The USCCB religious liberty video | National Catholic Reporter by MSW. MGB: The old joke about the Catholic Church and religious liberty before Vatican II was that it insisted on the liberty of Catholics in secular and Protestant Catholics and the rights of the Church as an institution in Catholic countries and kingdoms. Indeed, Ireland is still suffering from the latter attitude, although courage by Irish patriots is making headway.
The ultimate point of Dignitas Humanae is that human dignity is not served when religious belief is forced, whether it is forced by the government or by the Church. If one is honoring human freedom and dignity, one cannot forcibly restrain contraceptive options or sit by while bigoted shop owners are allowed to use hate speech against gays and lesbians under color of law.
Freedom is the individual right of the Will to choose the Good presented to it by the Intellect. If the intellect tells you that your are gay, then you are violating your own Good by pretending likewise. If the Church insists that it knows better than the individual on this, then the Church is not only wrong, but is doing violence to its own members, employees and priests - all of whom have a right to be happy. The Church needs to give up on the idea that it is seeking religious freedom while the rest of us can plainly see that it seeks religious power. Those who are strident on this will lose, because the faithful have gay kids, siblings and parents who are getting married in droves and will want these marriages blessed by a priest. In this case, the faithful are right and the bishops are wrong (while the priests are busily fulfilling the demands of their parishioners.
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