Archbishop Fiorenza on religious freedom

I've been really blessed, in recent years, with the opportunity to get to know Archbishop Emeritus Joseph Fiorenza (Galveston-Houston).  He's a holy and thoughtful man.  I happened to come across this Red Mass homily he delivered, in New Mexico, on religious freedom.  It's well worth a read.  Here's a bit:

It seems to me there will be more of these efforts to restrict the exercise of religion to within church walls. The secular world and the sacred are not in themselves opposed to one another. After all, Jesus said, "render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." The real problem is a form of secularism, called profane secularism which seeks to exclude God from all public life and confine Him to the church or synagogue or mosque. The growing profane secularization of our society will seek to impose on religious organizations a form of legislative dictatorship in violation of the traditional respect both federal and state legislators have had for religious freedom as an important ingredient to freedom of worship.

This tradition reaches back to President Thomas Jefferson who wrote in 1804 to the Ursuline nuns in New Orleans where the first Catholic hospital was established that their charitable works could continue in accord with their own rules "without interference from civil authority". This pledge of our third president is in jeopardy if current secular trends infringe on the freedom of religion.