'Right to pray' amendment has Missouri bishops' approval

(EWTN) Missouri's four Catholic bishops have given their approval to a proposed constitutional amendment that would ensure citizens the right to pray in both public and private settings.


“True religious freedom does not just constitute freedom to worship on Sunday, but also includes the freedom to express one’s faith publicly,” the bishops said in a recent statement about the amendment, which will go before voters on an Aug. 7 primary election ballot.


The bishops said the amendment was consistent with Catholic teaching, which supports the public right of believers to give their “prayerful witness to matters of importance to the common good of society as a whole.”


Amendment 2 states that the government will not impose religion on Missouri residents, either through an established state religion or by forcing any citizen to participate in religious activity.


Within this framework, it would secure the right of citizens “to pray individually or corporately in a private or public setting so long as such prayer does not result in disturbance of the peace or disruption of a public meeting or assembly.”


It would also make clear that all Missouri citizens, including elected officials, “have the right to pray on government premises and public property so long as such prayers abide within the same parameters placed upon any other free speech under similar circumstances.”


Students, likewise, would be guaranteed the right to express their religious beliefs in schoolwork, to opt out of requirements conflicting with those beliefs, and to exercise their religious beliefs in other private, voluntary, and non-disruptive ways.


The amendment would also require public schools to display the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution “in a conspicuous and legible manner” on their premises.


According to the state's four bishops, the proposal comes at a time when “religious values are becoming marginalized in our society.”


Religious adherents, they said, “need assurance that they remain free to exercise and express their religious beliefs in public, provided just order be observed, without threat of external pressure to conform to changing societal 'norms.'”


The Missouri bishops – Archbishop Robert J. Carlson of St. Louis, Bishop Robert W. Finn of Kansas City-St. Joseph, Bishop John R. Gaydos of Jefferson City, and Bishop James V. Johnston, Jr. of Springfield-Cape Girardeau– cited the Vatican II declaration on religious freedom, “Dignitatis Humanae.”


That document confirms a right to religious freedom, in the sense that all people “are to be immune from coercion …  in such wise that no one is to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his own beliefs, whether privately or publicly, whether alone or in association with others, within due limits.”


In light of that teaching, the Missouri bishops urged the faithful “to carefully review Amendment 2 and vote in favor of the Amendment in August.”