Month: July 2010

Chuck Colson sounds the alarm about a shift in US policy first noticed by The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom in its 2010 annual report. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton replaced the term “freedom of religion” with “freedom of worship” in a December, 2009 speech at Georgetown University. President Obama first used “freedom of worship” while remarking on the Ft. Hood shooting in November, 2009 and repeated it on trips to China and Japan (source: Christianity Today).

Is it deliberate? Of course it is. Public language by diplomats, particularly when repeated, signals a shift in policy; either that or incompetence in the White House (also a possibility but never with religion or homosexuality which the administration approaches with unmatched earnestness). Colson’s warning is sound and bears consideration. The George Weigel article Colson references in his talk is reproduced below the video.

Ethics and Public Policy Center

The Erosion of Religious Freedom

By George Weigel
Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Connoisseurs of political kamikaze runs will long debate what finished off Martha Coakley in the recent Massachusetts election to fill the seat Edward M. Kennedy held for 47 years.
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Picking up on the theme introduced with the Fr. Michael Oleska piece below (How the self governance of the OCA has benefited Orthodox Christians on this continent), Terry Mattingly writes how it took an outraged and persistent father (dad, not Rev.) to force the Catholic bishops out of self-preserving denial and finally confront — to use the late Fr. Richard John Neuhaus’ phrase — the persistent rot inside the Catholic Church. It’s a harsh indictment, but one confirmed recently by Pope Benedict who said:

The church needs to profoundly relearn penitence, accept purification, learn forgiveness but also justice…The greatest persecution of the church doesn’t come from enemies on the outside but is born from the sin within the church…The church has a profound need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn on the one hand forgiveness but also the necessity of justice. And forgiveness does not substitute justice … We have to relearn these essentials: conversion, prayer, penance.

My point is not to throw stones at the Catholics. We have enough problems of our own (see: Pokrov). But, like the Catholic Church, we must learn that accountability is not just a top down affair.

Terry Mattingly

It wasn’t hard to connect the dots when, after decades of lurid news about the sexual abuse of the young, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger delivered a Good Friday sermon bemoaning “how much filth” was in the church, including “the priesthood.”

Weeks after that signal in 2005, the cardinal became pope. Then at World Youth Day 2008, he said, “I am deeply sorry for the pain and suffering the victims have endured. … These misdeeds, which constitute so grave a betrayal of trust, deserve unequivocal condemnation.”

Read the entire article on the Scripps Howard website.