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June 20, 2016From: St. Mary of the Angels Parish
202 S. Union Street | Olean, NY
CONTACT: Jennifer Kane, Director of Communications
St. Mary of the Angels to hold two weeks of prayer services for Religious Freedom
(OLEAN, NY) — To be Catholic and American should not mean having to choose one over the other. That is the focus of the annual Fortnight for Freedom event in which United States Catholic bishops call upon their parishes across the nation to engage in two weeks of prayer for the protection of religious freedom. St. Mary of the Angels parish is participating in the annual Fortnight For Freedom event with daily prayer services focused on religious liberty which the bishops warn is much more than merely “freedom to worship.”
“It is about doing the good works our faith calls us to do, without having to compromise that very same faith,” said Very Rev. Gregory Dobson, pastor of St. Mary of the Angels church.
The event begins June 21 (feast of two martyrs for religious freedom, St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More) and ends on July 4.
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops lists recent examples of government mandates and court decisions that have resulted in what they consider forcing people of faith to violate their religious conscience or abandon charitable services altogether. Among the examples the bishops list are:-
The Department of Health and Human Services' mandates forcing religious institutions to facilitate and fund products contrary to their own moral teaching and beliefs. This same agency has taken upon itself to define which religious institutions are "religious enough" to merit protection of their religious liberty, according to the USCCB.
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State immigration laws forbidding what the government deems "harboring" of undocumented immigrants—and what the Church deems to be Christian charity and pastoral care to those immigrants.
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Municipalities and states driving local Catholic Charities out of the business of providing adoption or foster care services—by revoking their licenses, by ending their government contracts, or both—because those Charities refused to place children with same-sex couples or unmarried opposite-sex couples who cohabit. The bishops point to Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia, and the state of Illinois where this has occurred.
“Religious liberty is not only about our ability to go to Mass on Sunday or pray the Rosary at home,” the USCCB states in its official document on the issue, Our First, Most Cherished Liberty. “It is about whether we can make our contribution to the common good of all Americans […] Without religious liberty properly understood, all Americans suffer, deprived of the essential contribution in education, health care, feeding the hungry, civil rights, and social services that religious Americans make every day, both here at home and overseas,” the document states.
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ document, Our First, Most Cherished Liberty: A Statement of Religious Liberty [ http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/our-first-most-cherished-liberty.cfm]
St. Mary of the Angels’s Fortnight For Freedom Schedule -
