Bishop Thomas Paprocki of Springfield, Illinois. / Credit: Diocese of Springfield in Illinois

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, May 19, 2025 / 17:57 pm (CNA).

Bishop Thomas Paprocki, Bishop Kevin Rhoades, 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.

Rhoades, the bishop of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, chairs the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee on Religious Liberty. 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 Paprocki nor Rhoades could be reached for comment by the time of publication.

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,” 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.”

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 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 of pro-life legislators [despite] being advocates for IVF.”

“You also need to be protective of human life … created through IVF,” Ferguson said, recalling the millions of human embryos destroyed through the IVF process.

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.

Trump established the commission on May 1 through an executive order, which coincided with the National Day of Prayer.