"Students of Faith" Video
Apr. 18, 2024. In what is called a major win for free speech, a pro-life protestor was reading the Bible aloud, in a conversational tone, on the same street as an anti-Dobbs protest and a few days later at a Pride-Fest rally. In spite of police acting to stop him, his right to speak his views publicly and peaceably was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth District. Meinecke v. City of Seattle https://tinyurl.com/53xrfzms
Police had asked the protestor to stop reading and/or move to another location saying that he was causing a disruption to the ongoing events and there could be violence as a result of his reading. Some rally attendees tried to intimidate him, to drown out his reading, stole one of his Bibles, poured water on another Bible and knocked him down. Instead of arresting those who assaulted the protestor, police detained him and charged him with obstruction.
The Ninth Circuit judges found the man’s 1st Amendment freedom of speech had been “burdened” by the police asking him to leave the area and then arresting him for “obstruction” even though he was on a public sidewalk peacefully expressing his views. The court stated that whether the listeners found his views offensive or even hateful did not negate the protestor’s right to speak as he did.
Had the protestor complied with the police’s request for him to stop reading or move to another space, the court said that would have constituted a “Heckler’s Veto.” We see Heckler’s Vetoes often on college campuses when invited speakers are prevented from speaking by raucous, completely disruptive behavior and threats that stop any message of the invited speaker.
The judges concluded: “If speech provokes wrongful acts on the part of the hecklers, the government must deal with those wrongful acts directly; it may not avoid doing so by suppressing the speech.” Meinecke v. City of Seattle; Page 4
More: https://tinyurl.com/bdefkkk7 https://tinyurl.com/ykcnhc37 https://tinyurl.com/2rp6utaz
“To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness, which mankind now enjoys… Jedidiah Morse
LEARN & SHARE THIS WEEK'S LESSON
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN A MINUTE
Click here to learn one example of why and how we protect religious freedom and the choice for life.
https://vimeo.com/901879901?share=copy
Whether Americans pray and act for life and religious liberty at the Washington March for Life, at the Pilgrimage to Montauk, NY for Life and Religious Liberty, at their state's capitol for their state's March for Life or in their own parishes, the prayers and attention cannot waiver. Let us keep the safekeeping of innocent life and the maintenance of religious freedom always in our prayers and action
STUDENTS MAY PRAY IN SCHOOL
PUBLIC SCHOOLS
ARE NOT “GOD-FREE ZONES”
America’s children need not leave their faith outside the school house door.
For students to be silenced or disciplined by a school authority for appropriate religious expression should never happen. Sadly, young students may well conclude…
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Educational resources for parish members who work to support Religious Freedoms.
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AT WORLD MEETING OF FAMILIES: DEFENDING FREEDOM OF RELIGION
Barbara Samuells, president of Catholics for Freedom of Religion and a parishioner at St. Matthew’s, Dix Hills, shares her experience at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RALLY 2018
IN SERVICE TO THE CHURCH
Click here to watch Barbara on TeleCare TV.
Pope Francis has observed that “religion [cannot] be relegated to the inner sanctum of personal life, without influence on societal and national life.” Evangelii Gaudium. . . , no. 183. In insisting that our liberties as Americans be respected, Pope Benedict XVI said that this work belongs to “an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity endowed with a strong critical sense vis-à-vis the dominant culture.” Therefore, catechesis on religious liberty is not the work of priests alone. If religious liberty is not properly understood, all people suffer and are deprived of the essential contribution to the common good, be it in education, health care, feeding the hungry, civil rights, and social services that individuals make every day, both here at home and overseas.
CATHOLICS FOR FREEDOM OF RELIGION
MISSION STATEMENT
America’s First Amendment guarantees its citizens five freedoms, the first of which is Freedom of Religion. Freedom of Religion includes the freedom to worship according to one’s beliefs as well as the freedom to practice that faith in everyday life according to one’s conscience.
So that this First Amendment freedom may be practiced and preserved for generations yet unborn it is essential that Americans understand this freedom and the circumstances from which it came. A fitting place for the development of this understanding and protection of Religious Freedom is inside all faith communities.
Catholics for Freedom of Religion offers resources to parish members who work to support Religious Freedom by initiating parish laity groups with these suggested goals:
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To educate and inspire for Freedom of Religion
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To remain non-partisan, advocating for no candidate or party
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To invite and include other faith communities
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To become a permanent group within each parish to educate every generation of Catholics about our Freedom of Religion…how rare it is, how dearly it was purchased for us and how certainly it is being lost.
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To recognize and oppose attacks on Freedom of Religion from any source
“We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, that religion, or the duty we owe our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right.” James Madison
“While Americans presume that the Constitution guarantees their rights, in practice our rights survive or disappear based on how firmly we defend them.” Archbishop Charles J. Chaput
