This latest erosion of our first freedom should make all Americans pause. When the government tampers with a freedom so fundamental to the life of our nation, one shudders to think what lies ahead. – Timothy Dolan

We need to stand up and say confidently and resolutely to Kathleen Sebelius, her thugs at HHS, and her puppet-master in the White House: Your view is false and untrue; it radically violates human good and is destructive of communal integrity. Forcing persons wrongfully to cooperate in actions they judge to be evil is evil. And no president, king, or emperor rightly demands others to do what is evil. We won’t do it. – Christian Brugger

What if we all said no?

[I]t is imperative that the entire Catholic community in the United States come to realize the grave threats to the Church’s public moral witness presented by a radical secularism which finds increasing expression in the political and cultural spheres. The seriousness of these threats needs to be clearly appreciated at every level of ecclesial life. Of particular concern are certain attempts being made to limit that most cherished of American freedoms, the freedom of religion. – Benedict XVI

In August 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services issued an interim final rule that will require most health insurance plans to cover preventive services for women including recommended contraceptive services without charging a co-pay, co-insurance or a deductible. . . . Today the department is announcing that the final rule on preventive health services will ensure that women with health insurance coverage will have access to the full range of the Institute of Medicine’s recommended preventive services, including all FDA-approved forms of contraception. – Kathleen Sebelius

This is going to be a long year.

Between 2000 and 2010, 160 thousand Christians were being killed each year because of their faith (OCSE figures). In 52 countries across the world (35 of which are Muslim countries), followers of Christ are treated as second rate citizens. In many cases, physically eliminating them is not considered an offence. The OCSE representative for the fight against discrimination put it like this: “A Christian is killed every five minutes because of their religious faith.” The massacre of Coptic Christians took place just a few days ago. Dominique Mamberti, the Holy See’s “foreign affairs minister” took stock of the situation, saying: “Jesus’ followers are the most persecuted religious group on Earth.” – La Stampa

Complex Persecution

The overt and aggressive private and public anti-Christian sentiment so evident in Iraq . . . is not limited to Iraq. It is to be found throughout the lesser and greater Middle East, throughout Asia. It is to be found also in Africa and increasingly it is being found within the once-Christian lands of Western Europe. – Cardinal Seán Brady, archbishop of Armagh, Ireland

Free to Serve

[R]eligious freedom is humanity’s first and most important freedom. Our first governor is God, our Creator, the Governor of the universe. We are created for a religious purpose. We have a religious destiny. Our right to pursue this destiny precedes the state. Any attempt to suppress our right to worship, preach, teach, practice, organize and peacefully engage society because of our belief in God is an attack not only on the cornerstone of human dignity, but also on the identity of the American experiment. – Charles J. Chaput

Witness for the Persecution

The Manhattan Declaration

A Call of Christian Conscience

Christians, when they have lived up to the highest ideals of their faith, have defended the weak and vulnerable and worked tirelessly to protect and strengthen vital institutions of civil society, beginning with the family.

We are Orthodox, Catholic, and evangelical Christians who have united at this hour to reaffirm fundamental truths about justice and the common good, and to call upon our fellow citizens, believers and non-believers alike, to join us in defending them. These truths are:

1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

Inasmuch as these truths are foundational to human dignity and the well-being of society, they are inviolable and non-negotiable. Because they are increasingly under assault from powerful forces in our culture, we are compelled today to speak out forcefully in their defense, and to commit ourselves to honoring them fully no matter what pressures are brought upon us and our institutions to abandon or compromise them. We make this commitment not as partisans of any political group but as followers of Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.

Sign the declaration!

On college campuses, in newsrooms and now in the highest corridors of power, with Barack Obama in the Oval Office, the politically correct left is wielding its weaponry with the confidence that it can take down any group, anyone or anything. The thought police are now officially in charge. — Andrew Breitbart

Discrimination against Christians is the one acceptable bigotry; indeed, it appears it will soon be compulsory. The “tolerant” will not tolerate us.

It’s not a pleasant thought, but we all know that there exists in America today an anti-religious element whose antipathy for our fervor rivals that of foreign tyrants. We can be thankful that the militant atheists and antitheists among us have not yet clutched the power they crave to harness their hostility and direct it against us. But they bide their time, inching ever forward. And we, if we shirk our responsibility to export religious freedom to all the suffering saints across God’s globe, do we not embolden the foes of our faith at home and thus invite the extension of persecution to our own land? — Behind the Headlines, F.R. Duplantier, 1998