My "Fortnight for Freedom" talk

Here's a short story about a talk I gave, at the local Cathedral, in connection with the Fortnight for Freedom.  A taste:

“Religious freedom is a human right — not a concession — grounded in human dignity, fundamental and essential for human flourishing. Every person, because he or she is a person has the right to religious liberty.”

This was the message University of Notre Dame law professor Richard Garnett brought to an audience in St. Matthew Cathedral on the eve of July 4, the night before the official closing of the U.S. Bishops’ Fortnight for Freedom. Garnett is an expert on the U.S. Constitution and is a consultant to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty.

“Our founders put religious liberty at the heart, the core, not the periphery, of their bold new project,” he continued. “They knew that, unless our most sacred things are protected, all our other freedoms — press, speech, conscience, privacy — are vulnerable. Religious freedom was widely seen not as a gift, but, as it should be, as part of the very structure of a free society.”