Truth.

Monday night I traveled to the Franciscan Life Center in Meriden to listen to Peter Wolfgang, Esq., executive director of the Family Institute of Connecticut, whom I wanted to hear speak partly to "vet" him as he will be speaking here at Saint Catherine of Siena on Tuesday, July 3rd at 7 p.m. on the issue of Religious Freedom, vis-à-vis the context of the debate over the Health Care Mandate. I was impressed. Actually I was happy to hear the focus of his discussion to be one of unity and not division.

He did not pit the Catholic Church against the Administration, nor did he make this a "Catholic only" issue as some in the main street media like to position the issue. Rather, Mr. Wolfgang spoke to an audience of Christians—Catholics and denominations of Christianity, Jews, and Protestants alike. The room was filled to capacity—lay-men and -women, religious sisters and brothers and, of course, those outside the realm of Christianity. His audience mirrored his speech in the sense that the discussion was about an "American issue" and not one of contraception or abortion, nor is it an issue of war against women or an issue of conservative versus liberal, Democrat versus Republican. It is only an issue of Religious Free-dom—and that affects all Americans.

Mr. Wolfgang cuts through the fog of the issue—the partisan deceptions of what the issue is not about: all those peripheral issues based on emotions and used to cloud what is really under attack: religious freedom—for all peoples.

Of all the points he made in his 40-minute talk (after which he takes questions from the audience) he said one thing that really hit my heart: "never in my life did I think I would be attending Free-dom Rallies for religion in the United States of America. Maybe in Russia or maybe in China or some other country—but never in the U.S.A." He noted a conversation, I believe by then Bishop Lori of Bridgeport during a Congressional hearing, where the Bishop re-called a story between the Vatican emissaries sent by the Holy Father to enlist the naming of the first American prelate to the United States after the Revolutionary War. Ben Franklin told the Vatican that the US government didn’t dictate to the Holy See who the prelate should be. It was up to the Church to run its own business…in that era the Vatican needed to get the "blessing" of the European Monarchs before appointing a representative to a See. What a gift our newly formed government of the United States gave to the world at that time—religious freedom.

May freedom reign!