Politics

Illinois Bishop: Obama ‘intent on following a similar path’ as Hitler, Stalin [AUDIO]

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An Illinois Catholic bishop had fiery words for President Barack Obama’s “pro abortion and extreme secularist agenda” during a homily over the weekend where he encouraged good Catholics to stand up for their beliefs at the voting booth.

“This fall, every practicing Catholic must vote, and must vote their Catholic consciences,” Bishop Daniel R. Jenky said at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Peoria, Ill. during Mass at an event titled “A Call to Catholic Men of Faith” and posted in full at The Catholic Post.

According to Jenky, the new Health and Human Services (HHS) contraception mandate has put the country on a dangerous path for religious freedom.

“[N]o Catholic institution, under any circumstance, can ever cooperate with the intrinsic evil of killing innocent human life in the womb,” he explained.

“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,” Jenky went on to say.

Jenkey said that the church has survived thousands of years of persecution and will survive Obama and the recent HHS mandate, but it will require Catholics to stand for their beliefs — “heroic Catholicism, not casual Catholicism.”

“The church survived barbarian invasions. The church survived wave after wave of Jihads. The church survived the age of revolution,” Jenkey said. “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,” he continued. “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.”

Jenkey recalled in detail other leaders that have “tried to force Christians to huddle and hide,” including Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

“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.”

According to The Catholic Post, Jenkey delivered his comments before 500 men who had participated in a one-mile walk from the Peoria riverfront to St. Mary’s Cathedral as a public display of conviction.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York — considered the most powerful Roman Catholic cleric in the U.S. — has also had harsh words for the HHS mandate, charging that the administration is attempting to divide the Catholic Church.

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