Garvey, "Religious Freedom and the Love of God"

It's a few years old, but I stumbled across it again and thought that it definitely deserves regular re-reading.  Here is John Garvey's address, in June of 2012, to the USCCB, "Religious Freedom and the Love of God."  A bit:

. . . One thing we can say is that there has been a decline in respect for religious liberty. We can measure this in two ways. Think about a suit of armor. One measure of its protection is its scope, or the extent of its coverage. (A bulletproof vest covers the heart and lungs. A knight’s armor covers from head to toe.) The other measure is its strength. (A suit of armor will protect the knight against arrows but not against armor-piercing bullets.) 

Religious liberty these days is given a lot less scope. It protects priests but not teachers, Loyola but not St. Xavier, religious orders but not hospitals. Religious organizations like schools, hospitals, and Catholic Charities provide the public with valuable services. The government lets them do this work, but it is blind to their religious dimension. The problem with this way of parsing the work of religious institutions is that they do their work because of their religious beliefs. Catholic Charities does adoptions because the gospel tells us to care for the weak and vulnerable. Catholic universities exist because the gospel tells us to teach all nations. Migration and Refugee Services lives out the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount and Matthew 25. This is the heart of the Christian religion. Serving others – not just Catholics; all others – is not just a recommendation. It’s a requirement. 

Religious liberty also has less strength. It is weaker than it once was. This happened as a matter of constitutional law in 1990 when the Supreme Court traded the rule of Sherbert v. Verner2 for the rule of Employment Division v. Smith.3 The first amendment rule once was that religious liberty is protected unless the government has a compelling reason to override it – like protecting the national security in time of war, or preventing the taking of innocent life. Now the rule is that religion is protected against discrimination; but otherwise the government can ignore religious claims for any legitimate reason (like the aesthetic preferences of a historic preservation code). 

Smith invited religious people to seek protection from the elected branches of government rather than the judiciary, as a matter of statutory and regulatory law rather than constitutional law. In the last year we have seen the elected branches deny that protection. When the law forces Catholic Charities to choose between living the beatitudes and affirming behavior (like gay marriage) that the Church proscribes, freedom of religion is altogether lost. Catholic Charities has to set aside one or another of its beliefs: either the charity or the obedience they are called to in the gospel. . . .