On May 16, 2012, Bishop William Lori, the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop’s Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, was installed as the Archbishop of Baltimore.
In his homily at his installation Mass, he stressed the need to defend religious liberty, harkening to the foundation of the oldest diocese in the United States of America and its first bishop: “We defend religious liberty . . . because Archbishop John Carroll’s generation of believers and patriots bequeathed to us a precious legacy that has enabled the Church to worship in freedom, to bear witness to Christ publicly, and to do massive and amazing works of pastoral love, education and charity in ways that are true to the faith that inspired them in the first place.”
Archbishop John Carroll’s “generation of believers and patriots” were heirs to the great Maryland experiment in religious liberty in the middle of the 17th century — an experiment that did not last then and has not received the attention it deserves since.
George Calvert founded the Maryland colony as a commercial venture and to demonstrate that it was possible for a person to be a Catholic and loyal to the monarch, a combination long thought impossible in England. He and his heirs struggled to establish the Maryland colony and to maintain religious liberty in its laws and culture. They were swimming against the tide of European religious settlements: subjects were expected to go with the flow of their sovereign’s religion.
Next Saturday, March 9, the Kansas Authors Club District 5 monthly meeting is a read-around by members, and I plan to read from this article. I will also have my book for sale, and distribute information about the Catholic Martyrs of England pilgrimage. The meeting is held at the Wichita Public Library Rockwell Branch, 5939 E. 9th Street, Wichita, KS, 2:00- 4:00 pm--meetings are free and open to the public, so if you're in Wichita, please feel welcome to attend. Refreshments are served!
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