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Washington D.C., Oct 12, 2016 / 05:26 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the closing weeks of the Jubilee Year of Mercy, Catholics should pray and fast for “a culture of life,” one Catholic member of Congress has said.

“Like in the time of Queen Esther, the faithful and faith-filled need to pray and fast for God’s mercy, healing, justice, humane laws and policies and conversion. An outpouring of the Holy Spirit,” Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), co-chair of the Bipartisan Congressional Pro-Life Caucus, told pilgrims on the International Day of Prayer and Fasting on Monday.

“For a time such as this, the urgency now is for persevering prayer including the Rosary and Chaplet of Mercy, asking God in Jesus’ name for protection for the weakest and most vulnerable – unborn children, persons with disabilities, and the frail elderly,” he continued.

The 24th International Week of Prayer and Fasting took place from Oct. 2-10. It culminated in an all-day prayer vigil on Monday at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, in Washington, D.C.

Leaders of the prayer and fasting campaign were joined this year by the Marians of the Immaculate Conception and the pro-life group Priests for Life.

Global crises – including a record number of refugees and deadly natural disasters – were cited as the week began to emphasize the need for prayer. The current the Jubilee Year of Mercy was also cited.

The week’s prayer intentions were the “conversion of peoples and nations,” “to build a culture of life,” “to defend the sanctity of marriage and family life,” and “for peace and to implore God’s mercy.”

Maureen Flynn, who chaired the event’s coalition, said in a statement that “peace can only come to us from the return of humanity to God through means of conversion, to which we are being called this day by means of prayer, fasting, and penance. Prayer and fasting can stop wars and will obtain for our nation and our world great graces from God.”

Rep. Smith was joined by Lila Rose, founder of the pro-life group Live Action, in addressing pilgrims on Monday at the basilica, and Fr. Chris M. Alar, MIC, gave the homily at the Mass on the International day of Prayer and Fasting.

Jesus commanded his followers to fast in the Gospel. He himself fasted for 40 days in the desert, and he said that certain demons could only be driven out through prayer and fasting. Rep. Smith noted.

The need for this is all the more dire because of current problems, he said, pointing to pro-life legislation being overturned in the courts, a movement to eliminate the Hyde Amendment’s prohibition on federal funding of abortions, and moves to force churches to include abortion coverage in health plans, like in California.

Yet Smith exhorted the faithful not to lose heart but to continue praying and working to build a culture of life.

“Discouragement is a luxury we can’t afford,” he said. “We must become even more determined to protect the least of our brethren and expose the grand deception so effectively executed by the abortion industry.”

Catholics should also remember that in protecting the unborn, they are protecting Jesus, he stressed. “Finally, Jesus tells us in Matthew 25 that whatever we do for the least of these, we do it to Him. To defend the unborn child is to defend Jesus.”

And he added that Catholics must pray for not only the unborn, but also for mothers who have suffered from abortions.

“Post-abortive women need our prayers today – everyday – as the Church strives to reach them with ministries like Project Rachel, Rachael’s Vineyard, and the Silent No More awareness campaign,” he said.

“I would argue that the past and present need not be prologue. We can rally. We can surge in support of the culture of life,” he continued. “By the grace of God – through prayers, fasting, and hard work, the culture of life must be established – saving tens of millions.”

 

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Washington D.C., Oct 12, 2016 / 05:36 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A coalition of religious and civic leaders has denounced a report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights which said appeals to religious freedom are usually just discrimination-in-disguise.

“We took no position on the great cultural and moral debates facing our nation, except the position that in America everyone has a voice,” Dr. Tom Farr, president of the Religious Freedom Institute and director of the Religious Freedom Project at Georgetown University, stated of the letter that he and other leaders signed.

“Our founding generation would be scandalized that a government agency has asserted, in effect, that Americans who exercise their religious freedom are doing so with evil intent, and that the First Amendment’s guarantee of the free exercise of religion should be considered null and void. Every American should condemn this report,” Dr. Farr continued.

In September, a report by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights – “Peaceful Coexistence: reconciling non-discrimination principles with religious liberties” – explored the supposed conflicts between appeals to religious freedom by churches, religious groups, and employers, and claims of discrimination by employees, customers, and other members of society.

Some of the common examples of conflict highlighted in the report were businesses declining to serve same-sex weddings for religious reasons – while their customers might claim they are being discriminated against for not being served – and churches refusing to include contraceptives in employee health plans, while their female employees might claim discrimination for not having birth control coverage.

The report claimed that many persons, businesses, and groups “use the pretext of religious doctrines to discriminate” and sided against religious exemptions for persons and groups in many cases.

“Civil rights protections ensuring nondiscrimination, as embodied in the Constitution, laws, and policies, are of preeminent importance in American jurisprudence,” it stated, noting that “religious exemptions to the protections of civil rights based upon classifications such as race, color, national origin, sex, disability status, sexual orientation, and gender identity, when they are permissible, significantly infringe upon these civil rights.”

The commission’s chair Martin R. Castro, appointed by President Obama, actually decried many appeals to “religious liberty” in his own remarks, saying that “the phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.”

In response, a coalition of Catholic, Evangelical, Jewish, Muslim, Baha'i, and Mormon leaders – and even leaders of non-religious groups – sent a letter Oct. 7 to President Obama, House Speaker Paul Ryan, and Senate President Pro Tempore Orrin Hatch.

“In light of this, we call upon each of you to renounce publicly the claim that ‘religious freedom’ and ‘religious liberty’ are ‘code words’ or a ‘pretext’ for various forms of discrimination,” the coalition stated. “There should be no place in our government for such a low view of our First Freedom – the first of our civil rights – least of all from a body dedicated to protecting them all.”

Signers included Farr; Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore, chair of the U.S. Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty; Charles Haynes, vice president of the Newseum Institute; Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; Bishop Gregory John Mansour of the Eparchy of Saint Maron of Brooklyn; Nathan J. Diament of the Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America; and Sheikh Hamza Yusuf Hanson, president of Zaytuna College.

“We write to you as the authorities responsible for appointing members of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights,” the letter stated, noting that the report in question “stigmatizes tens of millions of religious Americans, their communities, and their faith-based institutions, and threatens the religious freedom of all our citizens.”

The leaders insisted that “each of us opposes hateful rhetoric and actions.”

“We believe in the equality of all Americans before the law, regardless of creed or community. But we are both determined and unafraid to speak the truth about beliefs we have held for millennia,” they stated.

Religious freedom is “the first of our civil rights,” the letter insisted, and differences of opinion on matters of conscience is part of what should be a vibrant public square.

“The genius of American democracy is that it invites everyone into the public square, on the basis of full equality, to contend over the laws and policies that reflect our values and our understanding of the common good,” the letter stated.

The government must not infringe upon this debate and refer to one side as bigoted, the leaders maintained: “Slandering ideas and arguments with which one disagrees as ‘racism’ or ‘phobia’ not only cheapens the meaning of those words, but can have a chilling effect on healthy debate over, or dissent from, the prevailing orthodoxy.”

And religious beliefs cannot be a private matter, but can and should be brought into the public square, the leaders continued:

“Frederick Douglas, Abraham Lincoln, William Jennings Bryan, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King – indeed, the majority of great reformers in American history – were not only motivated by faith, but repeatedly used religious language to argue for their cause.”

“So to say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates is a practical absurdity.”

The commission’s report also called for the repeal of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which would result in a dramatic shift of jurisprudence on religious freedom cases.

When it was published, one of the commissioners dissenting from the report, Gail Heriot, issued a scathing rebuke of the report and of Castro’s statements.  

She stated that “the Commission majority takes a complex subject and tries to make it simple – far too simple. Not many legal or constitutional issues come down to good guys vs. bad guys.”

“In some ways, I envy anyone who can dismiss those who disagree with him as mere hypocrites,” she added.

“Does Chairman Castro really believe that the Little Sisters of the Poor, whose case is currently before the Supreme Court, are just a bunch of hypocrites? Does he believe that they are making up their concern over being compelled to finance their employees' contraception? Does he think they really just want to save money?”

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By Julie Asher

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- The chief liaison to Republican nominee Donald Trump for Catholic issues said that emails released Oct. 11 by WikiLeaks "reveal the depths of the hostility of Hillary Clinton and her campaign toward Catholics."

The emails illustrate "the open anti-Catholic bigotry of her senior advisers, who attack the deeply held beliefs and theology of Catholics," said liaison Joseph Cella, who is the founder of the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast.

On Oct. 12, Catholic News Service sent an email to the Clinton campaign seeking comment, but there was no immediate reply. A Time magazine story published online late Oct. 12 said Brian Fallon, a Clinton spokesperson, responded to the charges of anti-Catholicism, calling it a "faux controversy" courtesy of a WikiLeaks hack.

Cella was referring to a leaked email chain with the subject "Conservative Catholicism" from 2011 in which Jennifer Palmieri, a Catholic herself, who is now Clinton's communications director, and John Halpin, a fellow at the Center for American Progress, discussed Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corp, a media conglomerate that includes Fox News in its holdings, and Wall Street Journal managing editor Robert Thomson had their children baptized as Catholics.

"Many of the most powerful elements of the conservative movement are all Catholic -- many converts. ... It's an amazing bastardization of the faith," Halpin wrote in an email to Palmieri and John Podesta, Hillary's campaign chairman who was chief of staff to President Bill Clinton and has been a counselor to President Barack Obama. "They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy."

Halpin added: "I imagine they think it is the most socially acceptable politically conservative religion. Their rich friends wouldn't understand if they became evangelicals."

Podesta, himself a Catholic, did not respond.

Cella said these advisers in "viciously mocking Catholics as they have, turn the clock back to the days of the 20th-century "No Catholics Need Apply" type of discrimination. Hillary Clinton and her campaign should be ashamed of themselves and should immediately apologize to all Catholics and people of goodwill in the United States."

In another leaked email to Podesta, Sandy Newman, president of Voices for Progress, said:"This whole controversy with the bishops opposing contraceptive coverage, even though 98 percent of Catholic women, and their conjugal partners, have used contraception, has me thinking. ... There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a Middle Ages dictatorship and the beginning of a little democracy and respect for gender equality in the Catholic Church

"Is contraceptive coverage an issue around which that could happen?" she asked in her Feb. 10, 2012, email.

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