Angrily condemning President Obama for his “radical pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda,” an Illinois bishop likened his leadership to Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin last weekend and urged Catholics to vote against him.
“This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences, or by the following fall our Catholic schools, our Catholic hospitals, our Catholic Newman Centers, all our public ministries—only excepting our church buildings – could easily be shut down,” said Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria at a gathering of Catholic men on Saturday,
according to LifeSiteNews.com
“Because no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the intrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb,” he said, LifeSiteNews reported.
The bishop warned that because of the president’s mandate for forcing religious employers to fund contraceptives, sterilizations, and abortion-inducing drugs, America is on a path leading to the state of past dictatorships when Christians were forced to “huddle and hide,” such as Bismarck’s Kulturkampf, Hitler’s Nazis, and Stalin’s Communists.
“Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services, and health care,” he said.
“In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama – with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path,” he added.
While Christians could lose the battle against Obama’s mandate, the bishop insisted that “before the awesome judgment seat of Almighty God this is not a war where any believing Catholic may remain neutral.”
“No Catholic ministry – and yes, Mr. President, for Catholics our schools and hospitals are ministries – can remain faithful to the Lordship of the Risen Christ and to his glorious Gospel of Life if they are forced to pay for abortions,” he said.
The faithful, he said, “can no longer be Catholics by accident, but instead be Catholics by conviction.”
“The days in which we live now require heroic Catholicism, not casual Catholicism,” he continued. “In our own families, in our parishes, where we live and where we work – like that very first apostolic generation – we must be bold witnesses to the Lordship of Jesus Christ. We must be a fearless army of Catholic men, ready to give everything we have for the Lord, who gave everything for our salvation.”
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