Petition to: Australian Catholic Bishops Conference
The Church and the Sacraments are Essential!
The Church and the Sacraments are Essential!
Please SIGN this petition, to implore our bishops to use all available safe and creative means to publicly restore the sacraments to us, their flock and Christ’s faithful. Also, to make perfectly clear that we firmly reject the classification of our Churches and Sacraments as “non-essential”, thus placing them in the same category as amusement centres, casinos and worse. All whilst abortion is regarded as essential.
In the Holy Bible we read “For we know, if our earthly house (our body) of this habitation be dissolved, that we have a building of God, a house not made with hands (our soul), eternal in heaven” (2 Corinthians 5). Since the soul is more excellent than the body, the essentialness of the Church’s work exceeds that of those enterprises providing entertainment, hardware supplies, alcohol or health and wellbeing services.
There is a battle raging all around us in which the secular world is seeking to eliminate all signs of Christ's presence among us. We ask of our Bishops that they make clear to the government authorities that the Catholic faithful of Australia reject the governments supposed classification of religious services as “non-essential” during COVID-19 and beyond.
May the following words of Our Lord, The Good Shepherd, be a source of strength and courage to you, our Bishops:
“I am the good Shepherd. The good Shepherd giveth his life for his sheep. But the hireling, and he that is not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming and leaveth the sheep and flieth: and the wolf catcheth and scattereth the sheep: and the hireling flieth, because he is a hireling, and he hath no care for the sheep. I am the good Shepherd: and I know Mine, and Mine know Me, as the Father knoweth Me, and I know the Father: and I lay down My life for My sheep. And other sheep I have that are not of this fold: them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one-fold and one shepherd.” (John 10)
May we all increase our prayers for our Shepherds, that they may reach everlasting life together with the flock entrusted to them.