Bishop Daniel Jenky is the Bishop of the Peoria, IL diocese. He is currently in Rome for his ad limina visit with Papa Benedetto. He was interviewed by the Catholic News Agency & asked about the recent actions of Kathleen Sibelius & Nancy Pelosi who both claim to be good Catholics. he issued a warning to them that someday they will have to face judgment for what they have done. He reminded them that their choosing political power & popular acclaim over Jesus will result in their being denied by Christ. He also reminded them it is not too late to repent. He didn't limit this warning to them, but to all "Catholic" politicians who act in similar ways.
He had some strong words to say about the Obama administration & his friends in the press as well. & they weren't complimentary. He compared what is going on in the USA with past assaults on the Catholic Church. He said that they would win Stalin approbation. He also issued a warning that we could be facing martyrdom if things keep going the way they are. he calls us to be ready.
Spmething tells me that Archbishop Sheen has got to be smiling in Heaven right now for the actions of this courageous leader of his home diocese. He has had to courage to say to Pelosi what her Bishop hasn't said. Sibelius's Bishop in Kansas did stand up to her publicly. But as he pointed out in an interview last week on The World Over, she is in DC & he is not sure where she is claiming residence. So he may no longer have any spiritual authority over her. Bishop Jenky is right to warn us of what lies ahead as well. In these actions he is truly being the shepherd he should be.
Rome, Italy, Feb 11, 2012 / 01:46 pm (CNA/EWTN
News).- Politicians who consider themselves Catholic but collaborate
in “the assault against their faith” should remember they will one day have to
give account for their acts before God, Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, Illinois
said Feb 10.
“There is a last judgment. There is a particular judgment. May they change
their minds and may God have mercy on them,” he told CNA during his visit to
Rome.
When asked specifically about recent actions of Democratic Health and Human
Services Secretary Sebelius Kathleen Sebelius and House Minority Leader Nancy
Pelosi, Bishop Jenky replied “I am utterly scandalized.”
“The Lord once said ‘if you deny me at the end, I will deny you,’ this from
our most merciful, good Savior. And so if it is a choice between Jesus Christ
and political power or getting favorable editorials in leftist papers, well,
that’s simply not a choice.”
Both Sebelius and Rep. Pelosi have been at the forefront of attempts to force
Catholic institutions to cover contraception, sterilizations and abortifacients
as part of their staff’s health insurance plans.
Bishop Jenky said there are too many Catholic politicians in the U.S. who
“like to wear green sweaters on St. Patrick’s Day and march” or “have their
pictures taken with the hierarchy” or “have conspicuous crosses on their
forehead with ashes” but who then “not only do not live their faith they
collaborate in the assault against their faith.”
The 64-year-old Chicago native is currently making his “ad limina” visit to
Rome to discuss the state of his diocese with the Pope and the Vatican. He is
part of a larger episcopal delegation from the states of Illinois, Indiana and
Wisconsin. Bishop Jenky said the issue of religious freedom in the United States
has featured in all their meetings so far, including their audience with Pope
Benedict XVI Feb. 9.
“Determined secularists see the Catholic Church as the largest institutional
block to a completely secularized society and not for the first, and probably
not for the last time, we’re under assault,” he said drawing parallels with the
anti-Catholic “Kulturkampf” in late 19th century Germany or the anti-clerical
laws in France in the early 20th century.
“I am a Holy Cross religious and my own community had six colleges in France
and they turned our mother house chapel into a stable,” he said. As for the
United States in 2012, “it is always difficult to predict the future but the
intensity of hatred against Catholic Christianity in elements of our culture is
just astounding.”
He believes the present White House administration is
also motivated by a “determined secularism,” while Communist dictator Joseph
Stalin would “admire the uniformity of the American press, with some
exceptions.”
In 2010 the Illinois legislature voted to legalize same-sex civil unions, a
move which led to the closure of Catholic foster care services. This, said the
bishop, took the Church “entirely out of the work that we started when the State
of Illinois could not have cared less about beggar kids running up and down the
streets.”
Bishop Jenky is very conscious of this patrimony of Catholic schools,
hospitals and other social services “built by the sacrifice of Catholic
believers” in previous generations of Illinois Catholics. “There weren’t a lot
of multi-millionaires who built the churches, opened those orphanages or built
those schools,” he said.
The bishop fears that socially liberal elites ultimately want to secularize
such institutions by stealth. “I assume that is the underlying goal,” he
suggested, “so that is robbing Christ but it is also robbing the heritage of
generations of believers. So we would try to resist this in every way possible.
It would be an incredible injustice.”
In conversation, he quoted the stark 2010 prediction of Cardinal Francis
George of Chicago, “I will die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his
successor will die a martyr in the public square.” So is Bishop Jenky prepared
for prison or worse?
“I hope I would always prefer Christ to anything so, if it came to it, yes
but I would be one of the trembling martyrs.”
He recalled how in ancient Rome some Christians would run towards their
martyrdom. He, on the other hand, would “probably be walking down the Forum with
eyes downcast a little.”
“I think most of the bishops of our Church, though, would be faithful to
Christ above anything, including our own personal freedom.”
Labels: Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, ObamaCare
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