The fight for religious freedom offline will patently affect our ability to advance the gospel cause online.
On Tuesday, February 23rd, in an inter-faith devotional at Brigham Young Unversity (a Mormon university based in Provo, Utah), Cardinal Francis George, who serves as the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, addressed the BYU student body, faculty, and guest in the Marriott Center.
Speaking of the growing affinity and partnerships with members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) on matters related to the wholeness and moral health of society, Your Emminence also acknowledged a pressing need to strap together as allies in the work to preserve our religious freedoms.
Of those freedoms, Cardinal George acclaimed:
“Religious freedom cannot be reduced to freedom of worship or even freedom of private conscience,” he said. “Religious freedom means that religious groups as well as religious individuals have a right to exercise their influence in the public square.”
Cardinal George, who was the first Chicago native to be appointed Archbishop of Chicago in 1997 and later appointed Cardinal Priest by the Vatican in 1998, shared personal experiences he has had with encounters with the Church. One of the stories he shared was when he was able to conduct the Mormon Tabernacle Choir during one of its tour stops in Chicago in 2007. As he stood in front of the choir, its members sang the words of the folk song “This Land Is Your Land.”
Unequivocally, Cardinal George affirmed family, indicating,
Society is based not on individuals, but on families.”…On mothers and fathers with duties and obligations to their children. On children who learn to be human in the school of love, which is family.
He enumerated specifically three threats to the moral fabric of family and society–namely, abortion, sexual orientation, and health care.
He made a call to persevere in the recall of our freedoms, and a statement to “never give up.”
In a spirit of optimism the Cardinal suggested:
If we stay together and go forward together, the good sense, the common sense, and the generosity of I think the majority of people … will in the end bear much fruit,” he said. “When government fails to protect the conscience of it’s citizens, it falls to religious bodies, especially those formed by the gospel of Jesus Christ to become the defenders of human freedom.
For the Deseret News article on the Cardinal’s Address to Mormons, please click here.
