Thanks for taking my call, and
thanks for joining us, Your Eminence.
My question is mostly in regards to this year,
since the state has encroached upon our religious
liberties and our civil liberties, and I was
just wondering if there's anything that the
Conference of Catholic Bishops is putting together
to kind of help Catholics in dealing with
potential civil disobedience, so we can ensure that we
fight to protect our religious liberties that we do have?
Cardinal, religious liberty, especially at the USCCB, the United States Conference
of Catholic Bishops?
I'm really not competent to speak about
the Conference of Bishops, because I, serving in Rome, I don't belong to
the Conference of Bishops, and so I'm not really party to...
Okay. But I did observe for instance that, in the Archdiocese
of St. Paul and Minneapolis, that when the
the governor tried to restrict the opening of the churches,
that Archbishop Hebda said simply: "No. We have the right, it's our—not only
the right, but the duty to to worship God in these times, and our
churches will open." And at that, the governor also
changed his his decree in that regard. But I think one of the things that
strikes me in this whole crisis is that the Church has to
underline, fight for the primacy of worship of God in prayer as the
primary way to deal with such a situation.
And I think that that requires, at times, we have to insist with the state
that our churches be open, and also that the sacraments can be
administered always, with this respect for the normal precautions.
But to...I mean, we had a situation where worship and prayer was considered
practically unimportant. All kinds of other things,
there were exemptions for them, but not for prayer and worship. So we have to
be very careful, and we have to be
ready to to fight to defend the
right to worship, but also the right to practice our faith.
I think, just to add to that, Cy— of course I agree with everything His
Eminence said— and in deference to your caller, there
will perhaps come a time where what he described as "civil
disobedience" may happen. The Church
has provision for these things, and again I'm thinking of my training as a
moral theologian and thinking about the
relationship between the the Church and the civil authority,
and in the Catechism these kinds of questions are addressed
so that we know when a certain line has been crossed. So it
can be that that may happen. In the
meantime, I think it's very important that we pray for the shepherds that they
have the courage, as Archbishop Hebda did, to
represent the faith well in the public square. And
other bishops will rise up in that way,
they will take encouragement from what the archbishop did,
and that's something that as the faithful we can do, through our prayer,
sacrifice, and perhaps even writing respectful letters,
respectful communication to the bishops to stand strong
and to fill exactly what His Eminence said, the responsibility that we
have, first and foremost, to worship God.