I subscribe to a handful of monthly marketing newsletters. One of the newsletters is written by Dan Kennedy, a business consultant and marketing expert who has more than 40 years of experience helping business owners grow their businesses.

Ever since the advent of Facebook, Kennedy has repeatedly warned his subscribers not to trust Facebook. He insists that businesses that advertise on Facebook must have a process in place that immediately transfers all new customer data from the Facebook platform to a website or database that is owned by the business.

Kennedy has never wavered in his warnings about Facebook. His argument is that Facebook can, at any time, decide that a business is not complying with its guidelines, in which case it can, without notice, immediately shut down the page of any person or business.

I thought about Kennedy’s warnings last week when I read a Catholic News Agency (CNA) article that reported that within a 24-hour period, Facebook had removed more than two dozen “conservative” Catholic pages from its website.

One of the pages belonged to an American Catholic priest, Fr. Francis J. Hoffman, who is commonly known as “Fr. Rocky.” Hoffman is the Executive Director of Relevant Radio. At the time that his Facebook page was removed, he had more than 3.5 million followers.

Another popular page that was removed was known as “Catholic and Proud.” The page had more than six million followers, and belonged to Kenneth Alimba of Nigeria. Alimba told CNA that his page had been taken down by Facebook without any warning or explanation.

Alimba had another page, “Holy Mary Mother of God,” that had more than 200,000 followers, that was also removed by Facebook. He told CNA that he had spent more than five years working on his Facebook pages and that the loss of the pages was “extremely heartbreaking” and “horrible.”

Another Catholic page that was removed by Facebook was known as “Jesus and Mary.” That page had more than 1.7 million followers. The administrator of the page, Godwin Delayli Adadzie, told CNA that he had been contacted by Facebook the evening before the page was taken down and was told that he was “suspected of suspicious activities.”

Adadzie is a Catholic author and evangelist, and was the founder of another Facebook page, “Do You Know Africa?” He told CNA that the page “happens to be the most effective means of driving traffic to my Catholic websites and blogs. I am also a blogger and a writer, and in writing, without readers, which requires quality traffic, your writing or blogging will be useless.” After reviewing Facebook’s policies, Adadzie said that he had no idea why his page was removed.

Within hours of the removal of the Catholic pages, Facebook received a wave of criticism from Christians from around the world. Within two days, Facebook restored the pages and issued a statement that said, “The incident was a malfunction of the spam detection mechanism in our platform. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

So a “spam detection mechanism” randomly selected and eliminated two dozen popular Catholic pages that happened to be promoting the traditional teachings of the Catholic Church.

Hmmm.

I would be willing to bet that the so-called detection mechanism was a small team of living, breathing, anti-Catholic, hateful bigots who decided they would do the world a favor by shutting down those intolerant Catholics pages.

By the way, no one at Facebook bothered to contact any of the individuals who oversaw the pages that were removed and then restored. The individuals who were in charge of managing the pages said that they simply noticed that their pages were back online.

In my opinion, it is only a matter of time before Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and all the other popular social media companies remove (as a matter of policy) pages and content that are offensive to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community.

Let’s face it. Almost every institution in our country — the major corporations, educational institutions, teachers’ unions, and federal and state governments — now support and even promote the gravely sinful behavior of the LGBT community. These institutions are now boldly demanding that we set aside our own beliefs and modify our behavior so that we are in line with their belief that the deviant behavior of the LGBT community is normal, rewarding, and fulfilling.

These institutions have money and power and will do whatever it takes to neutralize and eliminate the influence of the Catholic Church. It is their goal to make criminals out of those of us who still faithfully adhere to the teachings of the Catholic Church.

We are engaged in a spiritual war that can only be won with prayer, humility, and courage.

Although Facebook is a powerful platform for getting our message out and communicating with others, it is a Trojan Horse that has identified Catholics as an enemy that must be conquered.

If you are dependent on Facebook for getting your message out to others, make sure that you have a backup plan in place so that when the Facebook spam detection mechanism shuts you down, you will not be silenced.

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