Fortnight for Freedom
If you have not already visited our new website, sacredproperty.org, I invite you to take a look at it today. My hope is that it will be a sort of homepage for you in accepting my invitation to join me and all of our American bishops in a “Fortnight for Freedom.” The Fortnight will be a special period of prayer, study, catechesis, and public action to emphasize both our Christian and American heritage of liberty.
We begin the Fortnight on June 21 – the vigil of the Feasts of St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More – and will end on July 4, Independence Day. During this time, our liturgical calendar celebrates a series of courageous martyrs who remained faithful in the face of persecution by political power—St. John Fisher and St. Thomas More, St. John the Baptist, Saints Peter and Paul, and the First Martyrs of the Church of Rome.
Here in the Archdiocese of Washington, we will be observing a special “Fortnight for Freedom” event on Sunday, June 24 (the Birthday of John the Baptist) at George Washington University. In addition to this summer’s observance, the bishops also have urged that Sunday, November 25, the Solemnity of Christ the King—a feast born out of resistance to totalitarian incursions against religious liberty—be a day specifically employed to learn about religious liberty, both here and abroad.
I invite you also to consider sharing this website, as well as preservereligiousfreedom.org, with family and friends who seek to understand more fully our concern about threats to religious freedom and who will welcome the opportunity to be united with us in prayer.