On April 14, Bishop Daniel Jenky, CSC, of Peoria, Illinois, delivered a homily to about five-hundred men on the theme of heroic Catholicism. After speaking quite movingly on the Resurrection, on evangelization in the face of impossible odds, persecution, Jenky pivoted to discuss contemporary challenges to Christian witness. Can you guess what those might be?

For 2,000 years the enemies of Christ have certainly tried their best. But think about it. 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.[...]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, proabortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path.[...]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 instrinsic 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.

Why would anyone think a bishop could be perceived as partisan?