John Yep, President of Catholics for Catholics and Michael Hichborn of the Lepanto Institute spoke of Israel, Sean Hannity leaving the church and much more.
By Catholics for Catholics
Who’s really running the U.S.? The destruction of a life-sized crucifix by Jewish soldiers and Sean Hannity’s beef with Pope Leo. It all happened on the April 22 edition of “The Catholic Champion” podcast by Catholics for Catholics.
John Yep, President of Catholics for Catholics and Michael Hichborn, of The Lepanto Institute tackled those issues and more during the program. One of the themes that was perhaps the most emotive was the topic of an image of an Israeli soldier hammering the head of a statue of Jesus in Debel, a Christian village in southern Lebanon that went viral on social media.
The Assembly of Catholic Ordinaries of the Holy Land stated its “profound indignation and unreserved condemnation of the desecration of a representation of Jesus Crucified by an Israeli soldier in a Lebanese village,” according to a story by Our Sunday Visitor.
The statement was signed by Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem.
“This act constitutes a grave affront to the Christian faith and adds to other reported incidents of desecration of Christian symbols by IDF soldiers in southern Lebanon.” It also reveals “a disturbing failure in moral and human formation, wherein even the most elementary reverence for the sacred and for the dignity of others has been gravely compromised.”
The Israeli government condemned the actions of the Israeli soldier who desecrated the statue of Jesus in a Lebanese village to which Israel denied humanitarian access for weeks.
Also, the Israel Defense Force, or IDF, said it was probing the destruction of a statue of Jesus.
Still, Yep and Hichborn agreed that the desecration of the crucifix at the hands of an Israeli soldier shows a disturbing pattern. Hichborn told Yep that he agreed with Cardinal Pizzaballa, quoting him.
‘“It’s a pattern with them,’ Cardinal Pizzaballa said, Hichborn quoted. “This is not an isolated incident, and because of that I stuck to my guns and said ‘no, we are completely against this. This behavior is completely reprehensible and it does show a pattern of having a history of doing this.”
“This was a photo op. This was staged,” Hichborn went on. “This was completely deliberate; this was not just happenstance. It’s a continued pattern of violence against Christians, against Catholics.”
Yep and Hichborn also dived into the statements that Fox host Sean Hannity made during a program, where he blasted Pope Leo for condemning the U.S.’s war in Iran. In a segment, Hannity, who is a former Catholic, said he had left the Catholic Church for siding with woke causes and for its scandals.
Hichborn countered that though Hannity had a point when it came to disagreeing with Pope Leo on the Iran war, he was dubious about the real reason for the Fox host leaving the Catholic Church. In fact, he suspects it was much more personal.
“Sean didn’t leave the Catholic Church because he was concerned with corruption; he left the Catholic Church because he got divorced and remarried, or partnered up with somebody who was also divorced,” Hichborn said. “Fulton Sheen said: ‘Nobody leaves the church because they have a real reason to leave the church, they leave the church for moral reasons.’ Hannity has a multitude of moral reasons as to why he left the church. He’s just using the left as an excuse.”
