In C.S. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters, the demon Screwtape writes to the demon Wormwood about the man they want to get into hell:
“Your man has been accustomed, ever since he was a boy, to have a dozen incompatible philosophies dancing about together inside his head. He doesn’t think of doctrines as primarily “true” of “false”, but as “academic” or “practical”, “outworn” or “contemporary”, “conventional” or “ruthless”. Jargon, not argument, is your best ally in keeping him from the Church. “
At the USCCB meeting in Atlanta, this week, John Garvey, an attorney, had this to say to their Eminences and Excellencies — my emphases and [comments]:
I hope to show that the very ideal of religious tolerance – born of the notion that every individual should be free to believe whatever he wants about God –is one of the principal forces driving us toward the abyss.
I’m just thinking out loud. But it might be that the argument for religious freedom lies farther back than we have put it. Preserving religious liberty may not be a job for lawyers like me. It may be a job for lawyers like Thomas More. Our society won’t care about religious freedom if it doesn’t care about God. That’s where reform is needed. We won’t have –and we probably won’t need – religious exemptions for nurses, doctors, teachers, social workers if no one is practicing their religion. The best way to protect religious freedom might be to remind people that they should love God. [Who IS Love and IS Truth] This is, after all, why we have a first amendment. And why in better times we have not needed to rely on the Constitution at all, because we could depend on our elected representatives to respect our liberty.
The tragedy of Thomas More was that he had to die because he loved God. He could not be both a good subject and a faithful Catholic. ["The King's good subject, but God's first"] Our tragedy is different, though it is no less about the protection of religious liberty. The mechanisms to preserve religious liberty only work when people care about their religion. Religious liberty will expand or contract accordingly. Saving religious liberty means reminding people that they should love God. Thomas More taught us that we need religious liberty. More importantly, he taught us that loving God is worth dying for. If that is so, then the freedom to love God is worth the fight. [Be martyrs. Die for the faith. And if you're going to do that, manifest that faith even now.] That’s the message we need to get across. I think that asking people to keep this cause in their prayers during the Fortnight for Freedom is precisely the right remedy for what ails us. /// June 13, 2012
Accompany me, Father George David Byers, S.S.L., S.T.D., as I begin life as a Catholic Priest-Hermit by choice. Holy Souls Hermitage is dedicated to the sanctification of my fellow priests, bishops, deacons & seminarians going through the purgatory of this life or the next. Prayer and sacrifice go up, of course, for both Benedict XVI and the next Successor of Saint Peter. 
Thanks for posting. Put the original speech (http://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/religious-liberty/religious-freedom-and-the-love-of-god-garvey-address.cfm) over on FR.
Dr. Garvey definitely made some seriously good points here!
The religious atheists and religious secularists don’t get it. When they try to stomp those of us who love God, they are hurting their freedom of conscience too.
FreeRepublic: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2895384/posts
Excellent: love cuts through the mind games!
The only “religious liberty” permitted in a society like ours is the liberty to be religious at home, in church or amongst ourselves in coffee table discussions. The secularist elites do not want our religion to have any bearing whatsoever on any aspect of our public lives be they in education, business or politics. And this does not just apply to us Catholics but to all followers of whatever religion. If you try to take it seriously in the public sphere you will be cast aside as a crazy pariah who is disturbing the social order. The only “religion” allowed full reign in society is the religion of secular humanism which, in my opinion, most certainly IS a religion with it’s own ideas about who we are, where we came from and where we are going. It’s a religion that at bottom denies the reality of the Incarnation.
If you want a really good grasp of just what kind of enemy we are fighting here I strongly reccommend Dr. John Rao’s new book Black Legends. He is the ONLY Catholic I know of that “gets it” regarding the dangers of pluralism and he absolutely nails it in his recent book. If we aren’t careful we will simply be buying into the argument that the pluralists themselves give, namely, that religious liberty means the freedom to be whatever we want to be so long as it isn’t “divisive” with “divisive” being defined in whatever arbitrary or pragmatic fashion the current secularist diktats wish to define it as. In short we can be free to be Catholic in our heads and amongst our own but NOT free to allow our Catholicism to make inroads into education, public policy or business practice to name just a few examples.
The Martyrs are the witnesses to the fact that God given Freedom can never be curtailed by any human power!!.
Incisive observation, good Father! I love it!