Foreword
2025 Annual Report of the Committee for Religious Liberty
Foreword
By Bishop Kevin Rhoades
On Christmas Eve 2024, Pope Francis inaugurated the Jubilee Year of 2025, which carries the theme, “Pilgrims of Hope.” In calling for the celebration of this holy year, our Holy Father identifies two features of hope that must sustain us in our work to promote religious liberty: patience and stability.
Reflecting on the ministry of Saint Paul the Apostle, the pope says that even in the midst of difficulties, “we come to realize that evangelization is sustained by the power flowing from Christ’s cross and resurrection,” and thus “we learn to practice a virtue closely linked to hope, namely patience.”[1] He talks about our fast-paced world, and, indeed, in our efforts to defend religious liberty, fast-paced political advocacy and rapid social change can tempt us to make unwise judgements. We can become anxious that our unpopular positions on issues such as the dignity of all human life and the nature of marriage and the human person require us to compromise our integrity in order to secure political victories. This Jubilee Year offers us a chance to reflect on the necessity of patience and long-suffering in our work to bear witness to the truth.
Pope Francis refers to the biblical image of the anchor as a symbol of hope:
The image of the anchor is eloquent; it helps us to recognize the stability and security that is ours amid the troubled waters of this life, provided we entrust ourselves to the Lord Jesus. The storms that buffet us will never prevail, for we are firmly anchored in the hope born of grace, which enables us to live in Christ and to overcome sin, fear and death. This hope, which transcends life’s fleeting pleasures and the achievement of our immediate goals, makes us rise above our trials and difficulties, and inspires us to keep pressing forward, never losing sight of the grandeur of the heavenly goal to which we have been called.
In the years since the U.S. bishops established a committee to promote religious liberty, we have indeed seen troubled waters. Trends have come and gone, and political winds have shifted back and forth. The ministry of the bishops to promote our first, most precious liberty has sought to remain anchored to the truth of the gospel, and we ask for the grace of this Jubilee to continue to remain steadfast in our principles.
Last year’s report identified five threats that the Committee considered most significant for 2024: attacks against houses of worship, especially in relation to the Israel-Hamas conflict; the Section 1557 regulation from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which would likely impose a mandate on doctors to perform gender transition procedures and possibly abortions; threats to religious charities serving newcomers, which would likely increase as the issue of immigration gained prominence in the election; suppression of religious speech on marriage and sexual difference; and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) Pregnant Workers Fairness Act (PWFA) regulations, which attempt to require religious employers to be complicit in abortion in an unprecedented way.
In general, our concerns were well-founded. Although we can be thankful there was not a rash of attacks on houses of worship in 2024, antisemitic incidents did significantly rise following the attack on Israel in 2023. Anti-Muslim incidents also increased. Catholic churches continue to be vandalized at an alarming rate. The final rule of the Section 1557 regulations, issued in 2024, largely conformed to the Annual Report’s expectations. Campaigns against Catholic ministries to migrants took a new turn in 2024, as the attorney general of Texas undertook a campaign against Catholic Charities and began seeking to shut down a long-running, well-respected ministry in El Paso. On April 29, 2024, the EEOC issued its guidance on harassment, requiring employers to use preferred pronouns and to provide access to single-sex facilities to persons of the opposite sex. The EEOC also issued its rules implementing the PWFA. While the USCCB supported the PWFA, which was passed by Congress with the goal of helping support women and healthy pregnancies, a goal the USCCB shares, the EEOC interpreted the law to include abortion provisions. In response to this egregious subversion of what was meant to be pro-family legislation, the USCCB filed a lawsuit against the government.
As we look to 2025, we anticipate that long-standing concerns will continue to require our vigilance, while new concerns, and perhaps opportunities, will also present themselves. Political leaders of countries may change, and public policy priorities may shift amidst various contemporary circumstances, but our patient and steadfast commitment to Jesus Christ and the gospel must not change. I pray that this report will serve as a resource to Christians, and all people of goodwill, who seek to promote and defend religious freedom.
[1] See Pope Francis, Spes non confundit, 9 May 2024: www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/bulls/documents/20240509_spes-non-confundit_bolla-giubileo2025.html.