Pope Francis recently emphasized that “religious freedom is not simply freedom of thought or private worship. It is the freedom to live according to ethical principles, both privately and publicly.”
On Monday, the Supreme Court recognized this basic freedom in the Hobby Lobby case, upholding the rights of Americans to live out their faith in daily life, through the closely held businesses they run.
The court based its decision on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, which Congress passed in 1993 with nearly unanimous bipartisan support and President Bill Clinton enthusiastically signed into law.
While many Americans may not have heard of RFRA, the law has worked very well over the past two decades to allow people to live out their faith, both inside and outside of church.
In the early ’90s, for instance, a Washington, DC, Presbyterian church sought to move a few blocks and continue its longstanding work of feeding the homeless.
But some locals objected, enlisting the city’s help to block these plans with zoning regulations, stopping the church’s outreach to the poor.
The church sued, saying that ministering to the needy was an essential part of its religious teaching. It mainly relied on RFRA, arguing that the zoning laws substantially burdened church members’ religious exercise.
The court agreed and stopped the city from enforcing its unjust zoning regulations against the church’s program to feed the homeless.
The DC federal court back in 1994, and the Supreme Court in Hobby Lobby, both got it right — and both for the same reasons.
In both cases, people faced government punishment for living out their faith in ways that others disfavored. And in both cases, the government couldn’t justify the burden it had placed on that faith-in-action.
As President Clinton explained upon signing RFRA, the law “basically says . . . that the government should be held to a very high level of proof before it interferes with someone’s free exercise of religion” — and rightly so.
Religious believers may not win every RFRA case, and sometimes that is just. But holding the government to this higher standard serves the common good in many ways.
It reduces the risk of religious discrimination in disguise — when the government acts out of hostility to certain religious beliefs, but takes care not to state its hostility explicitly.
RFRA’s standard also maximizes religious diversity and the flourishing of civil society — the vital layer of voluntary associations between individual and government, which provide for so many of our needs, and so enrich our lives.
In the Catholic community, we count it a great blessing and privilege to have made many contributions to civil society, particularly through our great ministries of service to the poor and the hungry, the sick and the dying.
We also recognize that when religious freedom comes under threat, so do these ministries.
Without RFRA’s legal protections, the faithful may be afraid to start or continue such ministries. And the impact on those they serve — the most vulnerable members of society — would be sorely felt.
I was blessed to work for Catholic Charities for over two decades, and I have seen the great benefit — to those served, and to those serving — of that vital ministry.
In my years as a bishop, I’ve also seen how the Gospel inspires people of faith who own businesses to reward their employees with generous pay and benefits, and to give back to the community with their time, talent and treasure. Hobby Lobby’s owners, the Green family, have done so, precisely because their Christian faith demands it.
These goods are all of a piece. The human reality of religious freedom knows no difference between what the law may call a “nonprofit” or a “for profit” entity; it is rooted instead in the dignity of the human person.
Whether people are serving the poor elderly, like the Little Sisters of the Poor, or running a family business, like the Greens, the government should recognize that human dignity by allowing people to live out their faith absent a very strong reason.
As we saw Monday, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act guarantees this protection. Thank God for RFRA.
Joseph E. Kurtz is the Archbishop of Louisville and the president of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops.