Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, will join an advisory board for President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission.Bishop Kevin C. Rhoades, Bishop Thomas Paprocki and Father Thomas Ferguson will join an advisory board for President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, according to a statement from the White House.
The three Catholic clergymen will join San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone on the Advisory Board of Religious Leaders for the commission. Two members of the Church hierarchy — Cardinal Timothy Dolan of the Archdiocese of New York and Bishop Robert Barron of the Diocese of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota — are serving on the commission itself.
Bishop Rhoades, the bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, and the ninth Bishop of the Diocese of Harrisburg, chairs the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Religious Liberty.
In a statement, Bishop Timothy Senior, the current Bishop of Harrisburg, remarked that “Bishop Rhoades is an excellent candidate to serve President Trump and his administration in this capacity. As we know, the religious freedom with which we are blessed in the United States cannot be taken for granted. It is encouraging to know that the voice of a gifted and experienced bishop of the Church like Bishop Rhoades will be part of this important conversation for our country. All of us in the Church in Harrisburg are very proud of our son of the Diocese as he serves his country in this way.”
“I’m grateful that he recently accepted appointment to the subcommittee for the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, which oversees the principal anti-poverty initiative of the American bishops in the United States,” Bishop Senior added. “I am very grateful for his counsel and support in the work of that subcommittee as we move forward in our efforts to address the root causes of poverty.”
Bishop Rhoades grew up in Lebanon, where he was a member of Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Parish. He attended the former St. Mary’s School in Lebanon and graduated from Lebanon Catholic High School in 1975. He was ordained a priest of the Harrisburg Diocese on July 9, 1983, by then-Auxiliary Bishop William Keeler. The ceremony took place at Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary Church in Lebanon, and was the first ordination to take place in the county.
After years of service that included ministry in the Spanish-speaking apostolates and as assistant Chancellor, he was appointed pastor of St. Francis of Assisi Parish in Harrisburg in 1990. He served there for five years, until he accepted a faculty position at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary, where he was named rector in 1997.
St. John Paul II appointed him as Bishop of the Diocese of Harrisburg on October 14, 2004, and his episcopal ordination was celebrated on December 9 of that year. In November 2009, Bishop Rhoades was named the ninth Bishop of the Diocese of Fort-Wayne South Bend; he was installed there on January 13, 2010.
Bishop Paprocki, the bishop of Springfield, Illinois, played a major role in the bishops’ “Fortnight for Freedom” religious liberty campaign during the 2010s, according to the White House.
Neither Bishop Rhoades nor Bishop Paprocki could be reached for comment by the time of publication.
Father Ferguson, who is a parish priest at Good Shepherd Catholic Church in Alexandria, Virginia, also has a doctorate in government and authored “Catholic and American: The Political Theology of John Courtney Murray,” which focused on religious liberty and Catholicism in the United States.
“We’re looking forward … to the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year,” Father Ferguson told CNA in an interview, saying he hopes the commission can assist in “pointing out … just how important religious communities like the Catholic Church are to our society.”
Father Ferguson said the inclusion of Catholic clergy on the commission “is extremely welcomed by our Church,” adding: “It really puts us all in a forum where we can do the important work of educating people.”
One element on which Father Ferguson hopes to focus is insurance mandates for services that “violate our conscience” on issues such as contraception, sterilization, and transgender drugs and surgeries: “All of these things that we would find morally objectionable, we must be vigilant [against].”
He said he is also concerned about “where this country is going in terms of in vitro fertilization [IVF]” and noted that there are some politicians who “refer to themselves as pro-life legislators [despite] being advocates for IVF.”
“You also need to be protective of human life … created through IVF,” Father Ferguson said, recalling the millions of human embryos destroyed through the IVF process.
Father Ferguson discussed a new law in Washington state that will lead to the arrest of priests if they do not report child abuse they learn about during the sacrament of reconciliation, which would violate the “absolute sense of secrecy [of a] … sacramental confession.”
“That’s an area,” he said, where “we can be very consistent in teaching, explaining and clarifying for people: ‘This is how we freely exercise our religion in terms of the First Amendment.’”
The Religious Liberty Commission
In addition to the advisory board consisting of religious clergy, the White House also created an advisory board made up of legal experts and another of lay leaders. These boards will assist the commission in developing its final report.
The commission and its advisory boards include members of various religions, including Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Protestantism, Islam, and Judaism.
The report will outline the current threats to religious freedom in the United States and provide strategies on how to ensure legal protections when rights are under attack. It will also lay out the foundation of religious liberty in the United States and issue guidance on how to increase awareness of the historically peaceful religious pluralism within the country.
Some of the commission’s key focus areas include conscience protections, free speech for religious bodies, institutional autonomy, attacks on houses of worship, parental rights in education, and school choice.
President Trump established the commission on May 1 through an executive order, which coincided with the National Day of Prayer.
(Contributing to this story was Jen Reed of The Catholic Witness. Photo by Shannon Mullen, CNA.)
By Tyler Arnold, Catholic News Agency
