By Michelle Bauman
Atlanta, Ga.,(CNA/EWTN News): The growing
perception of religion as a threat to a free society is leading
to persecution of believers around the world, according to
speakers at a recent meeting of the U.S. bishops.
“Religious liberty is in global crisis,” said Thomas F. Farr,
director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center
for Religion Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown University.
He explained that the crisis has “enormous
consequences for the Church, the United States, the fate of
democracy worldwide, the defeat of religion-based terrorism and
the cause of international peace and justice.”
Farr spoke June 13 to the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops as part of a two-hour discussion on both
domestic and international religious freedom concerns.
His address came during the conference’s June 13-15 general
assembly in Atlanta, Ga.
Bishop Richard E. Pates of Des Moines, Iowa,
chairman of the bishops' Committee on International Justice and
Peace, noted that Christians around the world face threats
ranging from Church bombing to discriminatory legal
restrictions.
Chaldean
Auxiliary Bishop Shlemon Warduni of Baghdad, president of
Caritas Iraq, also spoke at the bishops’ gathering, discussing
the plight of Christians in the Middle East.
He offered accounts of priests being kidnapped,
tortured and held for ransom, as well as churches being attacked
and worshipers being killed.
There has also been a “huge diaspora” of
Christian communities in the region, he added.
“Some wonder if there is a big plot to empty
Iraq, if not to empty all of the Middle East, of Christians,” he
told the American bishops.
Bishop Warduni said that leaders in U.S. “bear a
special responsibility” towards Christians in Iraq because the
United States led the 2003 invasion that caused some of these
problems between the religious groups.
“We ask you to do your best” to raise awareness
and support for Iraqi Christians, he urged, explaining that the
people in the region simply want to live peacefully with “no
more war, no more death” and “no more explosions.”
Farr cautioned the U.S. bishops that a negative
view of religion is leading to a continued erosion of religious
freedom around the world, with disastrous consequences.
“Both history and modern scholarship demonstrate
that a robust system of religious liberty in both law and
culture is indispensable to individual human dignity and to the
flourishing of civil society and nations,” he said.
He pointed to a Pew Research study indicating
that 70 percent of the world’s population lives in a country
where religious freedom is seriously restricted.
And the problem “is getting worse,” he said,
citing studies indicating that “social hostilities” towards
religious minorities are rising in many areas, including much of
Europe.
Although this
does not match the level of violent persecution seen elsewhere,
“the root cause is quite similar,” Farr explained. In such
countries, the free exercise of religion is not only seen as
unnecessary, but is even viewed as a threat to democratic
society.
While this
view has commonly been held by tyrants and authoritarian regimes
throughout the ages, the alarming development is that it is now
being held by democratic majorities, he said.
Religion today is commonly treated as “merely an
opinion” and possibly “dangerous,” he alerted the bishops,
pointing to Europe, where an “aggressive secularist majority”
refuses to allow religiously informed opinions to enter the
public square.
This
view is also growing in the United States, he cautioned, as
religious freedom is increasingly being depicted as the mere
right to worship privately.
Farr argued that American policy under both
Republican and Democratic administrations is failing to
alleviate infringements upon religious freedom around the world.
He observed that the current U.S. State
Department has devoted “far more energy” to supporting gay
agendas overseas than to addressing religious liberty concerns.
The American bishops can make a great
contribution in “strengthening our understanding of the value of
religious freedom,” Farr said, explaining that Church teaching
on “the fundamental dignity and equality of every person in the
eyes of God” is powerful for society.
The Church is “uniquely positioned” to help
proclaim the importance of religious liberty and must work
immediately to do so, he urged, because “the stakes are high.”
