Protection of Conscience Project News
Service, not Servitude
The U.S. Agency for International Development has published a directive that includes a provision that prevents the federal government from denying funds to groups because they refuse to provide services to which they have moral or religious objections. The directive concerns only specific programmes funded by one agency, but it is of interest because the Obama administration has discriminated against a Catholic agency because of its refusal to provide abortion and contraception. [CNS]
The Attorney General of Alabama is reported to be seeking to join a lawsuit against the federal government launched by the Eternal Word Television Network to stop the federal government from forcing objecting employers to provide insurance coverage for surgical sterilization, contraceptives and embryocides. The Attorney General considers the Obama administration’s regulation unconstitutional. [WAAY TV]
The State of Washington has announced that it will appeal a decision by a U.S. District Court Judge that held that a state regulation was deliberately intended to deny freedom of conscience to pharmacists, and therefore unconstititional. [Yakima Herald]
Robert K. Vischer of St. Thomas University in Minneapolis warns against The Dangers of Anti-Sharia Laws in First Things. Such legislation, he says, “. . . proposes an unconstitutional double standard.” The attacks on the application of Sharia by American courts, which also apply denominational and private prinicples when adjudicating contract disputes, “fan the flames of religious intolerance while nurturing public acceptance of the notion that the religious commitments of our citizens have no place in our courts.”
“Canon law and biblical principles are not dirty words in the American court system,” writes Professor Vischer, “and Sharia should not be either.”
Evangelicals and Catholics Together, an ecumenical fellowship established almost twenty years ago, has published “In Defense of Religious Freedom” in the March issue of First Things, a journal of religion and public affairs. [National Catholic Register] The document responds to growing concerns about the security of freedom of conscience and religion in the United States and elsewhere. The document was co-written by 11 prominent Evangelical Christians and nine well-known Catholics and is substantially supported by over 45 others from both denominations.