“The challenge facing you, dear friends, is to increase people’s awareness of the importance for society of religious freedom; to defend that freedom against those who would take religion out of the public domain and establish secularism as America’s official faith. And it is vitally necessary for the very survival of the American experience, to transmit to the next generation the precious legacy of religious freedom and the convictions which sustain it.”
— Blessed John Paul II, 1995 Baltimore, Basilica of the Assumption
Today across the United States, Catholics are beginning a 14 day journey of prayer and fasting for the cause of religious freedom. As people of faith we always begin with prayer, but we also follow our prayer with action. We are to pray as if everything relies upon God, and act as if everything relies upon us. My hope is that over the next two weeks we will raise awareness among all people who value religious freedom to stand together so that this essential right is not lost in our country.
It saddens me that we have reached the point where our news media is now not only ignoring and distorting the truth when it comes to our Church, but have begun to engage in outright attacks upon the Catholic Church. Full page ads encouraging Catholics to “quit the Church” have now been run in three nationally respected newspapers. Christians in this country can still stand up and let their voices be heard. That always begins by inviting God into the process.
Please join me in prayer for our Church and nation.
