The Dialog

By Maria Wiering

Catholic News Service

ANNAPOLIS, Md. — The Catholic Church’s objection to the death penalty comes from its consistent teaching that life must be protected from conception to natural death, said Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori.

“At the core of all of (the church’s) public witness is an evident consistency that reflects our reasoned belief that every human life is sacred and to be protected, because every life comes from God, and is destined to return to God as our final judge,” he said.

Archbishop Lori said that view compels him to advocate against Maryland’s death penalty.

He testified Feb. 14 to support a proposed repeal of Maryland’s death penalty at back-to-back committee hearings in the state’s Senate and House of Delegates.

His testimony followed Gov. Martin J. O’Malley, who also spoke in support of the repeal bill he introduced. Other Maryland officials also testified as part of the governor’s panel.

Late Feb. 21, the state Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee voted 6-5 to send the measure to the Senate floor. It was the first time in many years that the committee advanced repeal of the death penalty to a full Senate vote.

The state House of Delegates was to consider the measure in coming weeks.

The death penalty hearings, held by the Senate committee and the House Judiciary Committee, were the first time Archbishop Lori has personally testified before the Maryland Legislature.

The archbishop told lawmakers there are many “worthy arguments” for death penalty repeal, but that the faith community’s perspective “goes beyond these issues.”

“While those who have done terrible harm to others deserve punishment, we urge a response that meets evil with a justice worthy of our best nature as human beings, enlightened by faith in the possibility of redemption and forgiveness,” he said.

Archbishop Lori told The Catholic Review, newspaper of the Baltimore Archdiocese, that the issue affects him personally, as the wife of a now-deceased cousin was murdered years ago.

His family did not seek capital punishment because they did not expect it to bring them closure, he said.

The incident has been in his mind as he has pushed for death penalty repeal in the state, he said.

“Once it touches your family, it gives (the issue) a little more impetus,” he said. “It’s closer to home.’

In his testimony, Archbishop Lori expressed “respect and compassion” for victims’ families, and urged lawmakers to devote more resources to helping them.

“I hope my presence today conveys to you a sense of how important this issue is to the Catholic Church,” he said.

Archbishop Lori is aware that not all Catholics agree that the death penalty should be repealed, and he told The Catholic Review that he urges those who disagree “to look at the reasonable position that the church is offering.”

“We also have the example of Blessed John Paul II, who many times intervened before the execution of someone on death row. I think that should also speak powerfully to us,” he said.

Baltimore Auxiliary Bishop Denis J. Madden also attended the hearings, although he did not testify. He said he hoped his presence also signified his support for repeal.

In 2008, Bishop Madden sat on the Maryland Commission on Capital Punishment, which ultimately recommended death penalty repeal. He said that many of the questions asked by legislators during the hearing were addressed by the panel and included in their final report.

The death penalty, along with gun violence and abortion, topped the issues Maryland Catholics discussed with their state lawmakers Feb. 18 during the Maryland Catholic Conference’s annual Lobby Night.

Archbishop Lori, Bishop Madden and Baltimore Auxiliary Bishops Mitchell T. Rozanski were among the state’s bishops’ who attended the event.

The event began in the afternoon at St. John Neumann with prayer and briefings from the catholic conference’s staff on legislation related to pro-life issues, education and social concerns. Following the presentations, Catholics met with their lawmakers to advocate for laws reflecting Catholic social teaching.

Wiering is on the staff of The Catholic Review, newspaper of the Baltimore Archdiocese.

By Carol Zimmermann

Catholic News Service

Defending religious liberty was a top priority this year for the U.S. Catholic bishops, who repeatedly spoke out against threats to its existence.

Much as they did the year before, the bishops in 2012 spoke out consistently against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ mandate requiring most religious employers to provide free coverage of artificial contraception, sterilization and abortion-causing drugs in their insurance plans, even if they are morally opposed to such coverage.

Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., chairman of the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, the Rev. Matthew Harrison, Ben Mitchell, Rabbi Meir Soloveichik and Craig Mitchell are sworn in before testifying at a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington Feb. 16. The hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was on religious liberty, prompted by debate over a federal mandate on contraceptive coverage.(CNS photo/Bob Roller)

The mandate, put in place in August 2011, has a narrow exemption for employers who object to providing these services on religious grounds, namely if they serve or hire people primarily of their own faith. It does not include a conscience clause for employers who object to providing such coverage.

The HHS issue took center stage early this year when the Obama administration announced Feb. 10 that it would leave the definition of an exempt religious entity but would shift the costs of contraceptives from the policyholders to the insurers. But the Catholic bishops and other religious leaders rejected the change, saying it failed to ensure that Catholic individuals and institutions would not have to pay for services that they consider immoral, because many dioceses and other Catholic entities are self-insured.

At a congressional hearing, now-Archbishop William E. Lori, who head the Baltimore Archdiocese and is chairman of the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, said the ongoing debate over the mandate demonstrated a need for enacting conscience protection into federal law.

The bishops have repeatedly said the mandate is a restriction on religious liberty because the requirement violates church teaching.

They echoed this concern throughout the year and urged lay Catholics to similarly speak out against infringements to religious freedom. Catholics around the country responded by participating in Masses, devotions, holy hours, educational presentations and rallies during the June 21 to July 4 campaign of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called a “Fortnight for Freedom.”

In April, the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Freedom issued a 12-page statement on threats to religious liberty which highlighted the HHS mandate but also included other examples such as: immigration laws that “forbid what the government deems ‘harboring’ of undocumented immigrants;” and government actions in Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia and the state of Illinois that have “driven local Catholic Charities out of the business of providing adoption or foster care services” because the agencies would not place children with same-sex or unmarried heterosexual couples.

Prior to the fortnight events, Archbishop Lori said the USCCB planned to closely monitor the lawsuits filed May 21 by 43 Catholic dioceses, schools, hospitals, social service agencies and other institutions challenging the HHS mandate.

“Even if we win the HHS lawsuits, the larger cultural issue of preserving religious liberty and the place of religion in our culture is something we’re going to have to engage in for many years to come,” he added.

He echoed this sentiment Nov. 12 in a report during the fall general assembly of the USCCB.

“Whatever setbacks or challenges in the efforts to defend religious liberty we may be experiencing, we’re going to stay the course,” he said.

At their annual meeting in Baltimore, the bishops approved a pastoral strategy specifically aimed at addressing critical life, marriage and religious liberty concerns. The campaign, set to begin after Christmas, includes monthly eucharistic holy hours in cathedrals and parishes, daily family rosary, special Prayers of the Faithful at all Masses, fasting and abstinence on Fridays, and the second observance of a Fortnight for Freedom.

Throughout the year, theologians and Catholic leaders discussed the importance of religious freedom and the issue also was addressed by Vatican officials.

In a Nov. 4 speech at the University of Notre Dame, the apostolic nuncio to the United States said threats to religious liberty in the United States may not be as obvious as the religious persecution in other countries, but he stressed that the “not so obvious” threat often “appears inconsequential or seems benign but in fact is not.”

Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano specifically mentioned the contraceptive mandate as a threat to religious liberty but added that it was just one example of attacks on “authentic and legitimate exercise of religious freedom” in the United States.

The archbishop said religious liberty has been threatened when Catholic Charities agencies are “being removed from vital social services that advance the common good because the upright people administering these programs would not adopt policies or engage in procedures that violate fundamental moral principles of the Catholic faith.”

Cardinal Angelo Scola of Milan, Italy, a prominent theologian, said in a Dec. 6 prayer service at the Vatican that most modern democracies have ended up hurting religious freedom in their effort to be “neutral” toward their citizens’ diverse beliefs.

He said the “classic problem of the moral assessment of laws has increasingly turned into a problem of religious liberty,” which he said was explicitly evident in the USCCB’s battle against the HHS contraception mandate.

In governments’ attempt to protect everyone’s religious freedom by being “neutral” or “indifferent” to religion, a well-intentioned secularity “has ended up becoming a model that is ill-disposed toward the religious dimension,” he said.

Thomas Farr, director of the Religious Freedom Project of Georgetown University’s Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs, told Catholic News Service in a Dec. 13 email that the heightened focus on religious liberty by the U.S. bishops and the Vatican is “having an impact, especially on American Catholics,” whom he described as becoming more aware of “an emergent danger to religious communities in the United States.”

He noted that with the federal contraceptive mandate the government is “taking a position that is highly unusual in American history” by using its authority to “require religious individuals and communities to abandon their most sacred beliefs.”

“Unless the administration’s position changes,” he said, “Catholic hospitals, colleges, charities and private businesses will either have to support — through their health care plans — the provision of contraceptive, abortifacient and sterilization services, secularize, or get out of business. That coercive policy would not only suppress the rights of individuals and communities in a way that is highly un-American, but would undermine another pillar of our democracy — civil society.”

By Dennis Sadowski

Catholic News Service

BALTIMORE — The work of defending religious liberty will continue more robustly and without end in the face of growing challenges, said the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty.

Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, told his fellow bishops during the fall general assembly of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that “whatever setbacks or challenges in the efforts to defend religious liberty we may be experiencing, we’re going to stay the course.”

He made the comments in a report on the ad hoc committee’s recent activities Nov. 12.

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By Maria Wiering

Catholic News Service

BALTIMORE — On the eve of the feast day of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, Baltimore Archbishop William E. Lori held up the two martyrs as a source of inspiration for American Catholics during a Mass June 21 launching the U.S. bishops’ much-anticipated “fortnight for freedom.”

“Their courageous witness of faith continues to stir the minds and hearts of people yearning for authentic freedom, and specifically, for religious freedom,” he said.

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By Dennis Sadowski

Catholic News Service

ATLANTA — Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore June 13 acknowledged the U.S. bishops’ “fortnight for freedom” campaign has come under heavy criticism in the secular media, in the blogosphere and by some Catholics as being a partisan political effort.

But the two-week period is meant to be free of politics and will emphasize church teaching on religious freedom, the chairman of the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Freedom said in Atlanta. Read more »

By Dennis Sadowski

Catholic News Service

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Catholic Church’s challenges to the federal government’s contraceptive mandate under the health care law is not an attempt to “throw” the presidential election in favor of one candidate or against another, said the chairman of the bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Freedom.

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By TheDialog

WASHINGTON — Masses at well-known basilicas in Baltimore and Washington will open and close the “fortnight for freedom,” a special period of prayer, study, catechesis and public action proclaimed by the U.S. bishops for June 21 to July 4. Read more »

By George P. Matysek Jr.

Catholic News Service

BALTIMORE — In a jubilant liturgy that highlighted the historic roots of the Baltimore archdiocese while also looking to the future, Archbishop William E. Lori was installed as the 16th archbishop of Baltimore May 16 at the Cathedral of Mary Our Queen.

A smiling Archbishop Lori wore the same pectoral cross that belonged to Archbishop John Carroll, the first archbishop of Baltimore, as he was led to the bishop’s chair by Cardinal Edwin F. O’Brien and Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano, apostolic nuncio to the United States.

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