The
Vatican's Faustian secret compact with China and the scandalous silence of Pope
Francis regarding the plight of several Catholics who by contrast courageously
stand against the tyrannical Chinese Communist Party raises a fair question: If
religious organizations kowtow to tyrants at the peril of religious freedom,
why should the nonreligious even care?
We
should all care about religious freedom because at its heart is our freedom to
believe and behave according to our deepest held beliefs. Every one of us
depends upon that freedom to live our lives according to our conscientious
principles.
America's
First Amendment by no accident pairs religious freedom with freedoms of speech,
the press, assembly and petitioning the government. That's because once a
government intrudes on any one of these freedoms, none of the other freedoms
remains safe. Witness China.
The
Chinese Communist Party's jackbooted stomping on freedoms of speech, assembly,
the press and religion should give us pause before sanctioning any weakening of
these freedoms in our own country—even when such suppression might advance our
own convictions regarding abortion, marriage, gender issues or any other matter
of belief and conscience.
As
Martin Luther King, Jr. reminds us, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to
justice everywhere."
