Bishop William Lori is the chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, established this fall to direct and fortify the Church’s response to the “erosion of freedom of religion in America,” arising from immediate threats — at both the federal and state level — to the free exercise of religion by Catholic institutions.
Bishop Lori, a former auxiliary bishop of Washington, D.C., who has led the Bridgeport, Conn., Diocese since 2001, has already testified on Capitol Hill at congressional hearings on this issue, but he’s impatient to mobilize the faithful to engage both legislative and cultural forces that seek to expel the Church from the public square.
In a wide-ranging interview with Register senior editor Joan Frawley Desmond, he outlines a new game plan for bringing, bishops and legal scholars, state Catholic conferences and ordinary Catholics on board for the fight.
Media coverage of the USCCB’s recent meeting in Baltimore characterized the conference as “turning inward” when it focused on religious freedom rather than social justice issues.
Religious liberty is the preeminent social justice issue. One can characterize religious freedom as an “inward” issue only if one accepts the very view our conference is struggling against — that religion should be confined to the sacristy.
When we speak about religious freedom as the first of the freedoms it’s not to aggrandize the Church but to uphold the first line of defense for the dignity of the human person.
At the same time, we are also defending the freedom of the Church to bring her social teaching robustly into national and international debates and discussions that affect the common good.
And we are defending religious liberty so as to secure the right of all churches, including the Catholic Church, to continue providing educational and social services in accord with their teaching and practice, to the needy and the vulnerable.
Far from being an “inward” issue, religious freedom is basic to all the Church strives to do outwardly in building “a civilization of truth and love.”
The U.S. bishops’ effort to expand the religious freedom exemption in the Department of Health and Human Services’ interim rule mandating contraception services for private employer health benefits has galvanized many Catholics to get involved on emerging threats to religious liberty. What’s going on, and can we expect more of the same in the future?
It is my understanding that HHS has received a flood of comments on its interim (final) rule mandating not only contraception services, but also abortifacients and sterilization. But we don’t yet know whether the rule will be revised to accommodate all faith-based and private insurers.
This episode underlines an important point: It’s not enough for the bishops and leaders of church institutions to clearly state our teaching, the government needs to hear from the lay faithful. The more they see a unity and resolve on the part of the whole Church, the less likely they are to try to impose such unjust and illegal rules.
You have also noted that an historic ongoing erosion of religious liberty is manifesting itself in the immediate threats.
It is not enough for us to look at the symptoms, namely, the immediate and palpable threats to religious liberty at the state and federal levels. We must also look at the underlying disease: an aggressive secularism which has decided that humanity is happier without God and organized religion. This has been going on for a long time.
America remains a very religious country and is marked by a surprising consensus with regard to belief in God and the importance of religion.
Nonetheless, organized religion over time has lost some of its influence on the culture and this is being reflected in legislation, court decisions and administrative rules.
Over time the view has emerged that religious liberty is a grant of the state not a gift of the Creator. Some would reduce it to a merely private right to worship as one pleases and would also unduly limit the rights of religious persons and institutions to advance their views in the public square and to act on their convictions as service providers.
Religious liberty, which is the first of our liberties and source of all the others, has been compromised by so called “rights,” which have no textual basis in the Constitution, such as those pertaining to abortion or same-sex “marriage.”
Thus the Church’s teaching on marriage as between a man and woman is viewed by some as a form of bigotry, akin to racism, against persons of a homosexual inclination. The Church’s teaching on the sanctity of life is portrayed as discriminatory against women.
Are we still in the early days of developing a broad-based defense of religious liberty similar to the pro-life movement that emerged in response to Roe v. Wade?
It is apt to compare the response of the U.S. bishops to their long-standing and vigorous defense of human life and also to their more recent efforts to defend marriage.
In one form or another, the bishops will always have to be involved in the defense of religious liberty at home and abroad.
We need to educate and mobilize the faithful and the broader culture about the importance of religious freedom. Scholars and experts need to be enlisted and involved. We need to advocate for sound public policy and, where appropriate, engage in litigation and research.
As the chairman of the USCCB’s new Ad Hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, how would you describe its mission?
The committee has been formed to help keep bishops alerted to present and ongoing threats to religious liberty at home and abroad and also to help them teach, communicate and mobilize their people in defense of religious liberty.
Its purview includes the long-term erosion of religious liberty (domestic and international) and immediate threats to this precious gift, such as the attack of the Department of Justice on the ministerial exception (a First Amendment right of churches to choose and manage their ministers).
The committee’s mission is comparable to the Defense of Marriage Subcommittee and, in some respects, to the Pro-Life Activities Committee. We have long-term and short-term goals and must seek to affect the culture, which currently places untoward restrictions on religious liberty.
How do you aim to engage Catholics at the grassroots level?
First, it is our hope to develop catechetical materials for bishops and pastors, and a multimedia initiative on religious liberty designed to inform and inspire. We want to reach young people through Catholic schools and CCD programs. And we will certainly seek the assistance of state Catholic Conferences and their legislative networks that are already in place.
Our effort is not to create new bureaucracies but to use what is already in place: a network of parishes, schools, social service agencies, communications networks and the like.
Over time we will develop what I hope will be effective strategies mobilizing the laity to voice their concerns and to be out in front in these efforts to defend religious liberty.
The committee includes Church leaders who have been active on religious freedom issues and a slew of high-profile constitutional scholars. How will you define the roles and responsibilities of both groups?
The committee is comprised of well-qualified bishop-members and consultants, including constitutional scholars and specialists in First Amendment issues. We have already divided up into working groups, bishops and consultants together, so as to collaborate on accomplishing important projects as soon as we can.
Some constitutional scholars now challenge the notion that religious liberty is the “first freedom” protected under the Bill of Rights, and they question whether we should promote this freedom abroad.
Pope Benedict XVI recently called religious freedom the first freedom, not just because it was the first to be discovered but also because it touches what he called “the constitutive dimension” of man, namely, his relationship with the Creator.
What does this mean? Religious freedom is the first of the freedoms because it identifies the transcendent dignity of man.
No other human being or government force grants us dignity and freedom; rather, we are endowed with liberty by God because we are made in His image and destined to be with him.
Once man’s transcendent nature is denied all freedoms are endangered. In the same vein, many constitutional scholars say that it’s not accidental that religious liberty is listed first in the Bill of Rights.
The Founding Fathers note the important role that religion is to play in a democratic society, in contributing to a common morality essential to the American experiment in ordered liberty.
If America is true to herself in embracing the transcendent dignity of the human person as enshrined in her founding documents, then she will continue to speak out against violations of religious liberty everywhere in the world.
But it’s not a one-way street, not a case of noblesse oblige; the struggle for religious freedom around the world should prompt us as U.S. citizens to ask how much we value our own freedoms.
Those who suffer for their faith in Egypt, China and elsewhere inspire us to perform actions of solidarity through prayer and practical assistance.
What’s the connection between the USCCB’s promotion of religious freedom abroad and the Holy See’s concerns?
The USCCB is closely aligned with the Holy See’s promotion of religious liberty throughout the world, especially as expressed by Blessed Pope John Paul II and now Pope Benedict.
Our work is guided by Church teaching on the dignity of the human person and on religious liberty, as expressed in Dignitatis Humanae in particular.
We are deeply conscious of the diplomatic efforts of the Church in many places to secure the freedoms of religious minorities, as well as the right and need of the Church to continue to freely provide assistance to the vulnerable and suffering.
This is one reason we’re deeply concerned about the refusal of the federal government to renew its cooperative agreements with Catholic Relief Services and Migrant and Refugee Services, in spite of their excellent performance. It is a violation of religious liberty when faith-based providers, which are otherwise excellent, are penalized in competing for contracts because of their convictions.
How will the committee assist with threats to religious liberty at the state level?
Mary Ellen Russell, the executive director of the Maryland Catholic Conference, is a member of the committee, and she will serve as a liaison with state conference directors. I will also address the conference directors via video-conference in the coming days.
Threats to religious liberty at the state level include the criminalization of the churches’ “Good Samaritan” services to the undocumented in Alabama, and the legal problems faced by a county clerk in New York State because she refuses to take part in so-called same-sex marriages. Meanwhile, hostile state legislatures are driving Catholic Charities out of adoption and foster-care.
Our committee will work with state conferences in putting such violations in the national spotlight, when appropriate, and will also seek their help in communicating to parishioners via their legislative networks.
How has the secularization of American culture fueled these legal and legislative challenges to religious freedom?
The erosion of religious liberty is first a cultural issue, then a legal issue. It has been going on for a long time. Some philosophers, social scientists and others in a position to influence culture have long regarded religion not only as absurd but also as the source of much societal and personal unhappiness.
Their views have not remained confined to the academy but have become popularized through the media and entertainment industries and, over time, have been reflected in laws, judicial decisions and administrative rules. As the great constitutional lawyer Learned Hand once said, if liberty dies in the hearts of men and women, “no constitution, no law, no court, can save it.”
The Church, “an expert in humanity,” must strive to transform the culture. In this sense, the defense of religious liberty is very much a part of the New Evangelization, which is very much a theme of this pontificate. In proclaiming the Gospel afresh and in bearing witness to the Gospel with renewed conviction, we must seek, in God’s grace, to heal the rift between the Gospel and an aggressively secular culture.
Joan Frawley Desmond is the Register’s senior editor.
Matthew Warner: Ask Fr. Barron: To be deep in history is to cease to be protestant? and secular?
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Religious liberty is a worldwide problem, not just a local issue in the race to become the official chaplains of the Republican Party.
Struggle on! Yes, America is a very religious country. Lots of religious freedom. That’s why there are so many quacks, mostly Protestant Fundamentalists (prounounced FUN DULL MENTALIST)and Evangelicals (prounounced EVEN JELLY CALLS)and the primary reason that those “aggressive” secularists have found the need to protect themselves from the hogwash, claptrap, and drivel dispensed in the megachurches of these charlatans. (We currently have a GOP Presidential Candidate who favors these idiots. Unfortunately we also have a GOP Presidential Candidate who is a convert to Catholicism who is equally unacceptable). This is not to mention the Pentecostals who like to play with Rattlesnakes, or the Jehovah’s Witnesses who let their people die because they are against blood transfusions. Want me to go on? So what the Catholic Church has to do is become more like those Jesuits in Paraguay who will protect and serve the weakest and most vulnerable of people anywhere. What the hierarchy of the Church needs to overcome includes child abuse, and the image that it has created over the centuries that it still supports Louis XVI against the masses of humanity. That’s why “Che” has won out in Latin America, and that’s why so called secular humanism is so much against the Catholic Church (and any other church here). It’s a combination of defense against religious quackery (real and imagined) and Corporate Fascism. The Church is going to have to stand as the only viable alternative to what is unfortunately becoming a European style duel between State Socialism and Corporate Fascism in these United States of America.
The Church is going to have to stand as the only viable alternative to what is unfortunately becoming a European style duel between State Socialism and Corporate Fascism in these United States of America.
And what will also make that difficult is the tendency for Americans to pat themselves on the back regarding Europe (or anywhere else in the world), telling themselves that “it couldn’t happen here.”
and of course there’s not even a glimmer of thought for the religious freedom of the homosexual who chooses not to follow catholicism.
Of course there is also a “flip side” to the issue of “religious liberty”. Let’s take the recent brouhaha over the Governor of Rhode Island’s insistence in calling that blue spruce erected in the Rhode Island Statehouse a “holiday tree” instead of a Christmas Tree as his State Legislators believe he should. The Governor immediately rebutted with the fact that Rhode Island was founded by religious dissident Roger Williams as a haven for tolerance and so on. Remember that Willams was escaping from the diehard Calvinists on Massachusetts Bay. However, ironically many of today’s a hard core Baptists hail Williams as their founder. The Governor then went on the tell his legislators that they needed to feed the poor instead of blasting him for his decision. With that said, it is amusing that Christians still insist on the symbol of a tree to represent the Nativity. Was a “blue spruce” nearby the original manager in Bethlehem? On that note, the issue of religious liberty should also remind people that while they may be worried about religious liberty for Christians, that umpteen thousands of Buddhists, Jews, Muslims, and Hindus in the United States also want religious liberty. This is difficult for people who grew up in the United States without seeing mosques or Hindu Temples in their neighborhhoods. It’s a real dilemma in a country where Catholic Americans would like to NOT see other religions around all that much. Maybe a Jewish Synagogue, but a Muslim mosque is something else, and especially some of those really big mosques. Other people also use religious freedom to protect Or spread their religious beliefs. Perhaps a solution (which is emerging) is for Catholic Hispanic peoples to flood the United States and eventually become a majority. We already have bilingual signs in stores and elsewhere. So think Hispanic, and just remember that Spain and then Mexico until 1848 owned ALL of what is now California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. (Texas to 1836), and half of Colorado, a slice of Kansas, and part of Oklahoma. THINK ABOUT THIS!!!! And if you really want to see some impressive full blown Hispano culture take yourselves over to San Luis, Colorado and see the “Stations of the Cross Shrine” in a very beautiful corner of our fair land. It will knock your eyes out. Pray that some Muslim don’t decide to exercise their religious liberty and build a mosque nearby. God Forbid!!!!
This article is interesting, and I agree with it, missing is the fact that those opposed to religion state “separation of state and church”, as if that is the magical words to remove religion and God from monies, oaths, and basically anything pertaining to God.
The mere separation of State and Church is simplistic, but so diluted are the opposition that even scholars and those at government level cave into these people. Separation of Church and State is this:
The First Amendment states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The actual phrase “Separation of Church and State means:
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”, thus building a wall of separation between Church & State….President Thomas Jefferson.
The Government is not to impose their dictation of beliefs upon the people…basically the “State/Government” cannot dictate religion and or penalize because of religion. Period.
The Laws enacted in the United States and most Countries follow the 10 commandments, yet the U.S. Supreme Court decision is the 10 commandments are unconstitutional?!..
Those opposed to God are trampling on us who are believers and have a relationship with God and belong to a religious sect, I am Catholic.
I will display my “religion” I wear a crucifix, I say Merry Christmas too.
I think and I believe that we should exercise our rights to religious freedoms and not be intimidated by those who oppose, because their argument as to opposition is the exact argument for us who are not opposed.
Dianne Beeker Cerkvenik
I applaud the USCCB for such a move. However, Bishop Lori did not say how this involves the laity. For this to be successful, it is going to have to go right down to the Parish level. While the Catholic Conference at the state level may coordinate the activities, it is still going to have to be a grassroots operation. Just like the previous commenter wrote. ALL Catholics should display their religion. In my previous Parish, once asked how does anyone know you are Catholic when they enter your house. I recall a scene from the Shoes of the Fisherman. Kiril Cardinal Lakota is speaking to the other Cardinals at the conclave. His last line of that conversation is, “I do know that we are in action in a brutal world. The Children of God are ours to protect and if we have to fight, we fight.”
and of course there’s not even a glimmer of thought for the religious freedom of the homosexual who chooses not to follow catholicism.
And no glimmer of thought, either, only hoots of derision and condescension for the homosexual who does decide to choose Catholicism. In a culture that lionizes “choice,” his choices obviously don’t matter, because they don’t fit the usual narratives.
Can you imagine the first popes blaming “an aggressive secularism” for the persecution of Christians? So typical of our bishops to blame the world for its problems. When only 25% of Catholics who were raised Catholics still call themselves Catholics, there’s something else that’s really wrong. If the bishops think that the lay “faithful” are going to stand up, then they had better get out of the office and on to the street. Consider the following very sad state of the U.S. Catholic Church:
On abortion, a Gallop poll shows that 40% of Catholics support abortion as “morally acceptable” and 63% support stem cell research on human embryos. The poll analysis concludes: while official church doctrine is “distinctly conservative”, such is not the case “when it comes to average American Catholics”, stating further that U.S. Catholics “are actually more liberal than the non-Catholic population.”
http://www.gallup.com/poll/117154/catholics-similar-mainstream-abortion-stem-cells.aspx
On contraception, a Guttmacher Institute report revealed that 98% of Catholic women use church-banned birth control, which means that not only are most Catholics NOT opposed to Obama’s contraception mandate, they are probably happy that contraceptives are now fully covered by their insurance. In addition, most Catholics are most likely elated that Obama’s mandate forces full coverage of vasectomies and “tubals”, as sterilization is reportedly the “Catholic birth control of choice”, since it supposedly only needs to be confessed once!
http://www.guttmacher.org/media/nr/2011/04/13/index.html
http://www.catholic.org/featured/headline.php?ID=655
On gay rights, a Public Religion Research Institute poll shows that 75% of Catholics favor either allowing gay and lesbian people to marry (43%) or allowing them to form civil unions (31%). And 60% support adoption by gay and lesbian couples.
http://www.religiondispatches.org/dispatches/candacechellew-hodge/4417/new_poll_shows_strong_catholic_support_for_gay_rights
Some Catholic commentators attempt to distinguish between the poll responses of Catholics who attend Mass regularly and those who don’t. But, a recent CARA poll shows that only 23% of Catholics attend Mass “regularly”, and “regularly” was dumbed down to mean only once or twice a month! Given that missing Sunday Mass is a mortal sin (CCC 2181), attendance once or twice a month means that a large percentage of those who still go to Mass are not what the Church could even call “practicing Catholics”!
http://cara.georgetown.edu/CARAServices/CCPMethods.html
AND THEY ARE WORRIED ABOUT RELIGIOUS LIBERTY!!!!! I think I see the problem.
For more, see http://www.themassneverends.com
“There’s not even a glimmer of thought for the religious freedom of the homosexual who chooses not to follow catholicism.”
How do you figure that? You can’t mean that certain homosexuals belong to a religious body that requires its homosexual members, on pain of sin, to adopt children from specifically Catholic institutions? Wow! That institution is really putting its members in quite a bind, isn’t it?
Does the fire have to reach the corner office before the bosses sound the alarm? Does the Obama administration have to cut federal funding to USCCB charities before the bishops get mad and point out the anti-Catholic evil perpetuated by this population-controlling government? If the bishops as a group had joined Cardinal Burke and others three years ago in clearly saying that it is a grave sin for Catholics to knowingly support a pro-abortion candidate, perhaps we wouldn’t be in this jam today. Their silence these three years towards Obama and abortion has reminded me of many bishops’ non-response to Hitler and the Holocaust. Hopefully now that the bishops are in the fight, they will keep fussing through Novemeber 2012.
I am one of those Catholic converts who is wary of the rhetoric of “social justice,” but I could not be more gratified to hear Bishop William Lori speaking out for religious liberty. In this election the mainstream media has tried to concoct a “political test” issue around Gov. Mitt Romney’s candidacy. But it is the ordinary Catholic who confronts a “religious test” in the workplace and the classroom. The hostility is overt and unrestrained by any authority within corporate or academic America. Note that the president’s re-election efforts specifically lists “human resource” executives as part of a new coalition hostile to the “white working class” (once a stronghold for the Church). Hispanic Catholics take note. You could be next.
This has been my experience since the 1990s. The Human Rights Campaign and NOW, whatever their original briefs, have put the truncation of religious freedom at the heart of their “civil rights” efforts. Hollywood’s hostility to Catholicism goes back decades now. In my years in New York book publishing I attended hundreds of editorial meetings and the Church was an object of ridicule and contempt.
The fact is that one more term of the current president may be all it takes to institutionalize this redacting of the First Amendment (the president is on record deleting the establishment clause in his praise for this Amendment). Just as this president has instituitonalized abortion to a degree that too many Catholics have refused to acknowledge.
The president’s hostility to the Church was evident at his Inauguration and his cynicism at Notre Dame was breathtaking but familiar to those of us who have seen the American left up close. One hates to use the term “useful idiots” in connection to priests and academics who should know better but apparently do not. Too often I hear priests saying there is “no such thing as the Left.” Well were are all paying and will continue to pay for this diplomacy.
My hopes and prayers go to Bishop Lori. It may well be too late but the struggle itself will have to go on. The Church can no longer expect or want a cozy relationship with the civil order as it now exists and as it continues to devolve into to a cold-eyed bully pulpit.
“You can’t mean that certain homosexuals belong to a religious body that requires its homosexual members, on pain of sin, to adopt children from specifically Catholic institutions? Wow! That institution is really putting its members in quite a bind, isn’t it?”
And you got all that from my saying that others do have a right to their own religious freedom which may not necessarily have a problem with same-sex marriage? No wonder there are so many misconceptions about homosexuality if you read that much into things. This is all the more reason your religion does not need to be legislated into my life.
Either way: your religious freedom does not give you the freedom to expect others to follow your religion. I do not know any heterosexual who would give up as much as any given homosexual if the tables were turned. The best response would be your religious definition of marriage and the freedom to practice it. I have the same religious freedom.
I am created equal and am entitled to the same freedom.
“only hoots of derision and condescension for the homosexual who does decide to choose Catholicism. “
I’m unaware of this. Please tell me where.
Bishop Lori is also the chaplain for the Knights of Columbus. When the supposed Catholic Gov. of N.Y. jammed the homosexual-marriage bill through, he was only able to do so because two (2) swing votes were provided by Knights of Columbus, N.Y. State Senators ! He & the Supreme Knight said absolutely nothing & ignored the requests of many Knights that demanded the ouster of those two politicians, from the Knights of Columbus. For decades the USCCB was controlled by the author of the “seamless Garment” garbage, (social justice Communism), & many of his hand picked prelates are still pushing his homosexual-agenda today ! Until these modernist heretics are removed the USCCB will continue to be the problem, not the solution. Must we wait for their retirements ? The party-of-DEATH must be totally defeated in Nov. 2012. IF - Pelosi, Sebelius, Harkin, Biden etc. had been publicly denounced & excommunicated, other Catholics would have been shown the way & the Bishops would have done their jobs.
Bishop Lori and other bishops has obviously harmed the Catholic teachings on the faith. He and other Catholic Bishops in Connecticut outright capitulation to Gov. Malloy and other Pro Homosexual and pro abortion politicians has put the faith at risk in Connecticut and elswhere. Plan B is dispensed from ALL Ct. catholic hospitals when Malloy and the state of Ct. threatened to withhold state funds from the Catholic hospitals. It IS given to women in ALL Ct. Hospitals even though it is labeled as a Abortifacient by Plan B’s distributor-Manufacterer. Bishop Lori did not help the faith in Ct. cause when he mishandled the infamous and obvious Homosexual former Father Fay scandal. After harrassment by bishop Lori and his staff on Jewett Ave.Bpt Bishop’s headquarters the assistant pastor in Father Fay’s parish who uncovered the scnadhal in the first place via a private detective “Resigned” and left the Catholic priesthood in Ct.. The bookkeeper at the former father Fay’s parish sued and won a big settlement from the Bishop’s office(Lori’s) for slander etc.. Sadly Bishop Lori should look to his own adminsitration of his and other bishop’s diocese in Ct. as to the reason pro abort so called Catholics like Malloy(Ct.) Kennedy’s (Mass.) and Coumo’s-New York hold church teachings and the bishops in such an obvious state of disbelief and contempt.
G.K. Chesterton: “Having a right to do something is not at all the same as being right in doing it”.
The above comment by Ed, is what saddens me about the American Catholics. Each time the Bishops rise up to defend the Church, “an Ed” will stand up screaming how the Bishops are worthless, toothless dogs who keep quiet as things begin going wrong, or do not fociferously condemn Politicians who are propagating anti-God rhetoric and pushing such Legislations. One would have expected the Catholic Lay Faithful in whatever State that is pushing anti-God Legislation to be the first to rise up and protest, even before the Bishops have spoken. My advice to you Ed and all of you faithful American Catholics is to take up the fight as we did in our Country when the anti-God Constitutional Provisions which were pushed down our throats from your Planned Parenthood surfaced. The entire Lay Catholic Justice and Peace Commission countrywide, mounted a vigorous fight against these Satanic Provisions baptized “Human Rights”. Though we lost the fight and they are now part of our new Constitution - thanks to the money and support from your Obama and the treacherous Biden - the Head of the Catholic Church in our Country had this prophetic Message to my country men and women : “When this Constitution begins to be implemented, and you realize the calamity you have brought upon our Nation, then you shall remember that the Catholic Church did warn you and instead of listen to the Voice of God, you called Her a Liar”. What ails the U.S. of America to-day - and all the so-called Civilized Western World” - is covered in this precise quotation : “an aggressive secularism which has decided that humanity is happier without God and organized religion. This has been going on for a long time.” So, American Catholics, rise up and support your Bishops as they step up their fight against Satan and His Agents. The entire Universal Catholic Church is with you in this. Stop criticizing your Bishops and wringing your hands as if there is nothing you can do for yourselves and Lay Catholic Faithful.
On the issue of fake “Christian Denominations”, you are spot on, Merlin. That is how Satan works. He introduces counterfeits to lead people astray with the hope of burying the Truth under His Falsehoods. Those quacks called Protestant Fundamentalists are causing havoc in many countries. With their “Prosperity Gospel” they have enticed and mislead many Catholics whose Faith is not very well grounded into trooping to their “Rock’n Roll” Crusades and Televangelism “Churches”. But we should not give up. Jesus’s genuine “Sheep know Him and they hear His Voice and follow Him”. And those who - through their weak Faith - do stray to the Wolves’Liars, He goes in search of them and eventually brings them back into His Sheepfold. So, He is asking us to pray as He goes out to look for His misguided lost “Sheep” while at the same time invigorating His Bride to fight the Evil One gallantly. Let us all stand up to be counted.
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