From Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review:
“The defense of religious freedom is not some Evangelical Christian polemic, or wily strategy of discredited Catholic bishops,” the president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops said, countering the media narrative, “but the quintessential American cause, the first line in the defense of and protection of human rights.”
“Freedom of religion,” he said, “has been the driving force of almost every enlightened, unshackling, noble cause in American history,” the cause of some of our most “liberating, ennobling” movements, including the civil-rights movement, he said. In defending religious liberty today, he said, we are “protecting America. We act not as sectarians, but as responsible citizens. We act on behalf of the truth about the human person.”