"Students of Faith" Video
A student in Creekside Elementary School, WA, asked her principal if she could start an after school interfaith prayer group so she and her religious friends would feel comfortable and safe praying and doing community service together.
The principal replied that all clubs had started earlier in the year so there was no funding for another club and the girl and her friends would have to pay to use space in the school like other outside groups. Meanwhile, one week earlier, the school had approved a new Pride Club.
Based on 1st Amendment rights of free speech and free exercise of religion many such denials have been invalidated by courts so that a law firm representing a case like this usually needs to go no further than to write a letter listing the freedoms the school has denied and citing other such cases settled in favor of the student.
Situations like this could be avoided, and religious clubs quickly approved if we Americans were familiar with the basics of our religious freedoms including students’ rights to live their faith in many ways in public schools. Our children deciding to bring their faith to school should not have to struggle for the religious freedom already won for them by our Founding Fathers.
The US Department of Education explains students’ rights to religious expression in public schools at the link below. Also, at www.cffor.org there is a short video and a pamphlet on “Students of Faith” which cover much of the guidelines.
Thank God as well as the faithful parents of these children that we have students eager to live their faith in school. May they thrive in their love of God and serve as examples of hope and faith for some of our young Americans whom studies show feel isolated and hopeless.
Read more here: https://tinyurl.com/528xbzcy https://tinyurl.com/yc62732a
Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.” Matthew 19:14
LEARN & SHARE THIS WEEK'S LESSON
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN A MINUTE
School Says “No” to Interfaith Prayer Club a Week after Approving a Pride Club
Click here to learn one example of why and how we protect religious freedom and the choice for life.
https://vimeo.com/901879901?share=copy
Whether Americans pray and act for life and religious liberty at the Washington March for Life, at the Pilgrimage to Montauk, NY for Life and Religious Liberty, at their state's capitol for their state's March for Life or in their own parishes, the prayers and attention cannot waiver. Let us keep the safekeeping of innocent life and the maintenance of religious freedom always in our prayers and action
STUDENTS MAY PRAY IN SCHOOL
PUBLIC SCHOOLS
ARE NOT “GOD-FREE ZONES”
America’s children need not leave their faith outside the school house door.
For students to be silenced or disciplined by a school authority for appropriate religious expression should never happen. Sadly, young students may well conclude…
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Educational resources for parish members who work to support Religious Freedoms.
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AT WORLD MEETING OF FAMILIES: DEFENDING FREEDOM OF RELIGION
Barbara Samuells, president of Catholics for Freedom of Religion and a parishioner at St. Matthew’s, Dix Hills, shares her experience at the World Meeting of Families in Philadelphia.
RELIGIOUS FREEDOM RALLY 2018
IN SERVICE TO THE CHURCH
Click here to watch Barbara on TeleCare TV.
Pope Francis has observed that “religion [cannot] be relegated to the inner sanctum of personal life, without influence on societal and national life.” Evangelii Gaudium. . . , no. 183. In insisting that our liberties as Americans be respected, Pope Benedict XVI said that this work belongs to “an engaged, articulate and well-formed Catholic laity endowed with a strong critical sense vis-à-vis the dominant culture.” Therefore, catechesis on religious liberty is not the work of priests alone. If religious liberty is not properly understood, all people suffer and are deprived of the essential contribution to the common good, be it in education, health care, feeding the hungry, civil rights, and social services that individuals make every day, both here at home and overseas.
CATHOLICS FOR FREEDOM OF RELIGION
MISSION STATEMENT
America’s First Amendment guarantees its citizens five freedoms, the first of which is Freedom of Religion. Freedom of Religion includes the freedom to worship according to one’s beliefs as well as the freedom to practice that faith in everyday life according to one’s conscience.
So that this First Amendment freedom may be practiced and preserved for generations yet unborn it is essential that Americans understand this freedom and the circumstances from which it came. A fitting place for the development of this understanding and protection of Religious Freedom is inside all faith communities.
Catholics for Freedom of Religion offers resources to parish members who work to support Religious Freedom by initiating parish laity groups with these suggested goals:
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To educate and inspire for Freedom of Religion
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To remain non-partisan, advocating for no candidate or party
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To invite and include other faith communities
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To become a permanent group within each parish to educate every generation of Catholics about our Freedom of Religion…how rare it is, how dearly it was purchased for us and how certainly it is being lost.
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To recognize and oppose attacks on Freedom of Religion from any source
“We hold it for a fundamental and undeniable truth, that religion, or the duty we owe our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. The religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right.” James Madison
“While Americans presume that the Constitution guarantees their rights, in practice our rights survive or disappear based on how firmly we defend them.” Archbishop Charles J. Chaput
