Personal Asides: See How the Archdiocese Cowed Pfleger? Back Bigger than Ever and on “Good Morning America!”…Fr, Andy Greeley Explains It All for You—Russert and Hesburgh Should Have Been Bishops. Figures.

Pfleger Agonistes.

Bigger, bolder and tougher than ever, a made-man now that he has cowed the Jimmy Lago-run archdiocese, Fr. Michael Pfleger scores his biggest media triumph by appearing on the ABC network show “Good Morning, America” this AM, all but thumbing his nose at the wilted, pathetically impotent archdiocese which parses instead of performs as a cleric figurehead does the ceremonials while a big-shot Democratic layman chancellor-pol joins it at the hip to the abortion party. Lago, Eddie Vrolyak’s best precinct captain, isn’t worried; the archdiocese has been humiliated, not him, although he’s called all the shots, puffing Pfleger bigger than he has ever been in his life.

This was all but predicted here as soon as the news of Pfleger’s “suspension” came out. A namby-pamby statement suggested that the dissident priest take a sojourn, reporting that he disagreed (oh my!), saying that two weeks off would allow him to leave the limelight. But a two-week leave to a demagogue just gave him breathing room. Now it’s Pfleger Agonistes a reprise of John Milton’s “Samson Agonistes” where the blind hero struggles against fate, going eyeless in Gaza, his fists upraised in anger—exactly the kind of billing the Sta-Comb blonde in roman collar needs.

As result of this flop, the Jimmy Lago-run archdiocese has given an object lesson to every liberal priest, every other do-it-yourself experimenter that the archdiocese can be rolled by any liberal crank…as indeed it can and has. And will be. Rolled by DePaul University which teaches students the rubrics of how to be gay while the archdiocese shakes a manicured finger at it and then retreats under a desk with its p.r. mavens rather than threaten to use the only weapon it has—the stripping of the name Catholic from the institution. Rolled by Loyola University which also celebrates the gay lifestyle. Rolled by the Mercy Home for Boys & Girls that brazenly invited a Democratic presidential candidate to raise funds for it while the archdiocese conflictedly avers and then denies it knew about it and sanctioned it.

Pew Poll Tells Why.

But the fizzle on Superior street doesn’t tell even a fraction of the story. The answer is contained in a poll taken by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released this week. Thirty-six thousand adults were interviewed. Get this: Percent of each religion saying that their holy book is the word of God and literally true…(holy book as applied to Catholics means the New Testament and Tradition): Black Protestant—62% believe that what the church teaches is true…Evangelical Protestant—59% believe their churches teachings are true…Muslim (here’s a surprise, and I rather doubt the figure)—50%. Now the big one.

Catholic—23%....only 23d%...believe their church teachings are true.

Mainline Protestant—22%. Jewish—10%.

You know what that tells us about the pitifully low Catholic affirmation that their church’s beliefs are true? The lamentable decline of courageous teaching about the Faith which is first and foremost the job of the bishops.

Take a look at a good 80% of the Catholic bishops today. Spineless, relativistic, politically-craven, androgynous, unmanly, supine…read: McCarrick. Do you expect these creatures to muster the force to convey needed behind any belief?

Father Andrew Greeley Explains It All for You.

In his “Sun-Times” column yesterday, Andy Greeley explained it all for us. Tim Russert should be canonized. And his qualities should be incardinated in bishops. The man who led in Judas-goat fashion Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Mario Cuomo to eschew pro-life and become pro-aborts (from which stricture Moynihan broke free and voted his conscience on the partial birth abortion ban) had the qualities that Rome should look for in bishops. Also Fr. Ted Hesburgh, the president emeritus of Notre Dame…noted for his saying “my view is, you don’t make decisions because they’re easy. You make them because they’re right!” Under whom Notre Dame took on a flagrantly secular character…and who doubled as president of the Rockefeller Foundation which stepped up its lavish donations to the abortion industry. What was that about decisions again?

What Andy really means is that he…Andy Greeley…should have been given first the purple monsignori, then the crimson of a bishopric and then the blood red cardinalate…signifying the blood of martyrdom a cardinal must be willing to shed for his faith,..allowing him to be called Andrew Cardinal Greeley, archbishop of Chicago. Ah! What a waste that was.

Ah! What a time we would have under Cardinal Greeley! He wouldn’t need a Jimmy Lago to make the tough decisions or a white helmet-coiffed p. r. maven-circuit judge’s wife to tackle the press, I’ll tell you that. We’d call him “Cardinal Andy.” He’d handle is own p. r. Oh how sweet it would be. And do you know what would happen to Pfleger when he tried the Agonistes crap? I mean moving in on Cardinal Andy’s media preserve…getting on “Good Morning America” instead of Cardinal Andy? Well Pfleger would just disappear, that’s all. He’d be a sacristan to the Sisters of Charity at Our Lady of Sorrows.

Not all bad would it be. At least we’d know who’s running things.