Peoria Bishop Tells Priests to Condemn Democratic Party

The Catholic snowball rolling downhill against Barack Obama is picking up speed and power in Illinois. A third member of the Roman Catholic clergy in the state has come forward to order his priests to read a letter to parishioners this Sunday explaining that politicians who support abortion rights also reject Jesus.

Peoria Bishop Daniel Jenky was firm with his instructions for his priests:

By virtue of your vow of obedience to me as your Bishop, I require that this letter be personally read by each celebrating priest at each Weekend Mass … Today, Catholic politicians, bureaucrats, and their electoral supporters who callously enable the destruction of innocent human life in the womb also thereby reject Jesus as their Lord … They are objectively guilty of grave sin.”

Jenky warned his parish that Obama and a majority of U.S. senators would not reconsider the mandate in Obamacare that would require employers, including religious groups, to provide free birth control coverage in their health care plans: “This assault upon our religious freedom is simply without precedent in the American political and legal system.”

Last month Springfield Bishop Thomas Paprocki offered his opinions in a slightly less direct fashion:

“There are many positive and beneficial planks in the Democratic Party Platform, but I am pointing out those that explicitly endorse intrinsic evils. Again, I am not telling you which party or which candidates to vote for or against. But I am saying that you need to think and pray very carefully about your vote, because a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy.”

In Rockford, Vicar General Eric Barr compared Obama’s support of religious freedom in Muslim countries to his attacks on Catholic morality and liberty:

Meanwhile, Obamacare marches on, steamrolling Catholic morality and the First Amendment under its weight. How can that be tolerated by citizens? Nothing justifies this peculiar and unreal stance of the president.