Is standing up for conscience now a criminal offence in the West?

The term “prisoner of conscience” may not have been invented by Amnesty International, but that organisation probably did more than any other to popularise it.

Formed in 1961, it was notable for encouraging its members to write to governments on both sides of the Iron Curtain to stand up for those who were imprisoned either because of their religious convictions or because of their political stance.

At the time, such prisoners were the victims of truly despotic regimes such as the Soviet Union or various military juntas in Central or South America.

Now it looks as if we in the West might soon have our own religious “prisoners of conscience”. A number of US Catholic bishops have said that they are prepared to risk imprisonment rather than implement the Obama Administration’s healthcare mandate, requiring employers to place workers in health insurance schemes that provide free abortion-inducing drugs, contraception and sterilisation, all of which are against Catholic teaching with the first items presenting a problem to most religions.

One admires the stance they are prepared to take. But more notable is the fact that we have arrived at a situation where this is even conceivable.  

It comes after we’ve seen Christian pastors and hotel owners fined for standing for their beliefs over traditional sexual morality, while nurses have been fired for refusing to carry out abortions. This could be about to happen here. At the recent Oireachtas hearings, a representative of the Medical Council indicated that abortion legislation should contain only very weak conscience provisions.

Jailing people for their religious convictions would be a even more dramatic step, however.

As it is an Irish civil registrar can go to prison for up to six months if he or she won’t officiate at a ceremony for a same-sex couple or a divorced person.

Some might say they have to do the job they’re paid for no matter what their conscience dictates, but prison?

This Government has also said it will jail priests who don’t break the
Seal of Confession if they are told about offences against children.

Once upon a time, it was only places like Communist China which jailed people for their religious convictions. Now, a little over two decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Land of the Free is headed down that exact same path.

That it has come to this tells us two things. Firstly, that equality absolutism in the West has reached a new level of extreme intolerance and secondly that ordinary people of faith have either not woken up to the extent of the threat to religious liberty or are apathetic about it.

It is to be hoped that if some bishops do go to jail, it will finally have the effect of mobilising lay American Catholics.