【正文】 s am mindful of that am an American and a Catholic。and to give any effect to the moral values of their creed, people of faith must speak directly about public Catholic bishops and the Reverend Billy Graham have every right to stand for the nuclear freeze, and has every right to stand against must be standards for the exercise of such leadership, so that the obligations of belief will not be debased into an opportunity for mere political to take a stand at all when a question is both properly public and truly moral is to stand in a long and honored of the great evangelists of the 1800s were in the forefront of the abolitionist our own time, the Reverend William Sloane Coffin challenged the morality of the war in John XXIII renewed the Gospel’s call to social Luther King, was the greatest prophet of this century, awakened our nation and its conscience to the evil of racial words have blessed our who now wishes they had been silent? Who would bid Pope John Paul [II] to quiet his voice against the oppression in Eastern Europe, the violence in Central America, or the crying needs of the landless, the hungry, and those who are tortured in so many of the dark political prisons of our time? President Kennedy, who said that “no religious body should seek to impose its will,” also urged religious leaders to state their views and give their mitment when the public debate involved ethical drawing the line between imposed will and essential witness, we keep church and state separate, and at the same time we recognize that the City of God should speak to the civic duties of men and are four tests which draw that line and define the , we must respect the integrity of religion of conscience should be careful how they deal in the word of their our own history, religion has been falsely invoked to sanction prejudiceeven slaveryto condemn labor unions and public spending for the believe that the prophecy, ”The poor you have always with you” is an indictment, not a I respectfully suggest that God has taken no position on the Department of Educationand that a balanced budget constitutional amendment is a matter of economic analysis, and not heavenly values cannot be excluded from every public issue。many of them are both civil libertarians and believers, who think that families should pray more at home with their children, and attend church and synagogue more people are not sexist because they stand against abortion, and they are not murderers because they believe in free does it help anyone’s cause to shout such epithets, or to try and shout a speaker downwhich is what happened last April when was hissed and heckled at I am doubly grateful for your courtesy here this was not Harvard’s finest hour, but I am happy to say that the loudest applause from the Harvard audience came in defense of ’s right to short, I hope for an America where neither ”fundamentalist“ nor ”humanist will be a dirty word, but a fair description of the different ways in which people of good will look at life and into their own hope for an America where no president, no public official, no individual will ever be deemed a greater or lesser American because of religious doubtor religious hope for an America where the power of faith will always burn brightly, but where no modern Inquisition of any kind will ever light the fires of fear, coercion, or angry hope for an America where we can all contend freely and vigorously, but where we will treasure and guard those standards of civility which alone make this nation safe for both democracy and years ago this fall, in New York City, President Kennedy met for the last time with a Protestant atmosphere had been transformed since his earlier address during the 1960 campaign to the Houston Ministerial had spoken there to allay suspicions about his Catholicism, and to answer those who claimed that on the day of his baptism, he was somehow disqualified from being speech in Houston and then his election drove that prejudice from the center of our national , three years later, in November of 1963, he was appearing before the Protestant Council of New York City to reaffirm what he regarded as some fundamental that occasion, John Kennedy said: “The family of man is not limited to a single race or religion, to a single city, or country...the family of man is nearly 3 billion of its members are not white and most of them are not Christian.” And as President Kennedy reflected on that reality, he restated an ideal for which he had lived his lifethat “the members of this family should be at peace with one another.”That ideal shines across all the generations of our history and all the ages of our faith, carrying with it the most ancient as the Apostle Paul wrote long ago in Romans: “If it be possible, as much as it lieth in you, live peaceable with all men.” I believe it is possible。t even apply for I wonder if that means that I39。but it does mean that there are areas where government cannot and should not decide what it is wrong to believe, to think, to read, and to Professor Larry Tribe, one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars has written, “Law in a nontheocratic state cannot measure religious truth, nor can the state impose it.“ The real transgression occurs when religion wants government to tell citizens how to live uniquely personal parts of their failure of Prohibition proves the futility of such an attempt when a majority or even a substantial minority happens to questions may be inherently individual ones, or people may be sharply divided about whether they such cases, like Prohibition and abortion, the proper role of religion is to appeal to the conscience of the individual, not the coercive power of the there are other questions which are inherently public in nature, which we must decide together as a nation, and where religion and religious values can and should speak to our mon issue of nuclear war is a pelling is a moral iss