Attorney General William Barr is scheduled to speak at the National Catholic Prayer Breakfast, event organizers announced Thursday.
Barr will be joined by former Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput, who retired in January. Both Chaput and Barr have criticized a growing trend of “secularism” in public life.
“We are excited to welcome Archbishop Chaput and Attorney General Barr to this year’s National Catholic Prayer Breakfast,” the event’s chairman, Mark Randall, said in a statement. “Although these men have been called to very different vocations, they share a profound courage to live out their Catholic faith in the public square. In so doing, they have furthered the New Evangelization called for by Pope Saint John Paul II — which is so needed today to overcome the culture of death.”
Organizers also announced that Barr would receive the Christifideles Laici Award, which the prayer breakfast gives to Catholics in public service. Barr will receive the award because of his “long history of dedicated public service and his commitment to the defense of the vulnerable and religious liberty.”
Barr stirred controversy for a speech he delivered last October at the University of Notre Dame in which he criticized the “militant” and “growing ascendancy of secularism and the doctrine of moral relativism.”
The attorney general singled out the Obama administration in his critique, saying that an Obama-era Health and Human Services birth control mandate had attempted “to force religious employers, including Catholic religious orders, to violate their sincerely held religious views by funding contraceptive and abortifacient coverage in their health plans.”
Barr delivered similar remarks on Wednesday while speaking at the National Religious Broadcasters convention in Tennessee. He said that the United States faces the threat of “totalitarian democracy,” in which its adherents attempt to replace religion with politics.
“Their sacred mission is to use the coercive power of the state to remake man and society according to an abstract ideal of perfection,” Barr said. “The virtue of any individual is defined by whether they are aligned with the program.”
The National Catholic Prayer Breakfast has been a popular speaking event for members of the Trump administration. Vice President Mike Pence addressed the event in 2017, and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney headlined it in 2019.
[Opinion: William Barr knows what he’s doing]
