On the eve of July 4th — here in Hillsdale residents are gearing up for the city’s annual parade — many Americans may give a thought or two to the ideal of political freedom. Roman Catholics in the U.S. have been having more than a couple thoughts of late since they have been observing what the American bishops have called a “Fortnight for Freedom.” According to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops website:

The fourteen days from June 21—the vigil of the Feasts of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More—to July 4, Independence Day, are dedicated to this “fortnight for freedom”—a great hymn of prayer for our country. Our liturgical calendar celebrates a series of great martyrs who remained faithful in the face of persecution by political power—St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More, St. John the Baptist, SS. Peter and Paul, and the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome. Culminating on Independence Day, this special period of prayer, study, catechesis, and public action will emphasize both our Christian and American heritage of liberty. Dioceses and parishes around the country have scheduled special events that support a great national campaign of teaching and witness for religious liberty.

But now to spoil the fun or complicate the prayers comes a piece at Religion & Politics on the limits of the bishops’ stand for freedom. Jessica Coblentz reports on parts of the American church where skepticism about the bishops’ project are evident:

Catholics for Choice (CFC), a reproductive rights group, has orchestrated the most expansive effort to actively engage the USCCB argument about religious liberty. In a statement, CFC asks the question, “Whose religious freedom are we talking about?” They argue, “No-cost contraception for the average woman, including many Catholic women, can mean following her religious beliefs, following her conscience.” Likewise, parishioners at The Shrine of the Most Blessed Sacrament parish in Washington D.C. released a public statement criticizing the campaign’s narrow depiction of religious liberty. “We, the faithful, are in danger of becoming pawns,” they stated. “In no way do we feel that our religious freedom is at risk. We find it grotesque to have the call for this ‘Fortnight’ evoke the names of holy martyrs who died resisting tyranny.” Other Catholics, from the editors of Commonweal Magazine to Bishop Stephen Blaire of Stockton, California, have criticized the shortsighted, partisan nature of the USCCB’s charge that the mandate poses a threat to religious freedom.

I for one am not about to instruct Roman Catholics on their understanding of religious liberty. Part of the problem stems from apparently conflicting teachings on religious freedom and liberty of conscience. While Vatican I denounced freedom of conscience, Vatican II took a much more expansive and positive view of human rights and freedoms. One plausible attempt to reconcile this tension is here (though how well the bishops are doing at instructing the faithful on the nooks and crannies of church teaching is another matter). What does make sense is that Rome would never construe freedom of conscience in such a way as to permit sinful acts.

An observation a Protestant onlooker may responsibly make concerns the slipperiness of freedom for Christians in the United States. For almost two centuries Protestants believed that their religion was not simply the best to preserve American freedoms, but also that the nature of religious and civil liberty were virtually indistinguishable when Protestants were the ones holding the reins of liberty. This was, of course, a major source of anti-Catholicism among U.S. Protestants: believers loyal to a foreign prince (the Pope) were incapable of participating in a free republic. But this identification of religious and civil liberty was American Protestantism’s undoing. During the 1960s, when the complaints of African-Americans, women, and war protesters raised genuine questions about the extent of “liberty for all” in the United States, Protestant endorsements of political liberty looked remarkably hollow. In response, the Protestant mainline churches went from the biggest apologists for the United States and the West to one of the nation’s constant critics (they found their “prophetic” voice).

It looks like the Roman Catholic Church, with its appeal to religious freedom, may be experiencing the tension that afflicted Protestants. Granted, the bishops are not part of an informal ecclesiastical establishment the way that mainline Protestants were in the 1950s. Also different is the setting for the bishops’ effort — contested federal policies that potentially hurt and definitely disrupt Roman Catholic agencies.

Still, what is similar is the way that liberty is always contested. The liberties one group wants inevitably involve the loss of another group’s prerogatives. In the United States we used to have a political mechanism for resolving this tension — it was called federalism. What the Roman Catholic Church has to resolve the conflict in its midst over the nature and scope of religious freedom is another matter. Whether Roman Catholic officials have the gumption to quell this debate by appealing to the power of church hierarchy is a matter best left to Roman Catholic speculation. Still, it would be a curious feat to see the church resort to clerical authority in the name of religious freedom and liberty of conscience.