"Recent international and national events present a disturbing trend of threats to freedom of conscience and religion experienced by those who suffer from bias, prejudice, hate propaganda, discrimination and persecution because of their religious beliefs.""Conscience is not, however, an absolute placed above truth. Rather, by its very nature, conscience has a relation to objective truth, a truth which is universal and which all must seek."
"Believers must therefore be allowed to play their part in formulating public policy and in contributing to society as a way of living their faith in daily practice. When this right is truly acknowledged, religious communities and institutions can operate freely for the betterment of society through initiatives in the social, charitable, health care, and educational sectors, which benefit all citizens, especially the poorest and most marginalized."
"In the past decade in Canada there have been several situations that raise the question whether our right to freedom of conscience and religion is everywhere respected."
"We all need to be vigilant in preserving, in a respectful manner, the religious symbols and celebrations which express the particular spiritual heritage of nations shaped in the crucible of Christianity. Forcing religious believers to keep their convictions to themselves, while
atheists and agnostics are under no such restriction is, in fact, an expression of religious intolerance."
"Those who refuse to cooperate with an unjust law or practice that would oblige them to act against their conscience – and are not given the right to conscientious objection or accorded respectful accommodation – must be prepared to suffer the consequences that result from fidelity to Christ."
Read the rest there.
While it's great that the CCCB for once is picking up on things before they become a national crisis (as Canada's federal government, not its provincial ones, are avoiding national imposition on people's consciences), like the one on sexual mores with the youth, I suspect this letter is "dead on arrival." When I start seeing and hearing this from the pulpits, or being distributed in your average Catholic Church on any given Sunday, I'll start believing these letters have any credit whatsoever in the Canadian Catholic atmosphere. I definitely won't see my socially minded pastor talk about this or distribute this at our parish. He thinks that renovations to the Church and making the kids stand around the altar at 1st communions during the Mass after before the Our Father are more important that our parish's spiritual welfare.
ReplyDeleteAs a side note, thank you for blogging about this. Were you not to blog about this, I wouldn't have known it existed.