In Defense of Religious Freedom

In Defense of Religious Freedom A.)In pursuit of the truth - www.cinopsbegoneblogspot.com - Wednesday, May 2, 2012 1.)By Joan Frawley Desmond, National Catholic Register, Mar. 25 - Apr. 7, 2012 2.)“Made in the Image of God” - Evangelicals and Catholics Together is an ecumenical fellowship established by the late Father Richard John Neuhaus, the founding editor of First Things, and Charles (Chuck) Colson, the Watergate figure and Christian convert who founded Prison Ministries, a nationwide outreach program to prison inmates. 3.)“In Defense of Religious Freedom” provides relatively brief but powerful reflections on the biblical basis for religious freedom, backed up with doctrinal statements from the Catholic and evangelical organizations. 4.)“In Genesis 1:26, the Bible teaches us that only human beings are made ‘in the image of God,’ No one bears this image (imago Dei) more than others; no one has the right to assert that by reason of race, tribe, ethnicity, class or sex his imaging of God is superior to another,” reads the statement. 5.)“In a world of manifest and innumerable inequalities, this radical equality of all men and women before God is the bond that allows us to speak meaningfully of a human family, a human race, in which we share mutual obligations - including the obligation to recognize and honor that sanctuary of conscience in which each person can meet the divine source of life. 6.)“Any power, be it cultural or political that puts unwarranted impediments in the path of the human quest for truth, which culminates in the human quest for God, is violating the order of creation. … Fidel Castro’s Cuba, for example, has been lauded for improving health-care services, and Castro’s /[Hitler supporters in the West] have shrugged off his suppression of basic freedoms… 7.)Two Years in the Making: Work on the statement began two years ago, as members of the ecumenical group became increasingly concerned about the First Amendment threat posed by the legal same-sex “marriage” and the weakening of conscience protections for health-care providers. [I wish these matters were brought to the Supreme Court years ago.] 8.)“Catholics and evangelicals constitute the two largest religious groupings in North America…” “Recently, Colson and George wrote an open letter to evangelicals, urging them to join with Catholics against an “unjust mandate that violates our first freedom as Americans. Both evangelicals and Catholics are fully convinced that religious liberty is a pre-political right which must be respected by the state,” noted Father Thomas Guarinao of Seton Hall University in New Jersey, who played a major role in forging the statement… 9.)“We knew that contemporary liberal legal scholars were thinking about narrowing our constitutional protections of religious liberty,” said R.R. “Rusty” Reno, the editor of First Things, who helped with the Evangelicals and Catholics Together statement. “It turns out that this tendency now influences the Obama administration, which has adopted a very narrow view of what counts as a religious organization fully protected by the Constitution. 10.)George H. Kubeck- Why the change by liberal scholars? To undercut religious influence in our society. This is a violation of the 1st Amendment which the present Supreme Court will concur with.