When the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights issued its shocking report last week in which it claimed phrases such as “religious liberty” and “religious liberty” were actually “code words” for discrimination, the Commission received swift backlash, including from the Church.

Crux is reporting on comments made by Martin Castro, chairman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, who claimed in a 306-page report entitled “Peaceful Coexistence: Reconciling Nondiscrimination Principles with Civil Liberties” that people of faith were using religious liberty as a way to strip certain members of the public of their civil rights.

In his statement, Castro said, “The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.”

Elsewhere in his statement, Castro said, “Religious liberty was never intended to give one religion dominion over other religions, or a veto power over the civil rights and civil liberties of others. However, today, as in the past, religion is being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality.”

Castro’s comments sparked criticism from all corners, even within the Commission itself.

For example, in a rebuttal to the Castro in the report, Commissioner Peter Kirsanow noted that prominent religious leaders were “in the forefront of the civil rights movement” and that he found it especially puzzling that the commissioner singled out Christianity.

“At first I thought he surely meant to identify for opprobrium religions in addition to Christianity,” wrote Kirsanow. “But, as it happens, his venom is directed against American Christians past and present. … In criticizing Christianity in regard to Islam and slavery, the chairman fails to recognize that Islam’s ties to slavery are at least as deep as those of Christianity.”

Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore

However, some of the fiercest criticism came from the Church.

“Statements painting those who support religious freedom with the broad brush of bigotry are reckless and reveal a profound disregard for the religious foundations of his own work,” said Archbishop William E. Lori in a Sept. 13 statement.

Lori, chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee for Religious Liberty, said the notion that people of faith are “comparable to fringe segregationists from the civil rights era” is a “shocking suggestion.”

“People of faith have often been the ones to carry the full promise of America to the most forgotten peripheries when other segments of society judged it too costly. Men and women of faith were many in number during the most powerful marches of the civil rights era,” Lori said.

Even though our church’s record is not perfect, “the idea of equality, which the (civil right commission) chairman treats as a kind of talisman, is incomprehensible apart from the very faith that he seeks to cut off from mainstream society,” Lori said.

“The vast majority of those who speak up for religious liberty are merely asking for the freedom to serve others as our faith asks of us. We ask that the work of our institutions be carried out by people who believe in our mission and respect a Christian witness.”

This is no different from a tobacco control organization wanting to hire an advocate for smoking or a civil rights organization not wanting to hire someone who has a history of racism.

“Today, Catholic priests, religious and laity can be found walking the neighborhood streets of our most struggling communities in places abandoned by a ‘throwaway culture,’” Lori said.

Castro’s report makes several recommendations to President Barack Obama such as requiring federal and state courts as well as lawmakers at every level of the government to “tailor religious exceptions to civil liberties and civil rights protections as narrowly as applicable law requires.”

He is also requesting that the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) be tailored so that it does “not unduly burden civil liberties and civil rights protections.

Fellow commissioner Gail Heriot disagreed with Castro’s recommendations and in her dissenting statement, she reminded that under the RFRA “federal laws and other actions – including anti-discrimination laws – are to be interpreted to bend over backward to protect religious liberty, not lean in the direction of minimizing the scope of religious liberty exemptions.”

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