What Is Religious Freedom?

Originally appeared in Public Discourse: Ethics, Law, and the Common Good, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, NJ

Reproduced with permission

Robert P. George*

In its fullest and most robust sense, religion is the human person’s being in right relation to the divine. All of us have a duty, in conscience, to seek the truth and to honor the freedom of all men and women everywhere to do the same.

When the US Congress passed the International Religious Freedom Act in 1998, it recognized that religious liberty and the freedom of conscience are in the front rank of the essential human rights whose protection, in every country, merits the solicitude of the United States in its foreign policy. Therefore, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, of which I became chair yesterday, was created by the act to monitor the state of these precious rights around the world.

But why is religious freedom so essential? Why does it merit such heightened concern by citizens and policymakers alike? In order to answer those questions, we should begin with a still more basic question. What is religion? [Full text]

Philippines Supreme Court hearings on the Reproductive Health Law

The Supreme Court of the Philippines has resumed a hearing into the constitutionality of the controversial Reproductive Health law (the Responsible Parenthood and Reproductive Health Act of 2012) .  The operation of the law was suspended by the Court pending the outcome of litigation against it.  Luisito Liban, a lawyer representing some of those opposed to the bill, told the court that his clients were “speaking on behalf of true Catholics” who do not use contraceptives.   He also criticized the section of the law that requires objecting physicians to refer patients for morally contested services. [GMA (Philippines); ABS-CBN News (Philippines)]

Seattle Times issues warning: Catholic hospitals won’t provide assisted suicide, abortion

An editorial in the Seattle Times has expressed support for the decision of Jay Inslee of Washington State to direct the state health department to update its rules about health care provider ownership, facilities and services.  The problem, in the Times view, is that about 1/3 of the state’s hospital beds are now in Catholic institutions, which refuse to provide abortion or assisted suicide, and that Catholic influence in the state is increasing.  By the year’s end, according to the editorial, Catholic facilities may control half the hospital beds.  “Concerns center on the possibility of patients losing access or referrals to the full range of legal reproductive and end-of-life services banned by religious doctrine.”

Abortion & Conscience

  • Michael Sean Winters* | . . . We are called to conform ourselves to the moral law and so form our consciences that this conformity is understood, properly, as a genuine liberation, a freeing of one’s capacity to choose so that we choose the good. In short, our exercise of conscience is not just a legal claim of immunity. . .
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