CNS STORY: U.K. lawyer: Attacks on religious freedom a symptom of wider attacks

FREEDOM-ADDISON May-28-2009 (790 words) With photo. xxxi

U.K. lawyer: Attacks on religious freedom a symptom of wider attacks

By Simon Caldwell
Catholic News Service

LONDON (CNS) -- Attacks on freedom of religion and conscience are attacks on freedom itself, said a leading Catholic lawyer.

Neil Addison, a criminal lawyer and a nationally recognized expert in discrimination law, said in a lecture at the London Oratory that England was becoming an increasingly intolerant and authoritarian country.

He highlighted a number of cases in which Christians had been penalized for their religious convictions and warned, "Attacks on religious freedom are symptomatic of wider attacks on freedom."

"If we want to defend freedom of religion, then we have to defend the idea of freedom itself," said Addison, the author of the legal textbook "Religious Discrimination and Hatred Law."

"We are in a society which is increasingly intolerant, repressive, regulated and untrusting and, in consequence, we have officials who are dictatorial, interfering and untrustworthy," he said.

Britain has entered an "era of increasing government interference and regulation of what used to be regarded as private life and an increasing intolerance of those who disagree," he said.

"What we have today is a governmental system which does not acknowledge the right of religion to have its own sphere, nor does it respect the right of religious organizations to defend their own identity and to preserve their own integrity," he said.

The church is always the first victim of authoritarianism because the church exists "as an organization that is, or should be, independent of the state and which has a basis for its motivation and thinking which is independent of the state," Addison said.

He said the Equality Bill currently before the British Parliament attacked freedom of association by denying churches the right to choose their employees, with the exception of priests and religious teachers.

"We need to defend the principle of civil society in which associations and organizations as well as individuals have rights and are allowed the freedom to preserve their distinctive nature and contribution to society as a whole," Addison said.

"It is no coincidence that the first thing any totalitarian state does is to regulate and control association, organizations and churches," he added. "We need to be alert to this danger, and we need to defend the rights of churches and other organizations, not simply in order to defend religious freedom but in order preserve freedom itself."

His speech, "Religious Freedom in England Today," was delivered May 20; the text was released to journalists May 27.

Addison told Catholic News Service May 20 that he first appreciated the gravity of the threat to religious freedom when the European Parliament vetoed the proposed appointment of Italian Christian Democrat Rocco Buttiglione as a justice commissioner after he said, in answer to a question, that he thought gay sex was sinful.

In 2007 Addison co-founded the Thomas More Legal Centre in Warrington, England, in response to rising demand for legal advice among Christians clashing with either their employers or with government authorities.

In his lecture, Addison said he had advised doctors, nurses and pharmacists with conscientious objections to involvement in abortion and distribution of the morning-after pill.

"Their right to moral conscientious objection is simply being dismissed as 'imposing your morality on others,' which ignores the fact that to make somebody do or participate in something they consider to be immoral is in itself is the imposition of a view of morality," he said.

The refusal to recognize the legitimacy of conscience and morality has consequences beyond the issues of abortion or homosexuality themselves, he said.

"Politicians are infantilizing us as a society by removing our ability to think in moral terms," he said.

Addison said freedom of speech was also under attack and there were cases involving people who had been fired or suspended from their jobs after expressing opinions -- in private conversations -- that were not politically correct.

"If you read the history of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union or the East German Stasi, one point is very clear and consistent: Totalitarian states do not recognize or respect the distinction between private and public life," he said. "In a totalitarian state there is no such thing as a private conversation."

He said the noble vision of England as a nation of free people was being allowed to die and "we need to fight to defend it again because it is an England that is worth fighting for."

"We as Christians cannot separate ourselves from the society in which we live, nor should we want to do so; similarly, we cannot separate the defense of our religious freedom from the defense of freedom itself," he said.

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