The Fundamental Right to Worship

Conn Carroll / April 15, 2008

Senior Policy Analyst for the Heritage Foundation’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society, Daniel Moloney shares his thoughts and predictions on Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to the United States:

The primary purposes of the Pope’s trip are to visit American Catholics as their pastor and to address the UN on the 60th Anniversary of the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights.

• I expect that he will give particular emphasis to the need to protect and promote religious liberty. As a religious leader you might expect the Pope to do this, but this emphasis on religious freedom isn’t just special pleading.
• He sees religious liberty as the most important human right, the foundation of all the others, because it protects man’s ability to pursue his greatest aspirations. If a person has the right to look for God, then his dignity is safe. If a citizen’s other rights are strongly protected—e.g., the right to life, to property, even to health care—but he lacks the right to worship freely, then in his innermost soul, he is not free but is a “mere creature of the state.” (more…)