Posted on 04/29/2012 5:34:56 PM PDT by IbJensen
Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria told the 500 men who attended the diocese’s annual men’s march and Mass that “the days in which we live now require heroic Catholicism, not casual Catholicism.”
“We can no longer be Catholics by accident, but instead [must] be Catholics by conviction. 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,” he preached. “We must be a fearless army of Catholic men, ready to give everything we have for the Lord, who gave everything for our salvation.”
Noting that “the world, the flesh, and the devil will always love their own, and will always hate us,” Bishop Jenky preached:
The Church survived and even flourished during centuries of terrible persecution, during the days of the Roman Empire. The Church survived barbarian invasions. The Church survived wave after wave of Jihads. The Church survived the age of revolution. The Church survived Nazism and Communism. And in the power of the resurrection, the Church will survive the hatred of Hollywood, the malice of the media, and the mendacious wickedness of the abortion industry. The Church will survive the entrenched corruption and sheer incompetence of our Illinois state government, and even the calculated disdain of the President of the United States, his appointed bureaucrats in HHS, and of the current majority of the federal Senate.
May God have mercy on the souls of those politicians who pretend to be Catholic in church, but in their public lives, rather like Judas Iscariot, betray Jesus Christ by how they vote and how they willingly cooperate with intrinsic evil.
“As Christians we must love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us, but as Christians we must also stand up for what we believe and always be ready to fight for the Faith,” he continued.
After referring to Otto von Bismarck’s Kulturkampf and the persecution of the Church in France in the early twentieth century, Bishop Jenky said that “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. 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.”
“Now things have come to such a pass in America that this is a battle that we could lose, but before the awesome judgement seat of Almighty God this is not a war where any believing Catholic may remain neutral,” he continued, adding:
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. Because no Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the intrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb.
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.
Bishop Jenky concluded:
The Risen Christ is our Eternal Lord; the Head of his Body, the Church; our High Priest; our Teacher; our Captain in the well-fought fight. We have nothing to fear, but we have a world to win for him. We have nothing to fear, for we have an eternal destiny in heaven. We have nothing to fear, though the earth may quake, kingdoms may rise and fall, demons may rage, but St. Michael the Archangel, and all the hosts of heaven, fight on our behalf. No matter what happens in this passing moment, at the end of time and history, our God is God and Jesus is Lord, forever and ever.
Start teaching the truth of human sexuality, the sanctity of marriage, the evils of homosexual behavior and the harm of contraception to those in your flock who never heard it from your predecessors (and maybe from you). That is the only way younger Catholics will be led to vote informed Catholic consciences in the polls this fall.
While what you say is absolutely true and I agree, that many of our priests and Bishops need evangelizing themselves, of first order should be the great and many thanks to the good Bishop Jenky for exemplar shepherding, and for his courageous and serious speech, which will bare its cost.
The Bishops are on fire over this religious liberty abuse and they have fully awakened to the peril of the Church that is just beginning because of this run on the Church.
The worm is turning.
I, for one, am not so enthused about harping on the past, but rather expecting the laity to roll up their own sleeves and get off the sofa. Weekly Sunday Mass attendance by itself doesn’t cut it. We need volunteers to be catechists and teachers, and CFP instructors, and educators.
These priests don’t even know Latin any more, and neither do we. They have had to get out of the prayer closet and hustle the dang fundraisers, wrestle the leaking roofs, handle the renovations, attend the committees and generally run a small industry of “missions”, all which keep them from the prayer closet, feeding their own spirit and learning their own faith. Rest, is pretty much out of the question.
God bless the good Bishop Jenky. A brave soul, telling it like it is—a meaningful start.
Thanks for posting this article. Bishop Jenky is inspirational.
I live in a small community where I know just about everyone here.
One thing I have learned here is that the Democrat party means more to Democrats than their religion.
Chalk it up as a lesson learned.
I am a Baptist but I stand with the Catholic Church in defending the sanctity of life in its anti-abortion stance. This is a fight to the death either the death of the wicked liberal secular humanists that want to replace worship of God with the worship of man. Or the death of Chistendom. And despite our doctrinal differences, I am going to side with the Christians when the chips are down every time!!! I will pray for the Catholic Churches success against the those who shed innocent blood.
I wish our hierarchy here in NJ would catch some of this fire; our Catholics schools are closing at an alarming rate because the voucher issue has never been seriously pursued (and our public school bill is several thousand dollars per year per household). We pay “public school tuition” regardless of whether or not we use the schools, and the cost makes Catholic education inaccessible to most Catholic families. Our hierarchy has instead supported “targeted vouchers”, whereby poor urban (mostly non-Catholic) students would get relief while we continue shuttering schools.
I wish the bishops well in their battle, but will always remember that they got into it when THEY had to participate in/pay for ObamaCare; when it was just us little people (including Catholics and their own businesses) there wasn’t a peep from them.
Bishop Jenky sounds like the kind of leader we need to bring the Church in America back to its senses.
My stars! That is a heck of a story. I had no idea! Heard of a few closings from AB Dolan in NY, but had no idea what was behind the bad financial policies! Thx.
My stars! That is a heck of a story. I had no idea! Heard of a few closings from AB Dolan in NY, but had no idea what was behind the bad financial policies! Thx.
This Protestant’s heart beats with Bishop Jenky here!
In my diocese many of our new immigrants are Catholic, but the schools close anyway. My town had five Catholic grammar schools and a Catholic high school when I was younger; this year the last one closed. At the same time, the number of Catholics is probably higher than before.
Here in NJ my diocesan college has a class on gay marriage; go figure.
The Church lost its way. I am not quite sure how or exactly when, but like America this erosion of foundational morals is the problem. Doing the works of the Church for political correctness reasons is part of the issue, actually part of the sin of the Church.
All of the churches in my diocese adhere to the idea of "social justice," even the Latin one. And as I read their bulletins and websites there is one thing that keeps coming to my mind, Matthew 6:33.
The Vatican was clear that abortion was paramount among issues in terms of elections, and the US hierarchy (for the most part) ignored that and placed it on par with such feel-good, non-specific things as “social justice” and “the environment”.
To me the only thing pulling the US Church to the right at this point is the fact that withour asses in the seats the clergy & religious will have to go out & get real (secular) jobs; as they age and look at their retirement prospects, they are seeing the writing on the wall. I’m that cynical about it...
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