Bishops Paprocki, Rhoades join Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission advisory board

イリノイ州スプリングフィールドのトーマス・パプロッキ司教。 / クレジット： イリノイ州スプリングフィールド教区

ワシントンDCニュースルーム、2025年5月19日午後17時57分(CNA)

Bishop Thomas Paprocki, Bishop Kevin Rhoades, and Father Thomas Ferguson will join an advisory board for President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, according to ホワイトハウスからの声明.

3人のカトリック聖職者が加わる。 サンフランシスコ大司教サルバトーレ・J・コルディレオーネ on the Advisory Board of Religious Leaders for the commission. Two members of the Church hierarchy — Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York and Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota — 委員会に仕えています itself.

Rhoades, the bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, chairs the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Religious Liberty. Paprocki, the bishop of Springfield, Illinois, played a major role in the bishops’ “Fortnight for Freedom” religious liberty campaign during the 2010s, according to the White House. 

PaprockiもRhoadesも、出版時までにコメントを求めることはできなかった。

Ferguson, who is a parish priest at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Alexandria, Virginia, also has a doctorate in government and authored “Catholic and American: The Political Theology of John Courtney Murray,” which focused on religious liberty and Catholicism in the United States.

“We’re looking forward … to the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year,” Ferguson told CNA in an interview, saying he hopes the commission can assist in “pointing out … just how important religious communities like the Catholic Church are to our society.”

Ferguson said the inclusion of Catholic clergy on the commission “is extremely welcomed by our Church,” adding: “It really puts us all in a forum where we can do the important work of educating people.”

One element on which Ferguson hopes to focus is insurance mandates for services that “violate our conscience” on issues such as contraception, sterilization, and transgender drugs and surgeries: “All of these things that we would find morally objectionable, we must be vigilant [against].”

He said he is also concerned about “where this country is going in terms of in vitro fertilization [IVF]” and noted that there are some politicians who “refer to themselves of pro-life legislators [despite] being advocates for IVF.”

“You also need to be protective of human life … created through IVF,” Ferguson said, recalling the 数百万のヒト胚 IVFプロセスによって破壊された。

ファーガソン 議論 ワシントン州で司祭の逮捕につながる新しい法律 if they do not report child abuse they learn about during the sacrament of reconciliation, which would violate the “absolute sense of secrecy [of a] … sacramental confession.”

“That’s an area,” he said, where “we can be very consistent in teaching, explaining and clarifying for people: ‘This is how we freely exercise our religion in terms of the First Amendment.’” 

宗教 自由 委員会

宗教聖職者で構成される諮問委員会に加えて、ホワイトハウスは法律専門家と一般の指導者で構成された諮問委員会を創設した。 これらの委員会は、委員会の最終報告書の作成を支援します。

委員会とその諮問委員会は、カトリック、正統派、プロテスタント、イスラム教、ユダヤ教を含む様々な宗教のメンバーを含む。

報告書は、米国の信教の自由に対する現在の脅威を概説し、権利が侵害されているときに法的保護を確保するための戦略を提供する。 また、米国における宗教の自由の基盤を明確にし、国内における歴史的に平和的な宗教的多元主義の認識を高める方法についてのガイダンスを発行する。 

Some of the commission’s key focus areas include conscience protections, free speech for religious bodies, institutional autonomy, attacks on houses of worship, parental rights in education, and school choice.

トランプは5月1日に大統領令によって委員会を設立し、それは国民の祈りの日と一致した。

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/264211/catholic-bishops-priest-join-trump-s-religious-liberty-commission-advisory-board