Youngstown Bishop concerned over intrusion on religious freedom - WFMJ.com News weather sports for Youngstown-Warren Ohio

On America's birthday, Catholics gathered in Youngstown to pray for courage to defend religious freedom, which Bishop George Murry feels has been challenged by the government in recent years. 

"A number of things have come up over the last few years that are encroaching on that right to worship freely and to live out our religion freely," said Bishop Murry.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says that Catholic Charities has been forced out of adoption and foster care services in Boston, San Francisco, DC and Illinois for not placing children with same-sex couples or unmarried couples who live together.

The Bishops also cite the mandate from the federal government that required them to provide drugs that cause abortions or contraception for their employees, which they are against.

"We're not saying that other churches are wrong, we're saying that if you're going to be a part of the Catholic Church and work for the Catholic Church you need to follow the rules that we have established for the church. So that type of encroachment I think is dangerous," said Bishop Murry.

Bishop Murry is also concerned that Americans are not as accepting of the Islamic faith as they should be after associating Islam with violence because of terrorism when the majority of Muslim people are people of peace.

"We sometimes lump them all together and we can't do that because if you go back in history when Irish Catholic immigrants were coming to the U.S. in the mid 1800s, when Italian immigrants were coming in the 1870s,  they were all lumped together as being socialists as being 'un-American' and we learned that they could take on the American spirit and the American ideal, we should not lump people into categories. We need to deal with people as individuals and recognize the faith of Islam is a strong faith and it is not a faith that promotes violence but there are some people who have twisted it to that and that's what we hear about so much in the news," he said.