(LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Joseph Strickland cautioned against complacency after Republican victories in the 2024 elections, calling on people to “stand strong in the truth” and oppose “false messages” wherever they come from.
“It is not a time to sit back and say, ‘Oh, we won,’” Bishop Strickland said during LifeSiteNews’ live election coverage on Tuesday. “We pray that we have an opportunity to fight back the darkness, and the evil, and the false messages that are even infecting the Church.”
“We’ve got to seize this moment,” he stressed, adding that we cannot “sit back and allow and just say, ‘Oh, well, this person in authority said this, so it must be true.’”
Instead, people must “know Jesus Christ well enough to say, ‘No, I don’t care what authority is saying, it’s not the truth.’ We need to know the truth. That is Jesus Christ,” he said.
The Texas bishop encouraged people to pray in front of the Blessed Sacrament and to the Blessed Virgin Mary in order to have the strength to defend the truth.
“I urge all of us to pray before Him in His presence in the Blessed Sacrament. That is the strength that I need, that we all need to proclaim to the world Who our Savior is,” he said. “Since we have a King, we have a Queen of Heaven, the Blessed Virgin Mary.”
“We need to get strong. We need to be clear. We need to speak up and not allow anyone in office or in the pulpit to say something that isn’t true to Christ and let it go,” Bishop Strickland insisted.
“We need to stop compromising and letting it go,” he declared, particularly emphasizing the immorality of abortion and other threats to life and the family.
Standing for the truth doesn’t mean “in any way attacking anyone,” he continued. “But we need to stand strong in the truth and joyfully and clearly proclaim what that truth is, because too many are deluded.”
“Thankfully, young families, young priests are clear and understanding because, as they walk through the darkness, they come to know on their own this is the truth,” Bishop Strickland noted. “And they’re the strong ones that are fighting for us.”
“But all of us, whatever age, whatever our place in life – bishops, priests, deacons, laity, religious – all of us need to know Jesus Christ and proclaim Him to the world,” he concluded.
Republican President-elect Donald Trump was declared the winner of the 2024 U.S. presidential election on Wednesday morning in a decisive victory over Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris. Republicans have also retaken the U.S. Senate, though control of the House has not yet been determined.
Harris made abortion the centerpiece of her campaign and vowed to sign a federal law that would legalize unrestricted abortion nationwide. She also ran as a militant supporter of all aspects of the LGBT movement, including “gender transitions” for children, taxpayer funding for transgender surgeries, and LGBT indoctrination in schools.
Trump, who had a pro-life record as president, upholds Dobbs v. Jackson, the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and once again allows states to ban abortion, and criticized Democrats for supporting late-term abortion, infanticide, and taxpayer funding for abortion.
However, Trump has said that he would veto any federal abortion ban and would not prohibit abortion pills and has strongly embraced in vitro fertilization (IVF) and abortion exemptions, including for rape and incest.
In February, nearly 90,000 babies were estimated to have been saved so far due to the Dobbs v. Jackson ruling, though the effectiveness of state abortion bans has been undermined by widespread mailing of abortion pills.
IVF is responsible for the destruction or abandonment of more than one million embryos every year and allows homosexuals to obtain children, exposing them to potential abuse.
On LGBT issues, Trump opposes underage “gender transitions,” LGBT ideology in schools, and allowing gender-confused males to compete in women’s sports and use female bathrooms but supports homosexual “marriage” and is close to some homosexual Republican activists and groups, like Ric Grenell and the Log Cabin Republicans.
The Republican president-elect has vowed to protect religious liberty and parental rights, including in education, and to pardon pro-life protesters jailed by the Biden-Harris administration.
Abortion, the killing of a child in his or her mother’s womb, is always gravely immoral, regardless of an unborn child’s age or the circumstances of his or her conception, and is never medically necessary.
“From the first moment of his existence, a human being must be recognized as having the rights of a person – among which is the inviolable right of every innocent being to life,” the Catechism of the Catholic Church states.
Regarding homosexuality, the Catholic Church teaches, in accordance with Sacred Scripture, the constant Tradition of the Church, and the natural law, that homosexual activity is mortally sinful, intrinsically disordered, and a “sin that cries to heaven” and that the homosexual inclination is “objectively disordered.”
The Church also condemns IVF because it destroys embryos, treats children like property, violates the right of children to be born of a marital union, and separates procreation from sexuality, as does contraception.