U.S. bishops identify liberty concerns

WASHINGTON -- A new annual report by the U.S. bishops’ conference identifies five top threats to religious liberty in the United States, including a federal regulation it says could impose mandates on doctors to perform objectionable procedures and threats to the Church’s service to people who are migrants.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ first annual “State of Religious Liberty in the United States,” published Jan. 16, said potential threats to religious liberty in the United States largely come in the form of federal regulations or cultural trends.

Five key areas of concern, the 48-page report said, include attacks against houses of worship, especially in the aftermath of the Israel-Hamas conflict; the Section 1557 regulation from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which the report said “will likely impose a mandate on doctors to perform gender transition procedures and possibly abortions”; threats to religious charities serving migrants and refugees, “which will likely increase as the issue of immigration gains prominence in the election”; suppression of religious speech “on marriage and sexual difference”; and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s Pregnant Workers Fairness Act regulations, which the report said “aim to require religious employers to be complicit in abortion in an unprecedented way.”

The report’s introduction said that due to a divided federal government, “most introduced bills that threatened religious liberty languished,” resulting in threats in the form of “proposed regulations by federal agencies,” or cultural trends such as growing partisanship over migration.

The report noted the U.S. Supreme Court only heard two cases implicating religious liberty in 2023, “but in each case the Supreme Court ruled for broader protections — for religious exercise in the workplace, in Groff v. DeJoy, and for free speech based on religious beliefs, in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis.”

Other areas of concern identified in the report include some state bills making clergy mandatory reporters for abuse without an exception for the seal of the confessional. As the report notes, “For Catholic priests, breaking the confidentiality of statements made during the Sacrament of Reconciliation — that is, breaking the seal of the confessional — is a grave offense, resulting in automatic excommunication from the Church.”

The report also identified partisanship within the Church as an area of concern.

Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, chair of the USCCB’s Committee for Religious Liberty, who oversaw the report, told OSV News that the committee began this annual report in order to “educate the faithful” and “motivate people to get involved in promoting and protecting religious liberty.”

Rhoades noted that threats to houses of worship remain a significant cultural concern, as Catholic churches and organizations saw vandalism and other crimes in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2022 that overturned prior rulings by the high court making abortion access a constitutional right; other faith traditions have seen more violence occur at their places of worship, such as the 2018 mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.