Franciscan University Presents: Religious Liberty

at america's founding the freedom of religion was enshrined in our constitution through the bill of rights ever since then americans have taken religious liberty as a given but should we today we'll explore the current state of religious liberty in america with mary rice hassan mary rice hassan is a fellow in catholic studies at the ethics and public policy center in washington dc i'm father dave pavanki and i'm president of franciscan university in steubenville ohio and you're watching franciscan university presents stay with us [Music] [Music] and welcome to franciscan university presents i'm your host father dave povock and i'm president of franciscan university of steubenville and today we're talking about religious liberty we are joined by a regular panelist dr regis martin it's nice to have you back dr martin and dr scott hahn so blessing to be with them well we have the great honor of this today to be able to welcome mary rice hassan marries the cato byrne fellow in catholic studies at the ethics and public policy center in washington d.c that's a mouthful but i think i got most of it she also directs catholic women's forum which is a network of catholic professional women and scholars she is a graduate of the university of notre dame and the university of notre dame law school mary is also a consultant to the u.s catholic conference of bishops of laity marriage family and life and youth welcome thank you it's so great to have you it's really really great to have you here so thank you so much for joining us maybe just beginning uh religious liberty what got you interested why does that particularly matter now yeah well i got interested in it because from the time i was a child i saw my dad mostly involved in both matters of public policy but matters of conscience particularly the abortion issue contraception and and looking at how faith matters in the public square so so even as a high school student a college student it was something yeah and then going to law school it was a it was a strong interest and there i met my husband kevin sheamus his nickname is james hassan who had a strong interest in religious liberty and ended up going on to start the beckett fund for religious liberty which has handled a lot of the key cases that we're seeing right now right and when you think kind of take a look at the landscape where are we with the whole and maybe yeah misconceptions where are we with religious liberty what should we be thinking about things like that well i think one of the things that's interesting uh to realize is when for example when he started the beckett fund about 25 years ago the key um issues or conflicts in the culture were things like can you have a nativity set right in the public square oh my those days were yeah yeah and and even he was responding to god's call but not necessarily with a sense of how far downstream things would become and so what we're seeing now is not just challenges to religious liberty but even the idea of religious liberty even though it's protected in the first amendment and it's it's a fundamental right and it's a right that comes from god but people questioning why religious liberty how about there how about just give us your working definition of religious liberty when we hear that what should it evoke which we know first of all just to realize it doesn't come from the state you know religious liberty comes out of the fact that as human beings were created by god and that religious impulse is built into us and so our duty to god comes first and even james madison you know wrote about that in in the founding um era and he was saying you have to make room for and acknowledge that the person's duty to the creator comes before the duty to the state and so the state needs to recognize there's a sphere that's not the state cannot compel action and that's the sphere of conscience and religious freedom you know another key point is to see that it's gone downstream a whole lot in last 25 years but it seems to either be getting close to the waterfall or plunging downward because the the freedom of religion you know is one thing but i think here's what i want to say is that the freedom of religion has become the freedom from religion in public square you know and in the process the freedom to worship has largely privatized this right and so the presumption that this is a grant from the state is so universal uh it's sort of the air they're breathing in dc i suspect when in fact that right comes from above right as you say it comes from god because all of us belong to him before we belong to this exactly and and that's a lost concept i think or something that on a public level we have lost more than concepts here yeah i i'd like to pick up from scott's image this metaphor of the waterfall i think we have pretty much gone over the cataract and maybe this sounds a bit apocalyptic but in the old days we had these quaint controversies about whether you can show a nativity scene in the village square now are you even able to say the word christmas it's got to be sparkle day or you get arrested the thought police are coming for you so your job it seems to me is pretty challenging and i think what you said is fundamentally true is that that god is one who grants us these religious liberties and yet if you take that out of the equation something has to fill that void and there's been a whole population of people that's allows the government to do that for us yeah and i think that's important insight because what we've seen over the past 20 years in 30 years is just such a decline in religiosity it used to be about eight out of ten um people in america considered themselves christian you know or at least believers of some sort now it's down to about 60 but in the younger generation it's about 40 percent so what that means is as a culture there is less and less shared experience about the importance of religion and in fact i was talking to a young woman two nights ago who was telling me she's in her 20s and she was saying out of my friend's circle i have one other person who's religious so to that that growing number particularly of young people who have no personal experience of faith this idea of religious liberty is something that it doesn't necessarily resonate what's conscience that's your opinion it's not you know and even those who practice religion prefer not to speak of it as religion you know in the last 10 or 15 years it's been common especially among you know generation x y and z or i've lost count but uh that i'm i'm spiritual but i'm not religious and so they're almost complicit in the privatizing of religion and in the relativization so that there really is a kind of relativism that it's the marketplace of spirituality and not even denomination right i i wonder if we could precise this phenomenon a little more this this notion of unbelief atheism is it just the absence of a belief in god or is it a more active articulate disbelief of an an attempt to uh eradicate any evidence of of god by all of the glints of god's glory i mean we used to think they were strewn about the world but now we have sort of systematically collected them and and consigned them to uh the dustbin of history and people are considered benighted if they express some pious sentiment is that where we are right yeah because i think one of the things that has happened is that say 20 30 years ago even people who were not religious would agree pretty much with the idea that it was good to be religious or religious organizations do good things in society but i can tell you at least among sort of the elite law legal legal scholars and things there is a sense of why religious liberty right you know the religious organizations don't necessarily we don't need them the government can do it you know that idea that that religion is irrelevant has become religion is dangerous yes in the public square especially keep it to yourself you know but you bring it up we've come a long way from the classical liberal tradition which i think somebody like voltaire championed who would say you know i disagree with what you believe but i would defended the death you're right to believe it we don't share that anymore no and i i think one of the things that we see and if you read news sort of the popular news and cnn headlines and things like that you'll see religious liberty put in quotation marks right in other words this is what they call it literally yes or it's rephrased as religious refusal in other words out of your religious belief you're refusing to grant someone their civil rights so it's even being portrayed just in the narrative and the language that's used in a way that's very negative think of how that imprints someone who has no experience i think your point is as well as that is important is that for the longest time i think religion was seen as part of the solution in the 50s that's the right part of the solution you begin to see that i think wayne in the 60s and now it's the problem yeah yeah everyone went to march for life a number of years ago that a woman had this but she was not pro-life had this poster that said if mary would have gotten an abortion we wouldn't have this problem right so that they see religion and there's all kinds of reasons unfortunately some of this we've brought on ourselves with this campaign yeah sure but we're the problem so now if we can be eradicated and moved out then and that's there's a concerted effort i believe yeah yeah you know i think what you're doing is an essential part of the new evangelization but more in terms of stealth i suppose you know and using the american system but it i said this before we started the show but i want to say it now too that it feels a little bit like operation dunkirk you know that we're fighting a rearguard action we're not just getting you know an evacuation with the uh the fleet of naval and we're using trawlers we're doing whatever we can you know but as we as we cobble that fleet together to get to evacuate we're not trying to leave america we're really trying to leave that part of it that is so overtaken that is uh just you know hitler's troops just stormed these countries and but we have to recognize that we're not evacuating so much as we are regrouping and thinking up new strategies because the fact is you have to do what you can you have to work with what you've got and so we can decry this new you know i call it the new devangelization you know if the new evangelization is re-evangelizing the de-christianized they want to de-christianize and i i think it's so obvious now but what isn't obvious is the need to develop new strategies and i think this is where your work plays a really important part yeah but you know you raise a really important point that you cannot as believers you cannot separate the idea of religious liberty from evangelism because one of the reasons why we're in this pickle so to speak is that as religion has become invisible and as believers sought to assimilate and look like everyone else and not express their faith you've had this vacuum and so this religious liberty litigation can only sort of carve out spaces and and create some protection but to change things we need believers to evangelize let me sound like debbie downer for just a moment feel free it's not difficult okay it's not big plenty plenty yeah yeah scott's image of dunkirk at one level it is a bloody disaster a devastation but there is good news about dunkirk if you happen to be british and it's 1941 and you go back to britain and there is churchill to rally the the team and the reserves of british spirit a spirit of resistance heroic resistance to the onslaught of adolf hitler where are the winston churchills in the present moment among the bishops can you name several i don't think so i think we're going to see more of that because i i think we're at a pivot point having you know a president who professes to be catholic and yet is taking public policy steps that are not only hostile to religious liberty but hostile to basic human dignity and values the the abortion things and so i think that has has been a catalyst or i'm hoping it is and i'm starting to see some signs that there will be more bishops speaking out because if you don't now when when will you right you know wow is there any constraints of religious liberty in the government and and yeah how do you kind of navigate those waters yeah so it's not that religious liberty even though religious liberty uh our right to worship god is is something independent of the state in a free society there are times when the state is going to have to regulate something so for example in the beginning of the covid situation it was reasonable when nobody knew the extent of this pandemic for the state to say look everyone's got to stay home for two weeks or whatever and for churches to cooperate with that but as justice alito said last fall you know after months and months and months you can't just continue to repress what is a fundamental right and so the state has has the right to impose some limits but not to eradicate it not to penalize it not to punish it not to condition benefits on your your willingness to forego it so there even within our legal jurisprudence there's limits it seems to me that distinctions can very easily be drawn i mean there's a reasonable restriction if the practice of your religion requires you to eat your neighbor cannibalism we're not favorable but suppose you eat jesus in the eucharist and the state finds that offensive and they move against you who's going to resist that yeah well and and i think that's the challenge to all of us right because that was one of the things that that i thought as i looked at the whole covid thing and particularly in the fall as as some of these repressive governmental edicts were still on it was like where's the outcry sure i mean you shudder churches month after month after month and people go without the eucharist and they sort of come to terms with it yeah yeah you know in italy there was way back uh antonio gramsci and graham she was uh like salalinsky was in chicago and he knew catholicism and he recognized that secularism and marxism in particular these are religions yeah and they're meant to displace that which is antiquated and useless you know he recognizes the masses have imbued this you know and so it's really hard to uproot it uh he was so self-consciously marxist but also anti-catholic his influence has been very widespread we don't know the name so much but i've been studying him recently and realizing that there are a number of american counterparts and so we also have to do in our higher education close study of what is going on you know we flipped in 2020 to an entirely new level of battle and we have to be more subtle but we also have to be more effective yeah very definitely we need to be strategic right right and i think that by like you said that being like shining the light on this because i don't even know that everyone recognizes that it's been shifted and and there are some people yeah let's wait to the next segment to get in this because there are some people that think that this is an opportunity for the good and i think ultimately it's going to be a great struggle for us in the future so we have a lot more to say about this so stay with us and franciscan university presents i think our society today has a profound misunderstanding of religious liberty they're trying to subjugate it just to the private sphere but it deserves a place in the public sphere because our faith is supposed to transform every aspect of our life all the decisions that we make and so it's very important that we fight in all spheres of society for religious liberty during my time here at franciscan i've been a part of center for leadership and as part of my studies we discussed the founding fathers and there we talked about religious liberty and how fundamental it is to our everyday life because of the sacrifices that our founding fathers made to come to this country and establish these principles so for that reason it's so important to maintain religious liberty so that we don't do away with their sacrifice we become members of a family that originates in god the father the son of the holy spirit but that holy spirit overshadows the blessed virgin so we become her children as well people knew that when the messiah came that this promise would call them as a covenant people to be what a light to the nations and everybody is invited to walk through that door of mercy the only key we need is the one that each one of us has but it is my sin that opens up the mercy of god amen [Music] welcome back to franciscan university presents we're speaking about religious liberty with mary rice hassan uh the pandemic has presented us some interesting interesting dilemmas with this whole issue thoughts and reflections about yeah a couple of things one i was reading a um an article in a medical journal by a physician who happened to be a christian and he was speaking to his fellow physicians who were many of them saying why are people going to church why why is this so important and he was saying one of the reasons that they were not getting it and and they were not appreciating the good and the reason why people needed to gather into worship together was because they viewed religion as a hobby but they also didn't understand what people do so he had a quote that uh in talking with some of his his fellow doctors that they seem to think that when people go to church all they do is sway and wave and sing and why can't why doesn't video suffice and i think that's that's a misperception particularly for us catholics and our governor in virginia said a similar thing when he in december was imposing more restrictions he said video is just the same virtual is just the same but god is out there so we can encounter them anywhere yeah right right missing the whole point of the real presence the sacramentality of our faith precludes that entirely there's a physical side to being spiritual that is not non-essential you know but there's also a social and a political side of being spiritual and i think that's what catholics have to rediscover on this side of covet in the presidential election we're bewildered you know and we had a strategy that worked for about 20 to 30 years except that it didn't it was just learning how to lose more slowly now we're learning we have to learn how to to lose but then counter attack in a way that is again stealthy but i i do believe that you know when i listen to people like tucker carlson you know at one point my heart might leap but another level i'm saying you know what you know you're trying to fight liberalism run amok but this is no longer liberalism uh this is post-liberalism this is critical social theory critical gender theory and you know we don't even know what the frankfurt school launched in this neo-marxist approach that has nothing to do with karl marx saying workers of the world unite you're not going to lose but your chains i mean this is a new form of morphed marxism that is weaponizing gender weaponizing race and we've got to go back i mean we've got to do whatever we can to get to work at home raise our families but also get the next generation equipped to understand what haberlocks was doing or what uh you know adorno and all of the other figures in the 40s 50s and 60s because i'm sort of going back to college right now as a professor and retooling and thinking my goodness we have got a major long-term strategy and i will just say which again this is going to be a plug for us but what we're doing at francis university is more important than ever amen is that we've got a population of young people that are coming in and they're just being indoctrinated with this and they don't even know they don't even know i mean they they want to be nice they don't the whole i'm going to get out of them but the whole bully issue the whole bully issue particularly in california how that's being presented is is all about the homosexuality and transgendered and and it's about what people feel not necessarily what's right or what's true and good and so what we're doing here is profoundly your question about where's the church i wasn't exactly sure where you're going but go to our chapel when when it's full four times a day these are the kids that are going to come out of this and make a difference but there is the sense that they have to be deprogrammed because everywhere it's coming out and re-tooled yeah but i think an important part of that is realizing what the public school system has done 85 percent of catholics it used to be 90 before the covet thing we've gained some people back but 85 of catholic kids go through public schools and it's not the public schools of even 10 years ago and certainly not 20 years ago but what it's doing because god's erased from that environment you're conditioning kids and habituating kids to thinking god doesn't matter when you're looking at the universe when you're discussing the big questions god's irrelevant to those conversations yeah that was the prediction that nietzsche made that it was as if a an eraser uh had been wiping the sky of god uh simply vaporizing all evidence of uh the sacred the transcendent it seems to me that we do have to go back to the right books but we have to go back to bedrock which means we have to go back to christ when he says without me you can do nothing i i don't think that's a that's a metaphor he means literally you're watching it you need to go back to the eucharist and you can't you can't celebrate it virtually any more than you can go to confession over the phone or make love to your wife on on a smartphone george weigel made a wonderful point the other day he said the eucharist is not something catholics do it's what catholics are it's it's the most singular embodiment of who we are how can you do that virtually but i think you know what you're saying and your reference to the marxism of the past i mean i think a lot of our young people have have implicitly bought into the idea that we're simply material beings and or if we're spiritual that means psychological and so you look at this crisis of suicide and and kids looking i say kids are younger than i am so they're kids but you know young people looking for meaning and yet they don't know to look for god and so that's where we have to come in because what we have god himself and the truth and the the teachings of the church that's what people are looking for but they don't know it because their their conception even of who they are doesn't really make room for that and that may be less typical of a franciscan student but even among sort of the the catholic kids culturally catholic kids that that i encounter they've bought into the premises who's the authority in life well it's google right it's that's that's the ultimate idea right it's not god and so understanding first who you are i'm a creature yeah and and god's got something to say about who i am and how i should live that's that's kind of the basic i think that the more we live our faith defensively or reactionarily you know uh the more we inadvertently empower those people who would like to eradicate it entirely and so here again you know i'm always reminded of nehemiah 8 10 the joy of the lord is our strength or paul in prison writing to the philippians rejoice in the lord always and again i say rejoice you know we have got to help them and ourselves rediscover that joy that and it's not just pie in the sky it is that and beyond but at the same time it is a it is a way of facing opposition and recognizing you know we have it bad but other catholics our forebears had it much worse and they sowed the seed that brought about the the kingship of christ in various ways and so let's not give up right right you know even social science data there's been a couple of studies that have come out in in the covid era and they've been surprised to discover and we wouldn't be surprised that people of faith have weathered the crisis better they're more resilient not because they don't suffer maybe depression or whatever but because they realize that maybe from the outset we don't have to control everything in our lives and there's a god who loves us who we can trust you know even if you bracket the question is there a god because it's so confrontational um you're still left with the mystery i i'm a being made to believe well what am i going to believe joe biden or maybe the beatific vision you've got to choose the choices are pretty pretty sundering and if the state if society makes no provision for the question what is the meaning of everything who am i why am i here what's the meaning of my suffering if there's no answer then why not slit your throat that's what we're doing to young people we're giving them nihilism and that's not very nourishing you know you said something that i think is important and that is we've got to get to bedrock you know it's one thing to study haberlocks or uh you're going to have ramos and these guys and i i'm i'm seeing the need for that but the great books sacred scripture augustine and that's again why a place like this is again essential and this but also real quick to do that in relationship that it's not just go online and read it on kindle to do it where you can discuss and and learn and open and be challenged as well but that that process again going back to the coming together is transformative to be able to do that together you know i remember nori clark the jesuit philosopher when he came here for sabbatical his jesuit conference were astonished because he'd been a georgetown in fordham and i drove him down to the jesuit residence one day and he'd just come from noon mass and he said i get it i finally get it i'm like what are you talking about he said these students probably don't have scores as high as they do at georgetown or fordham but they have the eucharist and when i was at noon mass i saw my students and i can see why they're opening up to eternity and so that's why the discussions in our seminars are so lively and he just put his finger right on it yeah but i think part of it and maybe you can speak to this man that i there there's almost this sense of can we make a difference i mean when we take a look at these major we'll talk next section about some of the major social issues but religious liberty what can an individual do to impact this evangelization yes but is there something more practically that they can do for this particular topic in defending this uh there's a lot there's a lot i think the the primary thing that every person can do is to live your faith authentically you know authenticity is a big word especially for for young people but how often do we hide it how often do we not tell people you know we're going to mass we say i've got an appointment or whatever living our faith authentically and openly without apology and letting people know that there's something good here so i was having a conversation with another um young man an attorney who was telling me he has a jewish friend jewish um sort of ethnically jewish but he's not not a spiritual guy who said to him during the course of the pandemic he said you know i have a sense that it's easier for someone like you and because you've got a worldview that makes a difference and so that's an opening yeah you know when you see people hurting when people are looking for meaning and questioning that's that's an opening to say you know yeah that word authenticity i mean it can be a buzzword it can be trivialized and debased even but it's genuine it matters it bespeaks a certain involvement engage with life live the real as uh giusani says don't skim across the surface hover above the void but plunge deep down to the very bottom be passionate if you're on this stage this is the theater of your life yeah you know there are certain lines that you need to learn you need to speak them with conviction those are the people who will obtain the truth yeah yeah and to that that what we're doing this authenticity is attractive that people are on the outside they see that there's something different about us they begin to ask the questions and then we invite them into something different yeah yeah um would you care to comment on this this idea separation of church and state is a good thing is a bad thing it seems like now it's where is this first person supposed to even come down on that so first of all that phrase separation of church and state is not in the constitution you know it was in in the writings of uh one of our founding fathers but but that doesn't but that's how people sort of um conceptualize how americans should deal with faith that it's it's something separate and we need to push back against that and and in reality that was just that that was a writing but that was not even how people lived back then absolutely i think it's now become separation of religion yeah that's right and so the state just opens up and starts to take on almost all of the public square you know religion is not just being privatized and relativized it really is you know the churches are going to be perceived increasingly by secularists as a kind of enemy and i i think we recognize that and we shouldn't give into paranoia you know but at the same time we should recognize that living holiness is not something that we have to do in isolation i can't want holiness for myself but not my wife that's absurd i can't want you know i can't want it for her and me but not our kids you know i can't want holiness just for my family but not other families not my neighborhood well my neighborhood but not the town of steubenville well the town or ohio right yes and i mean the fact is the great commission you know is why we're here to make disciples of all nations and joyful disciples but but living it in a way that is so aware of the opposition and at the same time recognizing that the victory has been won and that isn't just religious rhetoric that is the real yeah living the real i think we get put on the defensive and i think of the phrase that i've heard um president biden used to justify his decisions which is i'm not going to impose my religious beliefs on anyone else and you know the the things that matter in the public square dignity of life protecting us and life those those are not and the humanity of the unborn child is not a religious right there is a great deal to say about this and we're going to pick this up okay so stay with us on franciscan university presents [Music] through philosophy leading into natural theology we're able to recognize that man is a created being and thus as a creative being owes worship to our creator viktor frankl a famous captive in the nazi prison camps when all else had been shipped away from him and he was absolutely being maligned on a daily basis could still decide within himself his response he had that at his very core and what more is religion than our response to our creation what if you discovered a university with unmatched science faculty and programs a place where you didn't have to choose science over faith at franciscan university of steubenville you'll find faith-inspired student-focused research-driven programs leading to satisfying careers in medicine scientific research engineering computer science and many more science and health fields at franciscan university of steubenville education is more than just a word it's a discovery [Music] welcome back and thank you for joining us you're watching franciscan university presents which we we record in the com arts studio here at franciscan university of steubenville our students are operating the cameras and the equipment and members of our theology faculty dr regis martin and dr scott hahn and i are discussing religious liberty with mary rice hassan you left the last section about talking about personally opposed but i don't want to put that on anybody else that we hear from politicians yeah that's a refrain we hear all the time i'm personally opposed and i remember being a student at notre dame when mario cuomo came and made sort of the the landmark speech gave the landmark speech of setting that out there that he is a politician was saying well i'm a catholic but i'm i may be personally opposed to abortion but i'm not going to impose my beliefs on others and so with that speech he sort of put out there this idea that there's a split that how we are in the public square is somehow different from who we are as human beings and religious people and it also um was such a an abdication of leadership right because you think of lincoln or or anyone who you see in evil your job as a leader is not say well i'm personally opposed to that can i just say i think it's honest it's not honest don't you think i mean it's fundamentally not they're not being honest it does a kind of violence to the human soul you have to live a schizophrenic life public versus private you can't sustain that it's untenable but we've come a long way since mario cuomo i mean look at his son andrew cuomo not only is personally in favor of abortion but he regards this as a kind of sacrament it's consecrated yeah i mean this is one of those instances where life is becoming theater and i i'm reminded of that line you know i'm not going to impose it upon other people well our current president doesn't even impose it upon himself you know when he joyfully celebrates and presides at a at a gay wedding um you know he's making a statement not that he's going to refuse to impose it upon other people but clearly he doesn't internalize this this is all part of his character on stage i think and i'm not judging his heart i can't right but at the same time you can't wreck you can't help but recognize that there is a consistent pattern through 47 almost 50 years of political services you know and at the same time and i think it's also a fundamental misunderstanding about the nature of law there's some laws that are making arbitrary judgments about things like should red means stop or should i mean go you know stop at the red light but there are others that have to do with the truth of the person and what's moral what's good and so law is about morality that's right it's pedagogical it is making decisions all the time we would say slavery is immoral slavery ought to be illegal because it's important i mean this really has become the flash point i think in the public life if you're a catholic and i'd like to know when will the bishops speak truth to power and say look enough stop it i i recently uh wrote a piece for a crisis and the lead paragraph was about fulton sheen calling up aywood brune who was a pretty cynical journalist back in the 1930s and saying you know i want to talk to you and and brune said in a pretty gruff way what about and he said your soul because you are imperiling it by the positions you take now that took courage a kind of nerve i'd like to see that right by the way in haywood broon's autobiography he recounts that and why it was the catalyst for his conversion he converted near the end of his life through the influence of fulton sheen you never know what kind of search you're so when you take a step boldly and share that kind of eternal perspective you know i do think that politicians ought to learn a crafty stealth so they're not always just in your face with the religion and if it's authentic holiness it's going to be contagious so it doesn't have to be the first paragraph in your speech but at the same time i i can't help but think that going back to the metaphor of the stage that we find ourselves in a real predicament as catholics because there are so many catholics out there in public life but it's almost as though we're doing you know they've got one script we've got another how does this proceed you know you're mouthing lines that are fundamentally at odds with everything you profess when you're there and so i just want to say time out you know let's get on the same page no let's get the same script but i think yeah i think it's diabolical it's exactly what the evil one wants to do is if he can cause we who are supposed to be united to be separated and we as catholics can't even agree anymore he's so a couple more thoughts yeah well just just to your point about the bishops um archbishop uh cordelian actually came out with a very strong statement towards nancy pelosi who's within his diocese but when will they pull the plug on their access to the eucharist which is the most obvious sign of unity i think they do that first privately and he has he has um made statements that suggest he's willing to do that in the course of a conversation and i know bishops who have done it but we have other bishops who are in very prominent sure places that are not willing to which is a problem it's confusing it's demoralizing and when you so kind of as we're beginning to wrap up when you're looking at the landscape what are some threats that you see coming what are going to be the major issues in the next year two years five years coming down the road yeah one of the um just in a conceptual level is the clash between religious liberty and the claimed rights to um self-definition gender identity the lgbtq causes which are now uh being labeled as as human rights and and civil rights and so there's a clash between the rights of religious people to live our faith to even speak the truth if i see you you're a man uh it doesn't matter to me whether you identify as a woman the truth is you're a man and i should be able to say that right and and yet we're going to see in the law and in fact we've seen already in terms of the executive order that came out from uh president biden there is going to be pressure and pressure brought even by private groups um corporations to change how we speak and when you change the language you change how people think it's just extraordinary i mean biology has become a form of bigotry or whatever exactly follow the science yeah yeah yeah i received an email just recently and below it it said preferred pronouns about yeah it's just and i also read an article recently related to the whole transition therapy and how that what that's going to do with women's athletics and and something like the top 300 boys could be the best female renters in the world and and the impact that this is going to happen how this is going to be fought and debated and how does somebody step into that yeah so one we have to be bold and speak the truth and it's it's interesting because on the transgender issue the truth about the human person is something that's accessible to reason right and so i i know atheist biologists who are taking a stand and saying no there are fundamental differences between males and females but what is going to challenge us as believers as a result of this clash is that in educational settings in healthcare settings we're going to see people who say as a matter of conscience i'm not taking a a healthy uterus out of a a 17 year old girl because she thinks she's a boy and wants wants to be rid of that i can't do that yeah and that's against my faith as well as my medical judgment but there's going to be pressure there already is pressure to have people do that sure you've pointed out that you know we can expect certain victories in the courts but that's a kind of safety net you don't want to just depend upon okay we got a decision on our side you know thank you for the predecessor you know who was there before biden i think we have to recognize that we need to raise up catholic young people who are going to go into science medicine law and and and not just theology as much as i love that myself you know but the uh the need especially for doctors would you speak to that yeah exactly right because healthcare is going to become a very contested space and unfortunately doctors who are not ethically grounded or medical care professionals who are not ethically grounded are going to be swept away over that waterfall right into doing things that are detrimental to the human person but that are going to elicit their cooperation in repressing others religious beliefs so we need grounded christian you know catholic uh men health care professionals the other the other thing that we really have to do is figure out how to build up the catholic education system certainly at the university level but you know k through 12 because the majority of kids are being educated in public schools and they are being taught this lie about who they are and so as a matter of faith we want our kids have to know who they are they have to know who god is even in catholic schools you will find that it's not 50 a majority of kids in catholic schools in many areas will buy into that and speak in favor of it in the classroom and even in private conversations as well you know if our ancestors could just take a peek at how things are going today i mean they would be mystified yeah because the truth of biology is so transparent it's not rocket science boys and girls are different it's a function of nature and if you can't see it then your obtuseness really prevents you from saying anything at all right we need to revive i think what leon leon cass calls the the wisdom of repugnance i mean an instinctive spontaneous reaction to this transgender nonsense it's repulsive stomach turning you can't do this to a human being don't you know right and you know while i think religious liberty to your point originally as we litigate some of these cases i think we will get some good decisions because we have a good supreme court on this issue however it takes three four or five years and in the meantime you will have this these lies becoming woven into the fabric of the culture well speaking of lies i mean here's a stunning example i mean people dismiss coney barrett because she's a devout catholic but they extol biden because he's a devout i mean it depends which side of the fence it's important is the the legal aspect is going to be important so we can't dismiss that but it's the social pressure in the social atmosphere that we're having particularly young people that are being just inculcated in that and it's it becomes every television show every musician every time they look at the grammys every it's just total concerning yeah and the social media is just it's pervasive and to the point that it's so hard for parents to keep up with but yet kids are being indoctrinated not into just an ideology a false religion absolutely yeah it's a dogma it is and you would never have a magisterium yeah exactly and and so we have to be very protective about that but realize that's exactly what it's doing it's a catechesis in a false vision of who we are with no no creator you you define yourself and so we have to teach the truth we have to encourage our people to be bold our educational efforts are absolutely key so law is important but all of this stuff has to to happen beforehand because it will take so long you know in the ancient world when young romans converted girls and boys they discovered something that they no longer belonged to the society because it was pagan and barbaric they didn't belong to their parents they belonged to christ and this was the source of their identity and their power and their joy and nobody could take that from them that's what we need to try and revive who are you famously back in the 70s two bank robbers in sweden held hostages four or five for almost a week and when finally the tear gas came and they captured the uh the robbers in the trial everybody was shocked that the hostages were speaking out in favor you know of the bank robbers and thus stockholm syndrome entered our vocabulary i think people internalize you know the mentality of their captors in ways that aren't fully conscious and yet they can be quite extensive and so this idea of re-education you know or true education from k through 12 as well as catholic higher education i mean this is a santa claus without this we don't have a chance but but we have an opportunity and we have to seize it and i i think in the post-covid situation we have to form a counter-culture that is really joyful but also highly contagious i think you're right it's an opportunity yeah this is an opportunity i was stuck by the image i think was march 29th when the holy father had the holy hour and that's that was a fundamental thing was that this is an opportunity for us to reevaluate what matters most what's important and i think we're seeing this never allow a crisis to go to waste give new meaning to that but my concern is is is have we done that no you know have we done that have we been able to take a look and really understand the impact that the pandemic has had on young people on anybody actually young people and elderly and how isolating it's become and basic relationships and community has just been devastated alcoholism abuse domestic abuse has just been it's been profoundly destructive so great up next our panelists and our guests will share their final thoughts on religious liberty stay with us [Music] so in other countries people are persecuted for their beliefs whereas in the united states we have our religious liberty based off of our constitution and so we actually are lackadaisical and won't stand up for our beliefs where in other countries people are willing to die for their beliefs there is a place where education begins and faith and reason connect franciscan university of steubenville's online programs will advance your career through an e-learning experience that's both academically excellent and passionately catholic with online degrees taught by full-time professors in theology catechetics business education and other disciplines you can earn your master's degree online without changing your lifestyle find out more today at franciscan.edu where your faith and career can connect online [Music] and welcome back to franciscan university presents we've come to our final segment so regis would you like to start us off with your final thoughts yeah let me begin by thanking you so much for coming up i only realized a couple of moments before that you are the daughter of the late charlie bryce an extraordinary extraordinary man uh no end of admiration and gratitude for what he has done so i i can understand that he shaped you in a decisive way it gives me confidence that maybe the bishops will take counsel with you and change direction i'll wait and and see in the meantime let me just make this observation i was reading re-reading tacitus the other day the annals of the early roman empire and he has this this blinding insight he says the thing that makes rome a city is not the nobility of the emperor not the strength of the army not the justice of the constitution or even the vitality of the marketplace but the temples of the gods and that's at the level of nature man is naturally drawn to god worship homage praise this is part of the structure of the human person and it's a function of nature natural justice that we give honor to god and we have religious liberty in order to do that so there's a limit to what the state can and cannot do and we need to be i think a little more intentional a little more courageous in insisting upon where those lines need to be drawn and i'm glad that someone like you is uh spearheading that effort yeah yeah great thank you scott i'm i'm reminded of the educational power of worship and how sometimes our opponents recognize that perhaps more than we do and so when we talk about the need for education that's also something that god does through worship and and so in the liturgy with the eucharist especially and and i think the catholics have got to recognize the need right now to be forming the next generation in that area as well joyful worship now i'm reminded of how it is that people always act on the basis of what they think is right and so forming them in terms of what is right is more important than dinner tonight you know one of my favorite players uh was a viking defensive end jim marshall who broke all kinds of records in the nfl over more than 20 years but he's most famous for picking up a fumble from the 49er running back billy kilmer and running it back 66 yards the end zone celebrating it tossing in the air and giving the 49ers a safety because he ran the wrong way you know it's the famous wrong way run you know and that's what he's that's what probably is why he's not in the hall of fame and he wasn't betraying his teammates it wasn't treasonous it was simply him acting on the basis of what he thought he was right you know fortunately won the game but i mean i think that you know in the football field of life we have got to recognize that even if we get thrown for a loss you know or gain only one yard or have to punt we want to advance the ball in the right direction and what is that i think people have especially young people have lost their sense of direction so formation education worship evangelization catechesis i mean i would put all of my money in those stocks right now regardless of the dividends and the payoff but thank you for your noble effort you know and sheamus too your amazing husband and your father it's just a it's great to see this legacy is not only still alive but it's also flourishing amen again thank you so much mary your final thoughts there was a priest who said in the midst of all the coveted government restrictions on on worship he said i'm not surprised that the government terms religious worship as non-essential what troubles me is that so many catholics do yeah and i i think that's a challenge that even as we look at religious liberty and we look at the public sphere there are battles to be fought there are cases to be litigated there are laws to be challenged and yet what it comes down to at heart is us knowing who we are we're made by god we're his creatures we're called to worship him and to be that person to be bold to be authentic to be visible not to allow ourselves to be erased from and or put in a you know a tiny corner of society and to be who we are and unafraid of the gospel that that's where religious liberty begins with us exercising it and and leave the rest of the lawyers but we have to live at first and form that next generation okay i'm just going to ask i'm going to break normal tradition here a sign of hope can you just give us a sign of hope that when you look out because there's so many difficult things but a sign of hope that you see it's that in in times of need people are searching they're looking for meaning and and they're open in a way that sometimes prosperity and and no challenges uh can close a heart so i think this is a time of opportunity we'll move into that great thank you so much mark uh if you would like to learn more about today's topic we have an article that mary wrote called ducat do catholic hospitals discriminate by mary rice and iris hassan and it addresses one of the aspects that we've talked been talking about today and it's yours free if you simply go online to faithandreason.com or call the number that you're going to see in the bottom of the screen in just a moment again mary i just want to thank you so much for your being with us this morning it's a topic that i've found myself interested i actually studied law a little bit and ended up getting a law degree and one of the things that i remembered was they said it doesn't matter what the constitution says it actually matters what other people say about the constitution and it's just something that i've studied and looked at and prayed about and thought about but what i loved about our conversation today was that's that's a part of it but i want to just take us back to the most important thing that religious liberty isn't something that the government grants us in the government's generosity it allows us that's just that's not the way it is and that ultimately it comes from god and my concern is is that we are looking towards the government to fix it or we're looking towards the supreme court finally we've got a supreme court so everything that simply isn't the case and ultimately what it's going to come down to is the individual's heart i remember a book i don't recall the name i'm sure you guys remember by george weigel he said when we take a look at what's taken place over the last many years fundamentally it's been a breakdown in discipleship that that's that's where we failed and because of that a disciple isn't a witness isn't giving witness to truth and beauty and goodness and because of that we've lost all credibility in the eyes of the world in the secular world and as i stated earlier what it once was seeing the church was this rock of of hope and and and being able to fix things and bring truth and reason for a vast population of people we see that they were seen as part of the problem so as we wrap up i think one of the things that i'm praying for is courage is that we live in a world that's simply by saying things and by not using the right word the whole weight of of social media and the media and and pressure that comes down on us but what we need is men and women who'll be disciples men and women who are going to love jesus and put him in the center of their life who are going to stand about what's true regardless of what happens there's going to be debate there's going to be people that come against people are going yeah people are going to lose jobs and things are going to be taken away from them but when the church is her best is when she's willing to do that so exactly what you said is is that there are going to be men and women who are going to stand up for what is true and what is right and what is beautiful so we have a lot to look forward to and a lot to get ready for amen so why don't we pray for a moment heavenly father we thank you for the call that you've placed on our life we thank you for mary's visit with us today bless her and her ministry bless her family lord we pray for our country that you would send forth your grace and your blessing and your peace jesus we pray that hearts would be turned not just the hearts of our politician and our judges but the hearts of all people in this time of great crisis and a time of a profound void that you will fill that void we thank you for your blessing and your grace and your mercy may almighty god brought his blessings on you the father the son and the holy spirit thank you so much for joining us god bless you [Music] download a free handout on today's topic at faithandreason.com where you can also watch past episodes of franciscan university presents or request the handout by emailing us at presents franciscan.edu or reach us by phone for today's handout by calling [Music] 800-783-6447 that's 800-783-6447 [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: Franciscan University of Steubenville

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Keywords: Franciscan University, Steubenville, Ohio, Catholic, college, Franciscan University of Steubenville, Franciscan University of Steubenville (College / University), Franciscan University Presents, presents, EWTN, Fr. Dave Pivonka TOR, Dr. Regis Martin, Dr. Scott Hahn, Mary Hasson, Mary Rice Hasson, Ethics and Public Policy Center, religious liberty, freedom of religion, 1st amendement

Id: Oy3cLT8ykKw

Length: 58min 34sec (3514 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021