Archbishop Chaput rallies US Catholics as Fortnight for Freedom concludes
July 04, 2012
Real freedom isn’t something Caesar can give or take away. He can interfere with it; but when he does, he steals from his own legitimacy. At a July 4 Mass at the basilica of the National Shrine in Washington, DC, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia preached on the meaning of religious freedom, as the US bishops’ Fortnight for Freedom concluded.
Reflecting on the day’s Gospel, Archbishop Chaput observed that while a coin can be made in Caesar’s image, the human person is made in the image of God. So as the coin belongs to Caesar, the person belongs to God. He said:
Real freedom isn’t something Caesar can give or take away. He can interfere with it; but when he does, he steals from his own legitimacy.
As he neared the conclusion of his homily, the archbishop spoke about the duty of American Catholics, saying that we “need to ‘speak out,’ not only for religious liberty and the ideals of the nation we love, but for the sacredness of life and the dignity of the human person--in other words, for the truth of what it means to be made in the image and likeness of God.”
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