Rockford.
The Rockford, Illinois diocese will not send seminarians to St. Mary of the Lake, Mundelein for training. Two upperclassmen propositioned a Rockford youth for homosexual favors. So much for the change that has been promised in archdiocesan public relations pronouncements.
Thus the Rockford diocese has decided it is finished with Mundelein. Thus you have the archdiocese of Chicago where layman Chancellor Jimmy Lago (believe it or not that’s his baptismal name, not to be confused with his brother Timmy, his baptismal name as well)…Jimmy the best precinct captain onetime Democratic Cook county chairman now under indictment Ed Vrdolyak ever had… has been put in charge of combating sexual abuse and the same-old, same-old is happening. Of course the supine Chicago “religious” press is asleep at the switch. The “Tribune’s” religion correspondent, one Manya Brachear, was sold a bill of goods by Lago who convinced her to write he is the guardian-at-the-gate implying the Cardinal archbishop is lax. She writes a blog which calls herself the “Seeker.” She is so naively liberal she swallowed the bait, hook and all, which Jimmy dangled before her.
Furthermore, don’t expect the remainder of the Chicago media to inquire. And if it does and goes to the top office in the archdiocese, it will get the regular parsing that goes with every question born of the view that with two doctorates all distinctions can be blurred with requisite sophistry. An authenticist bishop in another diocese told me that the parser should be teaching in a university where administrative expertise is not required. As far as controlling events in this archdiocese, the bishop said, “the parser can’t run a two-car funeral.”
Kicanas.
The man who ran St. Mary of the Lake Seminary, Mundelein when it was a hot-house of homosexual excess…and who was quoted in the “Sun-Times” as saying he does not regret ordaining Fr. Dan McCormack, who is now serving time for child abuse…is second in command of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. He is Gerald Kicanas, now bishop of Tucson, having been promoted from Mundelein (as were all others who ran the dissolute institution) to auxiliary bishop of Chicago and then to Tucson. In Tucson, Kicanas led Tucson through the filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization to the point where he ponied up $22 million in settlement for victims of priest child abuse.
Last month Kicanas received an award name for…who else?.. the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin whose departure from this world was serenaded by the Gay Men’s Chorus at Mass…for “efforts in handling the sexual abuse both locally and nationally.” The Common Ground initiative formed by Bernardin which selects recipients for the honor described Kicanas as “a champion of dialogue on contentious issues.” Kicanas received the award at Catholic University in Washington, D. C. where Tim Russert, moderator of “Meet the Press” was supposed to be the keynote speaker at the event. Russert was unavoidably detained by death which prompted a national wailing and a funeral Mass celebrated by- (who else?) Theodore Cardinal McCarrick (ret.). Russert in his earlier incarnation as Democratic strategist convinced both Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Senator from New York and Mario Cuomo, governor of New York, to support pro-abortion initiatives. Because he couldn’t attend the Kicanas tribute, Russert was lionized in death by the group.
Kicanas is slated to become the next president of the U. S. Catholic Conference of Bishops. If there is any justice at all, his automatic election should be greeted with grassroots opposition…not that it will make any difference with an organization that meets in a marble palace and has a huge roundtable with every bishop fortified with microphone based on the UN Security Council. The archbishop of Chicago is president of the USCCB who was elected on the same ticket as the former Mundelein rector Kicanas.
Chicago Weak in Review.
Chicago “Weak in Review” run by Joel Weisman at WTTW is running out of gas. It was originally conceived as a feisty review of city news by the reporters who cover it but for years the fatigued Joel Weisman has forbidden dissent on the show and presides over a panel from the Land of Nod. The reporters are all pro-Daley and do not enunciate any divergent opinions. The payoff last week came when even Weisman, the establishmentarian, tried to evoke some discussion as to whether the Barack Obama tour of the Middle East and Europe was excessive.
Naw, nobody felt that way. Weisman worked but everybody sat there transfixed. Then when the issue came up about Senate President Emil Jones who has refused to call his body into session to grant relief for the poor who are in substance abuse treatment, the Land of Nod moved smoothly. No one had anything critical to say of Jones—least of all the grimacing Weisman who makes a hollow pretense of being objective. When Todd Stroger’s tenure came up everybody nodded and thought he is doing a good job—this despite the fact that he has become a celebrated city, almost national, scandal.
That is the way liberal politics have corrupted so-called panel shows under the malleable Dan Schmidt as vacuous as a door-to-door salesman, who has no core beliefs except to solicit money to keep his station running and pay his exorbitant salary. No conservative is ever invited to appear in any media panel. Conservative positions and views don’t exist in WTTWland. And feminist liberal Carol Marin wouldn’t know a conservative position if she bumped into one, so inured is she in lefty formulations. She is a pathetic one-person monopolist of lefty slanted news: political editor of the “Sun-Times”…political editor of NBC-TV Chicago…and an interviewer at WTTW…paid by two private enterprises and a third partly with federal cash. Doesn’t bother this “ethics” maven.
WTTW’s highly trumpeted pro-gay rights documentary…introduced by Phil Ponce, a hollow man unburdened by belief in anything who has a number of look-alike sons scattered in high media roles throughout the city…turned out to be gay rights advocacy was paid for by a wealthy donor who has been involved in gay rights causes. This paid infomercial comes close to a scandal at WTTW where a group of wealthy liberal donors call the shots on what the station presents. It doesn’t both Schmidt who is a loose rudder twisting to and fro and who has a public relations man’s knack of parsing—but it should prompt some interest in paid-for-advocacy if there was such a thing as an aggressive news media in Chicago…which there isn’t.
I would be interested in knowing the who, what, when, where, why of this incident @ Mundelein especially in light of the seminary visits done recently...do we know if these incidents are to be reported to Archbishop Edwin F. O'Brien ?
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