It will awaken your ‘hearing’ the inner voice, to the Spirit.  If you engage in this meditation you will slow yourself down; that’s not bad in this busy, rushing world.  When have you had a ‘breather’ during a weekday?  It will draw you toward peace; it is a good thing to be free from the demands of productive every minute of your existence.  For one without employment (sadly that is the case for some who seek to be productive), it is a claim that our human worth is not directed solely by producing.  In either case, our soul is alive…and we are alive…and we are becoming attentive to the Lord.  

May Advent open this portal to the Sacred.

Opportunity for meditation: St. Paul will have a 24-hour adoration beginning after 8 pm Mass on December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, until 6:30 pm on December 9.  This is in preparation for the Advent Reconciliation Service on Thursday the 9th.  The Blessed Sacrament will be exposed in the main church for this silent prayer.  Pick a one-hour time for yourself.  Give yourself an ‘advent gift’.

 

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