Sandra Fluke, the Priest, and the Protestants

[Valin]

National Review:

The government restricts freedom and forces religious believers to violate their conscience.

Kathryn Jean Lopez

4/8/13

 

Do you hear all the talk about the “inevitability” of same-sex marriage? Are you watching the second round of “war on women” ads aimed at opponents of the HHS mandate? President Obama insists that even employers who are opposed to abortion and contraception must provide insurance offering these options to their workers — and employers of religious organizations (even at family-run, long-established, morally oriented businesses) will receive no relief.

 

(Snip)

 

On a secular campus in a major city — George Washington University in Washington, D.C. — a priest at the Catholic campus-ministry outpost has come under fire for voicing Church teaching on abortion and marriage from the pulpit and, perhaps the greatest of sins, for believing the doctrine so fervently that he actually counsels students against what the Church teaches to be sinful activity.

 

(Snip)

 

A Protestant community in Montana helps bring this issue into focus. The Big Sky Colony is a self-sustaining farming community with religious roots in the Protestant Reformation. They take a vow of poverty, share communal property, and support one another through the farm. The state government is insisting that they provide workers’-compensation insurance to the members of the community. Luke Goodrich, their lawyer at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, points out that providing this insurance would be a “a direct violation of Hutterite vows to renounce private property, to receive no compensation for their work, and to resolve all their disputes without asserting legal claims.” This is a crucial case, Goodrich says, because “if the government can force the Hutterites to violate 500-year-old religious vows, no religion is safe from the government’s whims.”

 

(Snip)

 

As we discuss these issues and soon process the aftermath of whatever the Supreme Court rules in two marriage cases, we ought to consider what is reasonable when it comes to government power and people with varying views and values. In our laws and * cultural tradition, we are the stewards of a remarkable gift of religious liberty. We need to write laws that make distinctions and protect freedom. How can we make sure that we respect the rights of the priest, the cardinal, and the Hutterites, too?

 

 

* The problem is there are people out there who do not like our cultural tradition...., “Hey hey, ho ho, Western Civ has got to go!” Jesse Jackson and Stanford students 1988