Washington D.C., Feb 18, 2013 / 17:05 pm
In anticipation of upcoming legislation, Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore urged the nation's lawmakers to work this year "to restore a tradition on rights of conscience in health care."
"I fear that the federal government's respect for believers and people of conscience no longer measures up to the treatment Americans have a right to expect from their elected representatives," Archbishop Lori said in a Feb. 15 letter to Congress.
The archbishop, who heads the Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, voiced his support for several new legislative measures to protect religious freedom and warned of the negative consequences that would come from a failure to preserve rights of conscience.
He said that a current draft of an appropriations bill for the Departments of Labor and Health and Human Services contains "two important provisions supported by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops."