Personal Asides: Who’s Your Favorite GOP Presidential Candidate? A Plebiscite… Strange, is it not, that Columnist Andy Greeley--With Opinions on Everything Else—Hasn’t Commented on the Lavender Priesthood Issue?

Who’s Your Favorite?

With Iowa’s caucuses dominating the news, why don’t we take a non-scientific, unofficial plebiscite among ourselves—strictly on the honor system as to whether you’re Republican. Who do you favor as the Republican candidate who (a) best typifies GOP principles and (b) can win? Cast your ballot in Reader’s Comments.

Strange.

Father Andrew Greeley, the columnist favorite of the “Sun-Times” has much to comment on, most of which comes from the Democratic National Committee playbook. He wrote last week about the unsuitability of New York city being a model for the U.S., a thrust at Giuliani. He is no expert on urban affairs or New York but that makes no difference to the newspaper which is grateful to have any Catholic reader, even one who disregards key moral teachings of his Church. Let’s see. Although not a foreign policy expert, this sociologist-priest has written extensively about Iraq and its follies. He has written about the economy on which he is not expert.

But Andy is a doctor of sociology and a professor of same at the University of Arizona. This would equip him to at least give us his thoughts on an issue of keen interest to his Church and city. There is no doubt that Andy is not lavender nor lavender-enabling. No one could write semi-heterosexual pornography with such zest and detail and be. But still he has not found time to write about recently is priestly pedophilia. There was a time when he did—but now he does not. Despite the fact that the Cardinal—his close friend with whom he dines and takes to the opera—has opposed extension of law suits beyond their deadline. Not a word about how the Dan McCormack case was botched. Not a word about how Voice of the Faithful, a liberal-oriented lay group, criticized George and recommended he not be elected president of the USCCB. There was a time when Andy said obliquely in one of his books that homosexuality will be a problem in Chicago. That was when he was on the outs with Cardinal Bernardin; but they made up and nary a peep since. He was so much a friend that he calculated how to make Bernardin pope (gasp!) in a series of self-reflections which he (unfortunately for him) combined with other memoirs which he sent to the Notre Dame library and which were published…which strained their friendship causing him to ruminate about scandals in the archdiocese. Now he is in good standing here.

Thus, not a word in his column about the election of George as president of the USCCB. Especially not a word about one who most certainly he must know, Bishop Gerald Kicanas of Tucson (in Arizona Greeley’s stamping grounds) who ran Mundelein and the adjunct Niles college seminaries into near cesspool status.

Why the silence do you suppose? Because possibly the people who have taken the heat for misfeasance are for the most part are political liberals and most are Democrats of the 1960s school, although Andy far antedates them in his fidelity to the party since it is his boast that he never, ever voted for a Republican. Period. The soft-core novelist priest who used to wear Bill Clinton’s golden saxophone emblem on his black clergy jacket lapel signifying that he was a big donor to the abortion president does not wish to add to the woes of his liberal friends most of whom have wittingly or not invested in lavender enabling.

Just wait for a conservative prelate (if one can be found: lots of luck) to get into some kind of trouble. He had better not spit on the sidewalk as the Chicago saying goes. Then you will see Andy’s hackles rise.