Archbishop Lori and the 'Fortnight for Freedom'

 Archbishop Lori, Baltimore's new Archbishop, has embarked on a new program called 'Fortnight for Freedom' as he espoused in his Baltimore Sun editorial of June 27th. The Archbishop has taken his concerns about contraception in the new health care policy and has construed it as an attack on religious liberty. Yet, the Archbishop himself in his editorial, references real attacks on religious liberty in countries like Iraq and Nigeria, which actually demonstrates that the Archbishop's current program in the Archdiocese of Baltimore is a tempest in a teapot. There is no vendetta, no discrimination, no hostility to the Catholic Church on the part of the US government. The President has made repeated efforts to reach out to the Bishops to resolve their differences. There are legitimate differences here, but they are policy differences, not attempts to deprive Catholic institutions of freedom.

The Archbishop thinks all Catholic institutions should be exempt from having to provide health care plans that cover contraception. The adminsitration believes that this kind of coverage should be available to all Americans. This is a difference of opinion, not a wholesale attack on everything Catholics hold dear. After all we do llive in a multi cultural society and everyone does not share the beliefs of the Archbishop. Our society requires compromise and understanding, but it appears that the Archbishop only wants to be understood, not to understand, which is a distortion of the prayer of St. Francis that many of us know.

The Archbishop seems to be concerned with religious liberty in so far as it impacts the ability of the institutional Church to operate as it pleases without restraint. Is there an equal concern for the freedom of other citizens to access health care plans wihich contain the services they feel they need? It is difficult to find such a concern. More broadly where is the Archbishop's concern that all Americans have health care? Would he have preferred the health care law to be struck down and the uninsured to remain without adequate care?

What happened to the concern of the Catholic Church for the poor? What happened to the moral imperative Catholic Bishops had insisted on in the past - that health care was a right and not a privlege. The Church and the Catholic Bishops had long been one of the most vocal and vigorous advocates for the implementation of a universal health care program. These goals seem to have been left by the wayside in the current climate.

 The Catholic Bishops seem determined to fight over this issue. We continue to be fed the notion that we poor Catholics are being picked on even as the administration continues to pursue every effort to find a satisfactory accommodation with the Church..At the same time the Church continues to wage an aggressive campaign to bend the administration to its will. The Archbishop has grossly distorted the issue into one of religious liberty which it is not.  There is and will continue to be differences of opinion, but the Church cannot continue to accuse their foes of being  anti Catholic whenever they don't get their way.