Religious freedom 'rooted in human dignity,' says expert ahead of US bishops' observance

Religious freedom 'rooted in human dignity,' says expert ahead of US bishops' observance
By Gina Christian , OSV News

(OSV News) -- Ahead of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' annual observance of Religious Freedom Week, OSV News spoke with Emily Schumacher-Novak, associate director of education and outreach for the USCCB's Secretariat of Justice and Peace.

Schumacher-Novak explained that this year's observance -- which begins June 22, the feast of St. Thomas More and St. John Fisher, and ends June 29 -- is more timely than ever, with the accompanying USCCB novena prayers reflecting on specific threats to religious freedom both in the U.S. and abroad.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

OSV News: How would you sum up the purpose of the USCCB's Religious Freedom Week?

Schumacher-Novak: The week is really a chance for the Church in the United States to consider, as we sometimes say, our first freedom as Americans -- to live out our faith in public and serve the good of all, and to reflect on how religious freedom helps us to think about all the other freedoms that we have.

One of the things I really appreciate about it is the opportunity to remind ourselves that it (religious freedom) is rooted in our human dignity.

It is our human dignity that is being protected when we are seeking to live out our faith in public, and we have the right to seek God, to look for who God is to us, and to do that in freedom.

As for why it is a whole week, there are a lot of issues that our country is facing, both domestically and internationally, and so this is a chance for us to pray through several of those that are of particular focus over the next couple of days.

OSV News: The U.S. bishops have observed Religious Freedom Week -- whose predecessor was the USCCB's "Fortnite for Freedom" -- for several years now. Have you found that this observance is taking root at the parish level?

Schumacher-Novak: Yes. We get questions about it every year -- "When is the Religious Freedom Week stuff coming out? Are you guys ready? Has it come in, and are you ready to share it?"

So we do hear from folks in the pews who are interested in the novena that goes along with Religious Freedom Week, and we get great engagement on the novena. That is a great example of the people of God taking this up and incorporating it into their lives of faith and their prayer life through the course of Religious Freedom Week.

We also have Scripture reflections, and this year Religious Freedom Week falls right after the 12th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Those readings from the lectionary are a really great opportunity to think about how we are called to witness to the faith. How does Christ call us to do that?

We hear from parishes that priests will sometimes include Religious Freedom Week in their homilies or consider it as they're thinking about preaching for the weekend and the days ahead.

OSV News: The novena covers an array of issues related to religious freedom -- political and anti-religious violence, concerns over immigration enforcement, religious discrimination, parental choice in education, gender ideology, federal grants and the persecution of faith in Africa and Nicaragua. How did the U.S. Catholic bishops discern these issues and this sequence for the novena?

Schumacher-Novak: Each year, the USCCB's religious liberty committee puts together an annual report that looks at both the opportunities and challenges of religious freedom -- sort of the status of religious freedom in the United States and around the world.

How do we as Americans sort of engage in that? These (novena intentions) are examples to pray through those challenges and opportunities that the bishops identify at the end of each year.

Sometimes it's a chance for Catholics to think about issues we might not always consider as religious freedom issues. Immigration enforcement is a huge human dignity issue. The bishops have spoken prophetically about accompanying our brothers and sisters who are immigrants and doing so with dignity and humanity.

And then there's this additional religious freedom piece of it, in that many immigrants have been detained, and haven't had access to the sacraments.

So there are all of these levels relating to why our human dignity is essential in our call to be Catholics in public life. Religious freedom is obviously a big piece of that, and it has implications all over the place.

OSV News: The novena has prayer intentions for Africa and Nicaragua, which would seem to remind participants that human dignity transcends national borders, correct?

Schumacher-Novak: Yes. I do think that our call as the bishops' conference is to help the people of God in their dioceses think about the broad spectrum of the way human dignity is lived out, and to protect human dignity.

I don't know that we would say religious freedom is taken for granted in the U.S., but it is something that we are constantly called to remember and incorporate into our both public and private lives.

I would say also that there are moments when there is renewed attention to the issue. Our committee chairman, Archbishop Alexander Sample, has spoken very beautifully recently about the antisemitism that has been experienced by our Jewish brothers and sisters, and how it's very incompatible with our Catholic life, faith and our take on religious freedom.

These opportunities that -- sometimes fortunately and sometimes unfortunately, depending on the issue -- really bring it to the attention of Catholics, for them to remember that this is a way that we live out our faith.

OSV News: Any thoughts on how Catholics can develop that holistic perspective of religious freedom as intrinsic to human dignity?

Schumacher-Novak: Catholics in the United States have a lot of religious freedoms and they're enshrined in law, so we have this great protection. And we ought to be attentive to that, and then also utilize that in order to speak out on behalf of our brothers and sisters around the world who don't have those protections.

When you look at what's happening in Nigeria, for example, or across Africa, where Christians and people of faith generally are really targeted in a particular way, it is our responsibility as Catholics to care that our brothers and sisters don't have the opportunity to seek God in a free way. We ought to be both praying for a change of hearts, and also contacting our legislators to the extent possible, engaging our foreign policy colleagues to say, "This is not right."

We need to be leveraging the good of the United States and our belief in the freedom of all people to participate in their societies in a holistic way. We need to offer our voices and lend our support for that to happen.