A Triumvirate to Keep the Presidency in GOP Hands Until 2012?

The Triumvirate.

Anyone who knows the Clintons understands that the game is not over with Hillary’s “concession.” If Obama wins the presidency and serves two terms she will be 68 and likely out of contention forever.

Anyone who knows Bill Clinton knows that he is white-knuckled with fury at Hillary’s losing to a man he has already declared unqualified—and wants to justify himself by seeing Hillary gets another chance at the brass ring.

Anyone who knows George W. Bush understands that he wants to leave a legacy of victory in Iraq to justify his treatment by future historians..

Anyone who knows John McCain understands that he wants to win the war in Iraq; not conditioned to surrender, he is a man of infinite flexibility but with one iron-clad absolute: victory.

To imagine that these immensely beady-eyed politicians who have applied Machiavelli often in their lives will treat the likely Obama victory with the words of the old Cole Porter song, “too bad, so sad—it was great fun it was just one of those things” does not understand them.

It’s my contention that these three will inevitably understand that their interests coincide.

The key player, Bill Clinton understands that if Obama loses his bid the next Democratic presidential nomination will be in Hillary’s grasp. In fact, she is immensely stronger now than she was when she began since figures increasingly show Democratic buyer’s remorse from the white working class and white women.

She will be 64 which is not too old to run. The great probability…almost a certainty… will be that her Republican opponent will not be John McCain at all. He is in fact a very senior appearing 71. The TV photo op the other day of his wife helping him down the steps is revelatory. The age issue can be surmounted for McCain if the voters perceive him as the only choice available to handle a crisis…but let’s face it, a McCain at 76 if he survives…and we must pray God he does… will be very-very long in the tooth.

If he does not, all bets will be off for a new president will be favored —but if he survives, as the life expectancy insurance tables justify for active men, odds will enormously favor his not running or having great influence to pass the baton to his successor. In fact, McCain has said for the record that he will govern without concern for reelection—a sure tip-off that he means to accomplish much in four years with James K. Polk as his model.

Since Republicans inevitably choose presidential candidates by the seniority system (“it’s your turn now” as was used with Ronald Reagan in 1980, George H. W. Bush in 1988, Bob Dole in 1996, George W. Bush in 2000 and now McCain in 2008, it’s a lead pipe cinch that McCain’s vice president would get the nod in 2012. The urge for change would be so strong by then that it would be easy for Hillary to beat that person—and Bill Clinton knows it.

The irrepressible self-interest of all three…Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and John McCain…and the Machiavellian nature of the political game they play…is to suppose that they will form a triumvirate. It will obviously not be a formal one but each member’s vital concern depends on the interaction of the triumvirate. It is all but certain there will be a facilitator, someone trusted by all. In past experiences, the facilitator does not come from outside but is one of the three. And of course the one all can trust is the man who by his very presence certifies he has much to gain by its success in the future: Bill Clinton.

Why would Bill Clinton be so duplicitous to the triumvirate and himself and his wife whom he sorely wants to be president so as to justify himself mislead them and cause the election of Barack Obama? What do the Clintons have to gain with an Obama presidency?

Why should George W. Bush whose father has become almost preternaturally close to Bill Clinton not trust him in these negotiations given that Clinton and his wife have so much to gain with the election of John McCain?

Why should not McCain trust Bill Clinton when the clearest reasoning shows that everyone in the triumvirate agrees there must be a McCain presidency in 2008 with everything to happen later postponed and off the table? Obvious.

Since the indissoluble rational for a triumvirate exists, we turn to process.

What would be the nature of the bargaining? First, it would have to involve national security policy, obviously. No domestic policy would be worth the candle.

Second, it would have to involve the risk of war with the nation going to the polls at a very dangerous time. Look back to the frozen attention the nation has always had when war threatens which it decides re quires no change—in 1864, 1916, 1940. Nineteen sixty-eight when two non-incumbents were running, Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey, favored Nixon. It was accomplished by a triumvirate of which I have some personal knowledge: John Mitchell, Anna Chennault and Thomas Corcoran, an FDR Democrat. In the triumvirate Chennault, wealthy and powerful a Chinese supporter of Taiwan and firm anti-communist, widow of Gen. Claire Chennault of Flying Tigers fame, convinced South Vietnam that its interest lie in boycotting the LBJ-sponsored peace conference between the North, the South and the Viet Cong, she assuring the South that it was in its interest to avoid the conference and await the possible election of Nixon.

The South torpedoed the conference, the peace effort failed and the nation went to the polls with the Vietnam war dragging on interminably.

Nixon was elected by a tiny margin—43.4%, Humphrey, 42.7% and George Wallace, 13.5%.

How could the triumvirate work? This next time.

PFLEGER’S SERMON JEOPARDIZED OBAMA’S CHANCES …AND THUS THIS PRIEST IS EXPENDABLE.

A column written for The Wanderer, the nation’s oldest national Catholic weekly. Significantly updated since publication…including “what should happen now.”

By Thomas F. Roeser

CHICAGO—Fr. Michael Louis Pfleger, the 59-year-old boyish, white (of German heritage), blond-haired, radicalized priest-throwback to the `60s who affects a black accent in his sermons, just may have unintentionally wreaked serious, long-term damage to the presidential hopes of Barack Obama. In the short-run, his TV tirade last week as a guest speaker before cheering black members of Trinity United Church of Christ who could pass for anti-white bigots caused a furor that led to Obama leaving the Hyde Park church.

Last week the fiery priest was suspended from his pastorate for two weeks by Francis Cardinal George. Many of his devotees are non-Catholic and more entranced with his “hate whitey” verbiage than the liturgy of his Mass which appears to be go by the wayside. A temporary administrator—a priest—was appointed and crowds of St. Sabina “congregants” attended a rally demanding Pfleger’s return. A pastoral associate interviewed by the press says the cardinal “disrespected us”—black talk for not kowtowing to wishes of the rabble, many of whom, some whites as well as blacks, had been bouncing off the wall in excitement at Pfleger’s tirades.

The same kind of excitement at pastoral enunciations preceded Obama’s departure from his church.

Obama left Trinity because in truth he can no longer remain a parishioner there and appeal to the white working class he needs to be elected president. He thought he had it greased when Jeremiah Wright left the pastorate to be followed by one whom Obama had saluted as a kind of clerical moderate, Rev. Otis Moss III, calling him “a wonderful young pastor.” But Moss not only invited Fr. Pfleger to speak at the Sunday service and introduced him in glowing terms but said he “is a brother beloved, he is a preacher par-excellence, he is a prophetic powerful pulpiteer.” After Fr. Pfleger’s incendiary speech, Moss took the pulpit and said, “We thank God for the message and we thank God for the messenger. We thank God for Fr. Michael Pfleger. We thank God for Father Mike.”

The priest, only slightly less than Wright, had been identified with Obama. Obama identified Fr. Pfleger in a 2004 interview with the Sun-Times as a key factor in his spiritual guidance. Fr. Pfleger responded in the article by saying of Obama, “Faith is key to his life, no question about it. It is central to who he is and not just in his work in the political field but as a man, as a black man, as a husband, as a father…I don’t think he could easily divorce his faith from who he is.” The priest was a contributor to Obama in his state senate days, has been friends with the candidate since Obama’s days as a community organizer, took part in an Iowa event last fall and has said he gives Obama “spiritual counsel.”

Whether Obama can repair gratuitous anti-white recriminations led by Fr. Pfleger is another question. It is all but certain that the “sleepy eye” of the electorate that focuses for briefest minutes on campaigns has glimpsed anti-white racism and has drawn its conclusions. But the presidential campaign is still early and the furor may cease being a public spectacle.

What Fr. Pfleger Said.

As the U.S. political world now knows, Fr. Pfleger began his guest appearance, invited by the new pastor-successor to the inflammatory Jeremiah Wright, by talking of the need to expose “white entitlement and supremacy wherever it raises its head.” Then he talked about Sen. Hillary Clinton’s nearly weeping just before the New Hampshire primary.

“I really don’t believe it was put on,” Fr. Pfleger said. “I really believe that she just always thought…” and here he raised his voice in a shrill scream that was supposed to be an imitation of Clinton…”`This is mine! I’m Bill’s wife! I’m white and this is mine! I just gotta get up and step into the plate!’ And then out of nowhere came, `Hey, I’m Barack Obama!’ and she said, `Oh, damn! Where did you come from? I’m white! I’m entitled! There’s a black man stealing my show!’”

Pulling out a hanky and wiping his eyes in mock anguish, the priest said, `She wasn’t the only one crying. There was a whole lot of white people crying!” The black audience erupted in raucous laughter.

Far more disturbing for white viewers of the scene on YouTube and the national networks was the scene of the black congregation roaring with laughter and cheering on the white priest as he mocked members of his own race—something which if done in reverse with a black man assailing blacks before a white church would likely be condemned as virulent racism.

The performance spurred Obama to say “I am deeply disappointed in Fr. Pfleger’s divisive, backward-looking rhetoric.” Fr. Pfleger responded to Obama by apologizing: “I regret the words I chose Sunday. These words are inconsistent with Sen. Obama’s life and message and I am deeply sorry if they offended Sen. Clinton or anyone else who saw them.” To which the Tribune responded editorially: “If? If? “ The question worrying Obama campaign strategists is whether Fr. Pfleger’s widely covered speech will prompt Jeremiah Wright, the retired Trinity pastor who is jealous of others moving in on his black nationalist constituency to respond to get equal time on the networks.

But There’s Much More.

If anti-white racism is what the priest is accused of today, a study of past speakers he has entertained at St. Sabina’s pose a distinct question of his support of Islamic terrorism. On the fourth anniversary of 9/11 he invited Kareem Irfan, former chairman of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago as guest speaker. Purpose: to inveigh against “prejudice against Muslims and Arabs in the wake of Sept. 11.” As a member of the Islamic Society of North America, Irfan has characterized Islamic beheadings of non-Muslims not as acts of evil but rather as manifestations of “a primordial sense of retaliation and revenge.”

Addressing his flock, Fr. Pfleger said: “In the name of patriotism and the Patriot Act, there was a great rising of prejudice and bigotry agains Muslims and Arabs. We cannot along that under the guise of patriotism.” Irfan spoke about the alleged abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and denial of legal representation to those suspected terrorists being held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

“We’ve seen a shameful erosion of civil rights and liberties,” he said, referring to the Patriot Act’s power to allow law enforcement to use such measures as secret arrests and unrestricted wiretaps to investigate people since Sept. 112. “There’s been a distressing violation of the privacy of organizations and individuals.”

His softness of Jihidism not perceived until recently, Fr. Pleger has been regarded as a distinct asset to the Obama campaign and to the Illinois Democratic party. The fiery priest has been a favorite on the heavily liberal news media here and has been inflated as if by a bicycle pump by its TV and print reporters with him cast as the hero of the powerless, the underdog, the defenseless. For the most part, the supine local media have not cared whether or not he conducts himself in accordance with priestly duties. Indeed, Chicago’s David Axelrod, Obama’s top campaign strategist and TV packager, had scheduled through one of his satellite companies a film documentary of the priest for use on public television, its release to be synchronized purportedly with the campaign calendar. Axelrod now has said the documentary has been indefinitely postponed.



Small wonder.

Francis Cardinal George issued a statement saying “The Catholic Church does not endorse political candidates. Consequently, when a priest must speak to political issues that are also moral, he may not endorse candidates nor engage in partisan campaigning. Racial issues are both political and moral and are also highly charged. Words can be differently interpreted, but Fr. Pfleger’s remarks about Sen. Clinton are both partisan and amount to a personal attack. I regret that deeply. To avoid months of turmoil in the Church, Fr. Pfleger has promised me that he will not enter into campaigning, will not publicly mention any candidate by name and will abide by the discipline common to all Catholic priests.”

Calm words and not censorious. But the pro-Obama tabloid the Sun-Times hyped it with a front-page color stock photo of the Cardinal in mid-speech, topped by the huge black headline Enough is Enough (words the Cardinal did not speak nor write) along with a stock photo of Fr. Pfleger looking chastened. Stinging from more than the ecclesial rebuke may well be the priest’s exorcism by the leaders of the Illinois Democratic party to whom the beloved figure known as “Father Mike” was always a key player.



As pastor of a huge church whose audience is heavily non-Catholic but who go to hear his sermons, Fr. Pfleger has been a celebrity in the party and a frequent guest of Mayor Richard M. Daley in his box at Cellular field for White Sox games. Catholic U.S. Senator Dick Durbin calls him “Fr. Mike.” Now Fr. Mike seems to be, temporarily at least, persona non grata because the priest yielded to his zest to rant before a black audience on TV to jeopardize Obama’s campaign to get white votes that would solidify a majority in the general election. The entire Illinois Democratic hierarchy is on board the Obama ship—and Fr. Pfleger’s rant may make it look somewhat like the Titanic.

While to the nation Fr. Pfleger has just become a national figure with his seeming unbalanced emotional address, he has been known to regular Wanderer readers for many years from stories about his proclivity to politicize his parish sermons, perform extraordinary partisan rants and get away with it. He has been a fixture in the local media ever since 1981 when he was named pastor of the all-black St. Sabina’s church in the city’s Auburn-Gresham neighborhood, becoming the archdiocese’s youngest pastor at age 31. He has been there for 27 years, far exceeding the usual term limitation of 12. He has refused to be reassigned and has said that if the archdiocese tries, he will start his own church. The archdiocese under two archbishops has backed down since Fr. Pfleger has so ingratiated himself to blacks there could be a mass demonstration on the chancery (something the archdiocese shudders to think about) if he were to be reassigned. He has been called by admirers the possessor of “a blue-eyed black soul.”

He Has Done Some Good Things.

By no means has the mission of Michael Pfleger been exclusively partisan—but has turned St. Sabina’s into a neighborhood social service hub with an employment resource center, a social service center and a home for the elderly. But he has been disruptive, bringing to his church such social and political activists as Joseph Lowry, Jesse Jackson, Cornel West and others.

In 1981 Fr., Pfleger adopted an eight-year-old son, Lamar, who is now working for Continental Airlines. In 1992 he adopted another son, Beronti, who attends the University of Central Florida. In 1997 the priest became foster father to Jarvis Franklin who was killed by stray gunfire on May 30, 1998. He has led successful anti-drug campaigns, winning the shutdown of a number of neighborhood businesses that featured drug paraphernalia. He campaigned for removal of liquor and alcohol billboards in his area. He climbed up a ladder and defaced a sign, leading to his being charged with defacing private property. He was tried by a jury and acquitted and the city council voted 44 to 1 to eliminate tobacco and alcohol billboards from selected areas of the city.

Then he turned his wrath on the hard porn radio broadcasts of Howard Stern, forcing Viacom to remove billboards advertising Stern’s move to satellite radio. He skewered violence-prone Jerry Springer whose TV tapings are done here. But as his celebrity grew in this city Fr. Pfleger turned more unconventional. He encouraged his parishioners to buy time with prostitutes, using that time to try to convince them to accept job-training and counseling at St. Sabina’s.

He was arrested dozens of times on civil rights issues. In later years he invaded the precincts of partisan politics, violating all the conventional rules governing religious leaders except cadres of politicized black ministers who feel unrestrained by IRS rules banning the mixing of electoral politics with their nonprofit institutions.

He has welcomed Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to St. Sabina’s with his virulent anti-white rhetoric but the local media played it down as not to bring harm to Fr. Pfleger. In February, 2003 he invited the Rev. Al Sharpton, then a presidential candidate and a pro-abortion figure to speak at Mass during Black History Month celebrations, prompting Cardinal George to object and archdiocesan officials to worry they would lose their tax-exempt status. George decided that trying to stop Sharpton from coming “would be a futile gesture and a waste of effort.”

In May, 2007 Fr. Pfleger joined a coalition protest with Rev. Jesse L. Jackson outside a legally-operating Chicago gun shop, shouting over a p.a. address to the owner that “we’re going to find you and snuff you out. Like a rat you’re going to hide but like a rat we’re going to catch you and pull you out!” Again the cardinal rebuked Fr. Pfleger. The priest said he did not use the word “snuff” as a slang term for kill but as a substitute for “pull.”



Because of his celebrity…due in large part because he is white …Fr. Michael Pfleger became a folk hero to the black community subordinate to Jesse Jackson but equal to black pastor and state senator Rev. James Meeks who has an equally large politically active Baptist congregation. As a result Fr. Pfleger has been a main cog in the exceptionally viable black wing of the Cook county Democratic machine, a figure whose personal endorsement of candidates has been adjudged worth many hundreds of thousands of black votes. Last month, the priest came to Jeremiah Wright’s aid by posting a letter on his parish’s website calling Obama and Wright “two friends who [sic] I respect, admire and have a deep love for…The truth is we need Sen. Barack Obama and we need Reverend Jeremiah Wright and, if we are serious about wanting a new America, we cannot afford to throw either one of them under the bus!”

Fr. Pfleger’s support of Obama has been returned in state grants. The priest donated $1,500 to the candidate’s first state senate run, $1,500 to his presidential campaign and until recently sat on a “Catholics for Obama” committee. When Obama was in the Illinois legislature he helped Pfleger land two state earmarks for his church--$100,000 to repair The Arc community center and another for $125,000 for computers at the church’s employment resource center.

Fr. Pfleger’s speech last week prompted another Catholic priest to speak out in favor of Sen. John McCain. Msgr. James Lisante of Rockville Centre, Long Island praised McCain and added: “A lot more of us would be comfortable with Sen. Obama’s judgment skills if he hadn’t sat for 20 years through the words offered by his preacher of division, bigotry…without a word of rejection from Sen. Obama—that is, until the media brought it up. And now he doesn’t want any part of the guy. I’m willing to be his pastor.”

Assessing the Political Wreckage.

Obama strategists whom I talked with following the Pfleger eruption have a packet of political worries caused by the priest. First, Fr. Pfleger’s speech came while Obama has been trying to reach out to white working-class voters who in the past several primaries have trended to Hillary Clinton (as my Wanderer article last week showed). Second, since Fr. Pfleger spoke from the Trinity pulpit, it will signal a return to the fray of Jeremiah Wright. Third, the disgraceful treatment of Hillary Clinton by Fr. Pfleger helps Clinton backers who are seeking to drive a wedge between women and Obama, especially white women.



Fourth, a highly publicized part of Fr. Pfleger’s speech opened a possible chasm between Obama and white wealthy donors and entrepreneurs from the Silicon Valley who have been significant in backing him financially including multi-billionaire Warren Buffett. Fr. Pfleger shouted that whites “should give up your 401K and assets because these are the benefits of slaves one hundred seventy years ago and you and your white ancestors are responsible”—echoes of what Chicagoans Wright, Farrakhan, Billy Ayres the Pentagon bomber and other close associates of Obama espouse. There have been hints which have also sprouted up in Michelle Obama’s rhetoric—who advised new college graduates not to strive to be rich but serve the community’s needs, notwithstanding that she settled for a $300,000 a year salary as community relations vice president of the University of Chicago hospitals.

Fifth, To imagine that Obama does not agree with his longtime friends (he has known Fr. Pfleger for 18 years) seems ludicrous and has to be remedied quickly in a drastic image makeover by Axelrod. Sixth, the message destroys the carefully-crafted Axelrod campaign showing Obama as a “different kind of politician” but pictures him through his associates as quite close to Farrakhan. Seventh, the spectacle of black congregants at Trinity hugely savoring Fr. Pfleger’s hate rant casts real doubt on Obama’s ability to rebuild a condition of white racial trust as president.

In summary, Republicans need not think they have won the presidential election because of this early flap. Most political analysts including this one say the election is still Obama’s to lose. Right now, though, even some Democrats admit he seems to be doing a good job of it.

What is Likely to Happen Now?

The archdiocese, always at sea when decisions of principle are to be rendered, is seriously thinking of replacing Pfleger with a black priest—by which it hopes to mitigate the damage. But there is no doubt that this will not work and could render the black priest token into an Uncle Tom. What has to happen, in the minds of authenticists, is that the archdiocese has to do three things:

1. It has to understand that by keeping Pfleger at St. Sabina’s far too long it has built a Frankenstein monster. Thus in rectifying the situation it has to take the heat.



2. Returning Pfleger would be more of the same-old, same-old and likely to produce another confrontation down the pike in weeks or months to come.



3. Replacing Pfleger with a new pastor is the way to go.



4. Installing a black pastor would be `way too cute. It is a needless mollification of a congregation, largely non-Catholic purportedly, which has been flattered far too long by Pfleger and treated as if it were a civil rights rally.



5. A new pastor of any race should come and be prepared to see wholesale defections from St. Sabina—but these defections would be either largely non-Catholic interlopers who savor stentorian shouting rallies instead of Mass or nominal Catholics who don’t understand the significance of the Mass. In any case hunkering down and returning the parish to its original status of church rather than raucous meeting hall is what is needed.

Personal Aside: Academic Freedom…The Congress Targets Ministries that Violate Tax Exemption: Guess Which Ones?...Get Ready for Peggy Noonan to be the Next Defector.

It’s Academic.

It is indeed heartening to see academe defending the goal of academic freedom of inquiry that has been a hallmark of Western civilization since the monks established the university system.

A University of Toledo faculty member has been fired after she wrote a column in the “Toledo Free Press” that questions whether homosexuality should be touted as a civil right issue. Crystal Dixon, associate vice president of human resources, wrote that “as a black woman” she took “great umbrage at the notion that those choosing the homosexual lifestyle are civil rights victims. Here’s why. I cannot wake up tomorrow and not be a black woman. I am genetically and biologically a black woman and very pleased to be so as my Creator intended.”

That violated the canon of the University which fired her, declaring her values “do not accord” with those of the school. Toledo is one of 13 state universities in Ohio and declares in its website that it respects diversity of all kinds.

Not the diversity that Crystal Dixon attests to, Judeo-Christianity however.

Congress Targets.

It’s heartening to learn that the U. S. Congress is targeting ministries that it suspects of violating the IRS nonprofit rule. Guess which ones? Trinity United Church of Christ which under Jeremiah Wright cursed America and hustles votes for liberal Democratic candidates? St. Sabina’s under Fr. Michael Pfleger which hits whitey and urges the election of Barack Obama for president? Rev. James Meeks who is both pastor of Salem Baptist church and a Democratic state senator and who regularly mixes political agendas with theological ones?

No. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) has launched a probe of six conservative televangelists which, Grassley said, “share the same branch of evangelicism and…promote socially conservative and public policy positions.” Meaning pro-life and anti-homosexual rights.

Last Nov. 6, Grassley, the ranking Republican on Senate Finance, asked for detailed financial information from Paul and Randy White’s Without Walls International Church, Benny Hinn Ministries, Joyce Meyer Ministries, Kenneth Copeland Ministries, Eddie Long’s New Birth Missionary Baptist Church and Creflo Dollar’s World Changers Church International. Only Joyce Meyer met the original 30-day deadline—but Grassley stiffened the committee’s investigation and got the chairman of the committee, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Montana) to co-sign subpoenas. When the March 31 deadline passed, only Copeland and Creflo Dollar stayed defiant. Copeland has since launched a counter-offensive, demanding an IRS audit under the Church Audit Procedures Act of 1984 (CAPA) which Grassley co-authored.

If Grassley wants information, he said, he should ask the IRS for it. It’s a clever strategy because IRS audits are confidential and take at least five years to complete.

So far Grassley and Baucus and the U. S. Senate see nothing further amiss from the other ministries across the land. Isn’t that comforting?

Peggy Noonan.

Judging from her columns in the “Wall Street Journal,” get ready for Peggy Noonan to be the next to defect to Barack Obama. The White House, you see, didn’t make her director of communications despite her taking a leave to campaign for Bush in 2004…so the posy, highly artificial scribe who is a gifted wordsmith grew discontented and started kicking about the callousness and political obtuseness of the White House. At the same time she has been very caustic about Hillary Clinton, almost to the point where her rants against the first woman to make a serious run for the White House seem like gender self-hatred.

Her gushiness about Obama seems very like the early “thoughtful” parsing Doug Kmiec did for Obama before he defected. Not a word from either on the great dichotomy between Obama and pro-life, an issue which both Kmiec and Noonan profess adherence to. The war…the economy…the need to ingratiate ourselves with foreign nations and not be hated…global warming—all seem of equal weight which means that if they are all equal, it’s easy to come down on the side of Obama on sheer numbers of equal issues alone.

Watch for Dear Peggy to follow the exit route and shake her golden tresses in the limelight as an Obama devotee.

Personal Aside: Pfleger to Return June 16 and All Is Forgiven—Until Next Time.

Reprinted from The Chicago Daily Observer of Today.

The Roman Catholic archdiocese went eyeball-to-eyeball with Fr. Michael Pfleger…and the archdiocese blinked. The incendiary priest is to return to his pulpit and pastorate June 16 to a forest of high-fives from those to whom the Mass and reverent ceremonials have always meant not much more than a circus.

Not surprising.

All along the archdiocese has forfeited its authority because it has been afraid. Afraid of black anger at St. Sabina’s. Afraid it couldn’t find a replacement that could build support to succeed him. Afraid the media…headed by the Bohemian Girl reporter, Cathleen Falsani…Carol Marin’s little sister…who has Catholic antecedents but is a Wheaton College grad (even though little evangelical propriety is observed in her hippie writing) who disses Roman Catholic cardinals as “men in red dresses” would portray the archdiocese as…gasp…unfeeling, untrendy.

All along the archdiocese had seven points to consider which authenticists say doesn’t rank very high with the lay pragmatists running the p. r. show.

1. It had to understand that keeping Fr. Pfleger at St. Sabina’s far too

long was sign of a weakness, a caving in to a rambunctious mob, many members of which are not Catholic at all but have flocked there for a good show on Sunday morning to catch the local rabble-rouser flail around putting on his ping-pong balls for eyes routine as he shouts.

2. It should understand that returning him to his church would inevitably produce more of the same-old, same-old nonsense, likely to produce another confrontation down the pike in weeks to come.



3. Replacing Pfleger with a new pastor would have been the principled way to go.



4. Installing a black pastor would have been `way too cute…a needless mollification and would put the African American priest in an untenable position because the heart of Pfleger’s appeal is that he is a white man who is an anti-white bigot.



5. The archdiocese should have replaced him with a tough pastor, presumably white, and prepare to batten down the hatches to see a lot of “defections” from the largely non-Catholic congregation and a lot of articles by the Bohemian Girl. But courageously hunkering down and returning the parish to its original status of Church rather than raucous meeting hall is what’s needed.



6. But this is all academic now. Frightened of the political, social and media consequences of replacing the priest, the archdiocese has once again played into the hands of the media and the militants.



7. Once more the archdiocese has kicked the can down the road. Once again its lay leadership has shown it doesn’t have the starch to run a corner grocery much less the Chicago outreach of a Church founded by Christ. But then that it has survived for 2,000-plus years with such earthen vessels indicates it shall endure to the end of time.

Personal Aside: Baby Miraculously Survives Abortion, Expected to Live Normal Life…WTTW-TV Diversifies its Commentators

Baby.

News that a mother who had decided to abort her son because he may had inherited a life-threatening kidney disease is overjoyed that he survived might strike you as heartening…but doesn’t this usurp women’s rights? Don’t we have a former Harvard Law Review editor running as an incipient president of the United States, the first black to do so, who as judiciary chairman in the state senate killed the Born Alive bill, voting to deprive all such infants of medical help…insisting with his Harvard law school wife that the “Born Alive” bill was a threat to a woman’s right to abortion? Becoming the most pro-abort senator by virtue of his state senate stand which he has never recanted when all others—Kennedy, Boxer, Feinstein, Clinton—voted for the bill when it came to the U.S. Senate floor before he was a member. Yes, of course! And when he becomes president I can assure you the feds will crack down on those doctors who botch abortions allowing a baby to live and thereby jeopardizing the reproductive rights of all women.

Truly a Change We Can Believe In.

WTTW.

If you feel that WTTW-TV, Chicago’s public television station, is eternally presenting the same-old, same-old liberal dicta…with a documentary this week entitled “Out and Proud” touting gays, lesbians, transgenders and cross-dressers, wait. The station has just said that it has retained a new commentator. Who? Republican Judy Baar Topinka. The former Republican state treasurer who…

o was a pro-lifer as a House member but who renounced her prior belief as a state Senator in order to accommodate the prevailing political climate…
o is a regular celebrant of and participant in Gay Pride Day in Chicago and who rides in an open-topped limo blowing kisses at the crowd…
o ran for governor, noted for telling the White House that she wanted the president to come and raise money for her campaign but he’d have to do it in “a secure, undisclosed location” ha-ha…
o called the Chicago Cubs chronic losers at a time when they were in contention…
o refused as state Republican chairman to support Peter Fitzgerald for reelection as Senator at a time when Fitzgerald was still considering a run…
o stayed on my radio program an hour and sparred as to why she would not endorse him, saying maybe she could do it as Riverside committeeman but not as state chairman—the program beamed to more than 100,000 listeners…
o then when the heat was turned up denied she had refused to endorse Fitzgerald despite the heavy preponderance of people who heard her on the radio, using the charming aphorism “Roeser should take the wax out of his ears”…



Yes, that Judy Baar Topinka.

Personal Asides: Why No Offering Yesterday…Let Us Now Parse Falsani’s Latest Pfleger Column.

Nada…Dead.

This old computer groaned but I called Geek and they restored it. Sorry.

Let Us.

“Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” was the title of the famous 1941 James Agee book which derives its title from Ecclesiastes. I say let us now praise famed feminist religious columning journalists to illustrate what we Catholic news consumers have a right to expect from their craft. —i.e. in Ms. Cathleen Falsani’s case at least a beginner’s knowledge of Catholicity since she gets so “p----d” off about bad things happening to the Obama campaign from time to time.

As you know, the “Sun-Times” newspaper has fallen upon evil days. In place of Milburn P. [Pete] Akers, its editor, a sage, we have the Brit Michael Cooke who is doing his damndest to make the paper insolvent by driving all its regular readers away before his imminent replacement as happened to him in under a year when he was editor of the New York “Daily News.” Chief of its editorial pages in the old days was a real gem, Emmett Dedmon, who wrote a brilliant history of Chicago that is still used as a staple. Steve Huntley was a worthy successor under great trials ands odds but whoever is doing the job now…and it’s unclear…is merely earning the king’s shilling. On politics, substituting poorly for John Dreiske, Basil Talbott, Steve Neal and Lynn Sweet as local columnist is Carol Marin, vapor-thin in profundity, negligent in analysis and who just substitutes rampant ultra-lefty feminist rant for opinion.

And then we get to Ms. Falsani, among whose predecessors was the Rev. Roy Larson, a Lutheran minister who knew his trade including Catholicity inside out. But that is not to say that Falsani doesn’t have a way with words that go well in the bohemian genre—“p----d” for angered or with the literary arts, “Harry Potter” which she quoted in her interview with Fr. Michael Pfeger.

This website ran a critique of Ms. Falsani’s work the other day along with her photo—but she wrote to say that “while I could care less what you say about me” (she meant “while I COULDN’T care less what you say about me” the “could care” being an affection endemic to the `70s, the photo could not be used without her permission as it is under copyright. And as she indicated she wasn’t about to give permission, it must be jerked—immediately. Well …exc-u-u-u-s-e me!” So we…Jake and I…pulled the picture.

But then you get the picture anyhow, don’t you?

Now let’s parse Falsani from yesterday’s column. On the way out of Park Ridge’s St. Paul of the Cross 8:30 a.m. Mass yesterday a reader exclaimed “Did you read Falsani today?” and he emitted a sound through his teeth—“sheeeeesh!” which told it all. Nowhere can you get more misleading illiteracy about Catholicism then from her. You’d think a degree from Wheaton would give her at least a working knowledge, but nope.

So we begin. The column is entitled “Why does church need Pfleger fill-in?” The body type is Falsani’s the bold-face is the answer from Catholic orthodoxy.

“When the Rev. Michael Pfleger takes his annual vacation to Hawaii, usually for two weeks in October, Kimberly Lymore, the parish’s pastoral associate since 2000, steps in to run St. Sabina Roman Catholic Church. Lymore, 50, has been a member of the Faith Community of St. Sabina’s (as members prefer to call it) for exactly half of her life, joining the parish in 1983 when it had about 300 members.

“Over the years, Lymore has become more and more active in the life of the parish, which now draws close to 2,000 worshipers on the weekend.”

NOTE: 2,000 so-called “worshipers” or Catholics? My guess is that people Fr. Pfleger wooed who go to his church to hear a leather-lunged preacher and a flock of Democratic candidates assail whitey may go for the pure thrill of it. You see, Cathleen—and you can tell your big sister Carol Marin a Catholic who should know this but who gives every indication that she doesn’t—that everyone is welcome in a Catholic church but the Lateran Council defined two classes of people—Catholics and others. Their respective situations are not the same. Catholics have to be baptized, should be instructed (although with the current state of parochial schools many are not), confirmed, make their Easter Duty which is to receive Communion at least…at least…once a year, then at Easter and follow a number of church precepts, particularly the obligation to be in the state of sanctifying grace when receiving Communion which Catholics believe to be in fact the Real Presence i.e. the actual body and blood of Christ not a symbol and is essential for salvation. Of course contraception which is never mentioned by a timid church is a sin and abortion is a grave offense which gets liberal feminists and others aghast. But back to Lateran. The Council stated, “those who have accepted the faith under the magisterium of the Church can never have any just reason for changing that faith or calling it into doubt.” Sounds authoritarian by today’s standard, doesn’t it? But it has to do not with authority but with grace, as the Church has long taught and has ratified with Vatican I and II. How so? Because God is never wanting with His grace and because the evidence for accepting this faith is such that a Catholic does not have objectively valid grounds for doubting or denying what, perhaps subjectively, he/she finds trouble in believing.

Now Falsani describes Lymore, unmarried, no kids, who earned a master’s degree in divinity from Catholic Theological Union and who next year expects to complete Doctor of Ministry degree at McCormick Seminary and is a Eucharistic minister.

NOTE: The Catholic Theological Union is indeed Catholic but let us say liturgically and doctrinally creative—still Catholic however. The McCormick Theological Seminary is one of eleven schools of theology in the Presbyterian Church USA.

“With Lymore standing by in the rectory why did Cardinal Francis George feel the need to appoint a temporary administrator—the Rev. William Vanecko, pastor of neighboring St. Kilian parish—during Pfleger’s “leave of a couple of weeks form his pastoral duties” since Lymore is a pastoral associate?

NOTE: I know this comes as a shock to you as a religion columnist for a major urban newspaper but while a Eucharistic minister can distribute the consecrated host, he/she cannot consecrate bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. That can only be done by a priest. Yes, hosts can and are occasionally pre-consecrated by priests so the Eucharistic Minister can distribute them but the participating in the sacrament in which the act of transubstantiation occurs cannot be effected by anyone but a validly ordained priest. In addition, Cathleen, confessions cannot be heard by a surrogate. Suppose someone in the parish gets a heart attack and needs what we call the Last Sacraments, the sacrament of reconciliation, or confession. This can only be administered by a priest, who alone has the power to invoke forgiveness of sin and confer penance. Anointing of the sick and dying can only be administered by a priest. Weddings can only be performed in the Church by a priest as witness.

“Could it be because she’s a she?”

NOTE: I knew you’d get to that because along with your big sister, Carol, it’s your favorite wedge as feminists, but save it for your active cheer-leading in the Democratic party. The character of the Roman Catholic priesthood has been a property of maleness. Why? Because the ultimate basis for the sacrament of Holy Orders has been Christ’s own priestly ministry on earth, with precedents in the priestly casts of the family of Aaron, the twelve tribes of Israel, the very name of apostles whom he was sending.

“If it’s only for two weeks—if it’s really ONLY for TWO WEEKS—then why do we need an administrator?” Lymore said Wednesday. “We met with Vanecko this morning. He’s kind of laid-back. He said, `I was told by the diocese that you are run, basically, self-sufficiently.’ Maybe they thought we need priest to come in for Mass, I don’t know,’ she continued. ‘But we always have someone to do the Masses…We can have Masses in the absence of a priest, just using consecrated hosts. We were trained to do that at CTU.”

NOTE: Either Lymore wasn’t listening closely at CTU…or maybe they didn’t stress it (my guess is the latter)…but as I would have hoped Lymore would know, while Falsani obviously doesn’t have a clue…distribution of the pre-consecrated Eucharist is not the celebration of the Mass. The Eucharistic offering is the central part of the Mass but receiving it without a Mass is no substitute for going to Mass. And if there is anything that Catholics are continually reminded to do, it’s to participate actively in the Mass. They do so by uniting themselves in spirit with the priest who represents Christ and the Church and by offering themselves together with Christ as victims to the heavenly Father. When the priest offers Mass, he does so in the name of all Christ’s members since he represents Christ in the fullness of His Mystical Body. The congregation unites its sentiments of praise and petition, of expiation and gratitude, with the prayers and intentions of the priest who is acting in the name of Christ. The consummation of the Eucharistic liturgy is the reception of Holy Communion in which the body and blood of Christ are received and by which we are united with the incarnate Son of God. But receiving a pre-consecrated host, while valid, is no substitute for attending Mass which is obligatory on Sunday and Holy Days at the very least.

It turns out that there are 98 pastoral associates in the archdiocese. None run a parish and Lymore’s name is not included, “a discrepancy not immediately explained.”

Note: A discrepancy or, given the free-form way Fr. Pfleger runs things, maybe not. It’s my guess…just a guess…that the lady is no pastoral associate but was told she was by the man they believe is their ad-hoc political Pope.

“It all depends on how long `a couple of weeks’ actually turns out to be. `They didn’t consult with us,’ Lymore told me. `We felt very disrespected as a faith community. Basically [George] is responding to the concerns of white Catholics’ who were offended by Pfleger’s comments on race in a sermon he gave late last month at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. `So what about your black Catholic community, the one you have again disrespected?’

“I for one would like to hear the cardinal’s answer.”

Note: You wouldn’t understand it, Cathleen because like Lymore, you can’t, for the life of you comprehend that the group that crowds into St. Sabina’s to hear bombast may well be largely non-Catholic, cheering and bouncing off the walls to enjoy an anti-whitey, racist political rally…rather than a Mass. Lymore’s mal-education is one thing, devolved from a liberal, free-form “Catholic seminary” that has always been on the farthest edge of orthodoxy mingled with a Presbyterian social gospel advocacy training camp, but your screed in a so-called column on religion is illiteracy-compounded, which is quite another.

Personal Asides: The Oh-so-Gentle Suspension of Fr. Pfleger…How Fitting—a Daley In-Law Priest to Sub for Pfleger…and Little Cathleen is so P----‘ed Off, Just Like Her Big Sister Carol.

Oh, so Gentle.

Reminder to priests who are tempted to become media icons in Chicago: be sure when you do it, you take a hard turn to the political left. Take a look at the oh-so-gentle reproof from the archdiocese to Fr. Michael Pfleger, he of the Sta-Comb hairstyle, who engaged in a hate-whitey tirade in his so-called sermon at Trinity last week.

Parsing—you should excuse the word--the chancery’s statement:

“To put recent events in perspective, I have asked Father Michael Pfleger…”

ASKED, not ordered.

“…pastor of St. Sabina’s parish, to step back from his obligations there…”

POOR MAN HAS BEEN WORKING TOO HARD.

“…and take leave for a couple of weeks from his pastoral duties, effective today. Fr. Pfleger does not believe this to be the right step at this time.”

WHAT? HE’S BEING FORCED?

“…While respecting his disagreement…”

OH MY YES, RESPECT HIS DISAGREEMENT.

“…I have nevertheless asked him…”

NOT ORDERED. THAT WOULD BE UNFORGIVABLY RUDE.

“…to use this opportunity to reflect on his recent statements and actions in light of the Church’s regulations for all Catholic priests.”

JUST WHAT PFLEGER’S GOOD AT--DEEP MEDITATION AND DEEPLY HUMBLE PRAYER.

“I hope that this period will also be a time away from the public spotlight…”

HE DESERVES TIME FOR REHAB. AFTER ALL HE HAD A DOUBLE HERNIA OPERATION FROM ALL THAT LEATHER-LUNGED SHOUTING IN CHURCHES.

“…and for rest and attention to family concerns.”

EVEN HATE WHITEY BIGOTS NEED TO GET AWAY ONCE IN A WHILE.

“…I hope also that the life of St. Sabina’s parish may continue in uninterrupted fashion…”

DON’T WORRY. IT WILL. A RALLY WILL BE HELD EVERY NIGHT. THE SAME FAITHFUL CONGREGANTS SHAKING THEIR FISTS IN RAGE.

“…Fr. William Vanecko, pastor of St. Kilian’s parish, will be temporary administrator of St. Sabina’s and will assure the full complement of ministerial services during this period…”

FULL COMPLEMENT. RIOT GEAR, HELMETS, PUBLIC ADDRESS SYSTEM CHECKED TO LISTEN TO THE CONGREGANTS’ WORDS THAT COME FROM GOD.

“…I ask the members of St. Sabina’s parish to cooperate with him and to keep him and Fr. Pfleger in their prayers.”



OH YES, INDEEDY THEY WILL. JUST AS THEY DID LAST NIGHT WITH THE FIRST BRING-PFLEGER-BACK RALLY. VERY PRAYERFUL GROUP.



All in the Family.

I said yesterday: when Democrats get fed up and unity of the ticket is threatened, the Catholic archdiocese acts. And so it did by suspending for several weeks…not removing permanently…Fr. Michael Pfleger. And it was not by coincidence that the pastor who will supervise St. Sabina’s is Fr. William Vanecko, the pastor of St. Kilian’s, part of a family with marital ties to Mayor Daley. Daley’s sister Mary Carol, 69, is married to surgeon Robert Vanecko who works out of Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Their oldest son, Robert, 43, is an officer of Realty Partners, Inc. which invests $68 million in pension funds from city workers, CTA employees and public school teachers.

Number 2 son, Mark, 42, is a lobbyist and close to a developer as well as a stakeholder in Lalapooloza a traveling rock-and-roll theme park scheduled for Grant Park this summer. Number 3 son, Richard, 36, is a partner in Cardinal Growth Entertainment owned by Robert Bobb, a friend of the mayor; and number one daughter, Mary, 31, is a nurse at Northwestern Memorial hospital. Exactly where Fr. William comes in is hard to determine. Perhaps a reader can fill me in--but he’s tied in, no doubt about that—my guess he’s the son of a brother to Dr. Bob. A Daley in-law is on the scene to keep the collections in tow…and the politics, of course.

Well done, Jimmy.

Little Cathleen so…so…so—p----d!

As everything she writes is all about her, this is the way “Sun-Times” religion [sic] columnist Cathleen Falsani, a Wheaton college grad no less, started her story. “On Sunday morning, I was enjoying a brisk walk along the Hudson River in lower Manhattan and some quiet contemplation…”

THINKING OF REINHOLD NIEBUHR OBVIOUSLY.

“…when my cell phone rang. It was my editor.”

THAT WOULD BE THAT MATCHLESS BRIT ARBITER OF GOOD TASTE WHO PICKS GIRLY SHOTS FOR EVERY FRONT PAGE, MICHAEL COOKE.

“`Mike just called and he wants to talk but he’ll only talk to you’ he said.”

HOW TOUCHING. GREAT SPIRITUAL MINDS.

“Mike, as in the Rev. Michael Pfleger, the perpetually embattled pastor of St. Sabina Roman Catholic parish in Chicago who most recently has been under siege from comments he made about Hillary Clinton a week ago from the pulpit of Trinity United Church of Christ—aka Barack Obama’s former (as of Saturday) church.

YES…THAT MIKE, CATHLEEN.

“`Oh, really? Well, I don’t want to talk to him,’ I said. `I’m p----d at him…”

JUST LIKE YOUR BIG SISTER CAROL MARIN. HOW COULD MIKE DO THIS TO US FEMINIST LIBERAL PRO-ABORTS? JUST WHEN WE HAVE A CHANCE TO GET THE FIRST GUY WHO VOTED AGAINST THE BORN-ALIVE BILL THAT IS SUCH A THREAT TO OUR ABORTION RIGHTS!

“…How could he do this? He probably thinks I’m a sympathetic ear but I’m not. I pretty much want to slap him.’”

SUCH HIGH JOURNALISTIC RESTRAINT THESE FEMINISTS DISPLAY.

“`Just think about it,’ my editor said with a whiff of smugness…”

NOW THAT SHE MENTIONS IT, THERE IS AN UNDENIABLE WHIFF OF SOMETHING COMING FROM COOKE. SMUGNESS?

“…and call me back when you’ve changed your mind.”

DID SHE EVER!

So, moving right along, little Cathleen meets with Pfleger. Let’s skip through their teen banter particularly the cute stuff where he stumbles over Obama’s name because he has been forbidden to mention candidates in a partisan manner. Pfleger keeps stumbling and the scholarly Falsani makes a cogent literary allusion:

“`Jeez, it’s like he’s Voldemort in Harry Potter, the name we dare not speak’” Let’s skip all that.

How’s that for an intellectual?

Jump to the point where Pfleger interprets the Bible’s most dominant theme. Now remember, this is a Catholic priest, almost 60 years old, to a religion columnist for a major daily who has probed deeply the spiritual reflexes of the last Cubs manager.

What is the Bible’s most dominant theme? Here comes a learning moment.

Was the theme born with the Semites in Mespotamia about 2000 B.C. spread by word of mouth, passing through the Phoenicians and Hebrews who began using symbols with exclusive phonetic sound, moving through the alphabetic system spread from the Near East to Greece, from there to Rome and throughout the world but mainly in Europe and Africa—as far east as India? The thought that begun with Abraham arriving in Canaan in 1850 B.C., through the Exodus when Moses received the revelations on Sinai, the Torah (literally “The Law”), then to the 27 books of the New Testament? To the present day? The gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? The epistles of Paul, Peter, James? .

NO, THE THEME IS WHITE RACISM, OF COURSE.

Stupid of me. Well do I remember reading that Abraham inveighed against white racism.

He tells Falsani once again to make it definite.

“The greatest sin against the Bible, about racism.”

Of course, she doesn’t correct him.

Obviously white racism, since there is no such thing as black racism.

OF COURSE! WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF IT BEFORE? WHITE RACISM CONDEMNED IN GENESIS, EXODUS,LEVITICUS, NUMBERS, DEUTERONOMY, JOSHUA, JUDGES, I & II SAMUEL, I & II KINGS, EZRA, NEHEMIAH, TOBIT JUDITH ESTHER, RUTH, PSALM…ALL THE WAY THROUGH TO MALACHI AND BARUCH!

White racism excoriated by Aaron, Abednego and Abithar,Abigail,Abihu, Abijah, Abimelech all the way through to Zippah, Zimri, Zipporah and Zophar!

It is the same vile evil that made Barack snitch on his white grandma. The lesson all of us will hear over and over again once he’s elected. That and Michelle telling us the only time she was ever proud of America was when voters supported her husband.



“This is a dangerous time in America,” says Pfleger, his eyes popping out like ping-pong balls, as effectively as they were in his sermon a week ago.

Falsani faithfully records his words as coming from a prophet. Unwashed, redneck middle America thinks he’s mad…not in the way Marin means, but mad as in demented.

But Falsani, not p----d off now keeps scribbling. It’s a message from a man of God.

“…the freest country in the world, where you have to whisper your thoughts.”

He’s won her back. She’s reconverted to Pflagerism.

One thing.

Anybody remember when this guy whispered anything?

Personal Aside: What Must Happen Until Pfleger is Justly Dealt With?

Pfleger.

Catholics will wait a long time if they expect that the timid, mild, semantically parsing archdiocese will punish Fr. Michael Pfleger on its own. But nevertheless the day of penitential reckoning may be near for the fiery Saint Sabina’s pastor. Wait—how can those two statements be reconciled?

Easy—Pfleger’s scandalous pastorate may well have angered the one institution that carries massive weight in Catholic circles: the Democratic party. He has already brought serious harm to the Barack Obama campaign from a ranting pastor run amok. The archdiocese has stood by and allowed him to rant. But Democrats are on the verge of saying: enough. Then the archdiocese will have to act.

A few evenings ago, Fox TV talk show host Bill O’Reilly criticized the ultra-bland nature of the formal disclaimer issued by the archdiocese to Pfleger. As well he should. The truth is that Pfleger has become more than a media power but up to now at least has been a major figure in the Democratic party. But he has broken his plate with important elements of the party now. It would be advantageous if he were silenced forever. Were he to be stripped of his pastorate and do what he has threatened in the past—start his own church--he would attract no more attention than the usual down-and-out leather-lunged Elmer Gantry storefront preacher he resembles. It is his acceptance as a Roman Catholic priest that gives him authority in the same way that the collar confers misbegotten integrity on the ultra-partisan boilerplate novelist-pro-Democratic columnist Fr. Andrew Greeley who hits the celebrity circuit by dining and opera-going with archdiocesan officialdom. But Greeley is a firm ally of the party; Pfleger has become a notoriously loose cannon.

Only when Pfleger becomes “persona non grata” with the Democratic party that pulls the ecclesial strings will the archdiocese be forced to do what it has not had the courage to do heretofore--subdue him. But the archdiocese is more than a church organism. Look to the lay chancellor, formerly Ed Vrdolyak’s best precinct captain, who runs the show except for the liturgical ceremonials. The Chicago archdiocese has long been a satellite of the ruling Democratic families who diss doctrine that is inconvenient with the party e.g. abortion, gay rights, contraception: the party of the pro-abort Catholic Daleys, the Durbins, the Hyneses, the Madigans, the Strogers, the Emil Joneses, the Quinns, Dick Durbin and a litany of other famous names in the legislature and city council…with which I include Eddie Burke as a knight of Malta to whom the chancery bows deferentially (though not gutsy, fearless Anne who showed the NCCB as interim head that she could not be rolled). The future of the Democratic ticket in Illinois depends on Obama doing well in this state. It has been regarded as a near-certainty but if anyone can derail it and cause working class whites to defect, it is rants by the white Pfleger which touch on anti-white bigotry.

Of course, if the archdiocese had any guts, Pfleger would have been out on his ear long ago on serious theological impropriety and flagrant disobedience.

Theological Impropriety. His Masses are liturgical nightmares and bear little resemblance to what was intended as a divinely ordained means of applying the merits of Calvary, something the Council of Trent meant when it declared “the sacrifice [of the Mass] is truly propitiatory so that if we draw near to God with an upright heart and true faith, with fear and reverence, with sorrow and repentance, through the Mass we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” The Church teaches that while the blessings of salvation were merited for mankind on the cross, they are still to be applied to us principally through the Mass. It is a good question as to whether the “Masses” at Sabina’s are valid. More likely they are not and the Catholic congregants are being mis-led as to their efficacy.

For the Mass that is polluted with railing and shouting anent race hatred and partisan Democratic politics that sets its heavily non-observant, secular attendees huzza’ing and bouncing off the walls in orgies of primitive emotion against whitey is a sacrilege…in the same way as if whites did the same in response to insults to blacks.

Flagrant Disobedience. Pfleger has refused to be transferred in accordance with term limits and has said that if he is, he will start his own church. At any other relatively recent time in U.S. Catholic history, Pfleger would be unhorsed, decommissioned, defrocked, laicized and sent out to pasture. Because the flaccid, equivocating archdiocese cannot muster the will to exert discipline (the same derelictions that accompanied its failure to halt latent pedophilia and active homosexuality in the seminaries) Pfleger will not be banished or silenced or sent on sabbatical until the Democratic party of Cook county and Illinois…uses the words of Henry II “will no one rid me of this priest?” Only Democratic party opprobrium at ecclesial laxity on Pfleger will call the turn in ecclesial circles here….and only until then will ecclesial authorities determine to rid itself of this priest. When Daley or his surrogate calls 1555 N. State, and only then, it will happen.

An archdiocese that cannot bring itself to threaten to strip the name “Catholic” from DePaul…not even threaten to do this…not even pretend to stand up to a school that teaches gay advocacy in Queer Studies 101…cannot be expected to unhorse a formidable media-icon and Democratic hustler like Pfleger. The only people this archdiocese can crack down on are Catholic authenticists since it is taken for granted that they will figuratively kiss the ecclesial ring and bleat assent.

Well for most authenticists, that time has long been over. It is long past time to recognize that discipline in the archdiocese to curtail Democratic politics, false teaching and free-form near Satanic liturgical excesses has fallen into a shambles, motivated by the desire to make it through the day while quaking from the displeasure of the 100 or so ruling largely Irish Catholic Democratic families.

In all its long history, this is the third lowest point of influence for the archdiocese since its formation on Nov. 22, 1843.

The first: The battle between foreign-born priests and native born priests which clouded the administration of Archbishop Patrick Feehan in 1899. Of the 119 parishes in Cook and Lake counties, 63 were national parishes, designed to meet the special needs of the foreign born. Feehan couldn’t get along with his auxiliary bishop, Alexander J. McGavick and so Rome ordained a second, Peter J. Muldoon. But the Irish-born pastors resented Feehan’s preference for the native-born Muldoon. A bitter challenge to the archbishop’s authority was led by Rev. Jeremiah J. Crowley and continued until Crowley’s excommunication. The diocese was in ethnic uproar until Archbishop James E. Quigley was ordained in 1903.

The second: dissatisfaction between a cadre of priests motivated by what they called the “spirit of Vatican II” was prompted by John Cardinal Cody’s retirement of a number of pastors. Charges that Cody was an authoritarian culminated in a spate of stories prompted by dissident priests that appeared in the “Sun-Times” including Fr. Andrew Greeley.

Cody mastered the knack of alienating many factions. He ordered busing of Catholic school children to schools in racially segregated neighborhoods, gaining support of blacks but alienating many whites. His autocratic manner infuriated so-called Vatican II followers. They charged that Cody misused “corporation sole” and ran the archdiocese’s finances as he would his own bank account. And they culminated with a charge, unproven, that Cody rewarded a young man they insisted was his own illegitimate son with archdiocesan contracts and was misusing church monies to support a mistress. It led to the speculation that Cody would be indicted by a federal grand jury that was studying his case. Instead the prelate toppled over from a massive heart attack at the age of 74 in 1982 which his physician said was prompted by the strain. The stories ended and those who spurred the stories, some of them false, will someday have to face the consequences when they appear before final judgment in eternity.

The chaotic inability of the archdiocese to restrict pedophilia and homosexuality in the clergy and the seminaries…plus its fright of Michael Pfleger…certifies this as the third lowest point in its history. Given the reality of the situation, only an angry Democratic party hierarchy can…ironically…spur the archdiocese to do what it has been loath to do with dissent in the past.

Personal Aside: Quick Comments on the Media

Quick.

o I wonder if anyone is just a Catholic to Sneed and not a “devout Catholic.” Every time she refers to a Catholic it is with the prefix “devout.” Now the latest “devout Catholic” to surface in her column is Conrad Black. This “devout Catholic” is teaching American history to prison inmates where he is quartered while his fans are trying to get him pardoned by President Bush. What other clichés does she use? Judy Baar Topinka is always “irrepressible”…that’s another. The buckshot…the backshot…the upshot…the downshot. All the same I read her every morning.

o Horrors! Carol Marin is “so mad at Mike Pfleger!” She’s mad because he’s spoiling Barack Obama’s chances to get elected. She’s going to hold her breath `til she turns blue! Honestly, the job of a political columnist is to bring some insight to the political news not just schoolgirl gushing about her preferences. To think she commands a virtual monopoly on political news in the media…her column in the “Sun-Times”…her prominent position on Channel 5…and her domination of Channel 11…all for the same supine lefty visceral thought processes with no intellectual basis except feelings. Religion for her is just a social service conduit, nothing more. Listen to her: Msgr. Jack Egan (devotee of Saul Alinsky) would be so mad at Mike Pfleger! And Sister Connie Driscoll would too! But still and all, the chancery doesn’t appreciate Mike Pfleger because he’s an activist. Being vocally left is one thing—and could be even a good thing if she brought insight. My own favorite lefty is Frank Rich of “The New York Times.” But this stuff from her is 1960s rant from someone who should have moved beyond it and brought some depth. It’s 16-year-old schoolgirl stuff hollowly shallow. Almost as if you’d expect her to write a sentence beginning with “go.” “So I go--what is this doing to do to Barack? And he goes: not that much.”

o All the while the brilliant analysis of Richard M. Daley not long ago by Fran Spielman seems to go underrated at that newspaper. I’m talking about her outstanding, superb “Whatever It Takes” analysis a few weeks ago concerning the museum in the park…outlining brilliantly how whatever Daley wants, Daley gets, her latest effort that really has powerful perspicacity. The “Sun-Times” can be so exasperating. It has some extraordinary good stuff in its city coverage and gawd-awful tripe in its signature columns for which we must thank Michael Cooke, emperor of schlock…I would add all signature columns with the exception of Sneed. The cartoons of Jack Higgins are really world-class quality. And the Daley family tree yesterday by Tim Novak was really first-rate. None of these outstanding journalists have columns, you understand. Those who do are awful: Falsani who for some reason sticks around, supposedly writing religion but instead does high school sophomore stuff…Marin we’ve covered but when I think of her following Steve Neal and John Dreiske, ugh…Steinberg who one shouldn’t really criticize unduly because—he’s Steinberg. Again with the exception of Sneed who was an outstanding reporter on her own before she got the column.

o While I’m at it, when is John Kass over at the “Tribune” going to be nominated for a Pulitzer and get it which he richly deserves? It seems to me that here you have a guy who has put an enduring label on the political illness that afflicts Illinois…the “Combine”…and who has the wit, savvy and courage to keep on writing material that is both powerfully expressive and witty. His column on Big Jim is Pulitzer quality. For my money he’s much better than Royko because Royko was at heart a nihilist. Nobody was any good to him. Kass as a columnist is worth all more than all the political commentary in Chicago bar-none.

o And before I finish, I should point out once again that the best surveyor of commentary in the nation with the capacity of bringing it to light is Jim Bowman whose blog “Blithe Spirit” uncovers stuff that would otherwise be forgotten. Jim was religion editor of the old “Daily News” and a superb literary craftsman.

DEM BUYER’S REMORSE EXISTS BUT OBAMA CAN’T BE DENIED.

By Thomas F. Roeser

Another column for The Wanderer, the oldest national Catholic weekly.

Some of these thoughts you have seen before in other pieces I’ve written. On “Buyer’s Remorse,” I’m indebted to Jim Bowman who unearthed the statistical piece from Instapundit and Taylor Marsh I studied and found compelling.


CHICAGO—A surprising thing has happened on the way to the Denver Democratic national convention which will coronate Barack Obama. While it’s nowhere being reported in the so-called “mainstream media”…there are serious signs of what one Democratic vote analyst calls “buyer’s remorse” cropping up in the Democratic party.

Assuredly, barring massive political calamity befalling him, Obama will get the nomination. The Democratic party elders cannot…and will not…risk the certainty that there will be wholesale defections of blacks—the most predictably massive voting bloc ever to serve in any political party—if Obama is denied. Defections that would not just lose it the presidency (Democrats are inured to that possibility having lost it in 2004, 2000, 1988, 1984 and 1980), but would reduce the Democrats to a minority party in city after city by shrinking the black vote to a tiny margin. Consider what it would do to Chicago and Cook county: these areas would revert to a two-party status again, disastrous for politicians who don’t need the presidency ever to root their snouts in the patronage troughs.

For here in the strongest Democratic machine in the nation where one party rule has extended longer than the USSR existed, the first thought now as it has always been is the safety of the Cook county ticket which comes far before any consideration of the presidency. The highly publicized 1960 vote-fraud here that you have heard about was committed: no doubt about that…but was done for a major reason that far transcended the wish to elect John Kennedy president.

It was committed to defeat a Republican state’s attorney (prosecutor) Benjamin Adamowski, who was running for reelection on the pledge to find enough corruption to indict Mayor Richard J. Daley and his cohorts. It was for this reason that Democratic precinct captains flooded the lists with the graveyard vote. (And ever since that day, it has been the wish of many a dying Chicago ward-heeler that he be buried in Cook county so he can remain politically active). But all kidding aside, if blacks get the feeling that their party uses their votes as ballast for Irish, Polish and Hispanic candidates but deny (to them) a perfectly acceptable, quality candidate for president tens of thousands will drop out of the equation overnight…and will take Democrats a generation to woo back.

The blacks would leave in droves. No, not to vote Republican, assuredly-- but drop out of the system by the mega-hundreds of thousands…even millions…forsaking the Democrats up and down the ticket—causing loss of important local offices…especially (horrors!) elected prosecutorial ones… that grease the wheels for machine victories.

The national media have become so entranced with the prospect of a black president that they have not allowed justifiable coverage i.e. Obama’s earlier disqualifications for serious candidacy…identification of Jeremiah Wright as his spiritual godfather and Michelle Obama’s tirades against the white establishment…to overshadow his triumph. Indeed the media have become embittered with Hillary Clinton for staying in the race so long which has cost Obama precious time he could be using to defeat John McCain.

To create an artificial “scandal,” Chicago’s top Obama strategist David Axelrod concocted a perfect media storm to score a remark Hillary made about the value of a lengthened intramural political season lasting until the convention. There are many reasons for the benefit of the Democratic party that she not quit. If Franklin Roosevelt had cashed in his chips in 1932 when things looked bleak for him…as doubts were raised about his paralysis…the party might well have rerun the Irish Catholic Al Smith who failed to carry the then anti-Catholic south and likely would again--or, worse from progressive standpoint, the bourbon-sipping House Speaker John Nance (Cactus Jack) Garner who never met a big business he didn’t love. Everybody knows that it’s true but in cataloging why she should stay in, she mentioned Robert Kennedy’s assassination in 1968. Well, while everybody knows the story, you’d have thought she had tried to douse the eternal flame on the Kennedy tomb high on Arlington’s hill overlooking the city.

Accordingly, she has been screamed-at by most Democratic liberals for supposedly endangering Obama’s life and safety, despite the fact that earlier than any other presidential candidate, he has had phalanxes of Secret Service protection—lasting almost two years now. Everyone from The New York Times to the lowliest Obama volunteer have cried out that she is playing dirty pool. We all know how Bobby Kennedy met his end but to mention it is a cardinal sin (perhaps the time is coming when we dare not mention Lincoln and Ford’s theatre in the same sentence). Moreover, to show how selective is their outrage, none other than fanatical Democrat and emotional Obama supporter Fr. Andrew Greeley wrote several times in this town’s version of the Democratic party newspaper of record, the Sun-Times the prediction that Obama could be slain by a far-right Republican nut.

(Of course, in Greeley’s tortured view of history, far-right nuts have killed all the presidents when in fact none have e.g. Lincoln was killed by southern Democrat John Wilkes Booth, Garfield by a maddened Charles Guiteau who wrote in his diary “his death is a political necessity,” William McKinley by anarchist Leon Czolgosz, John Kennedy by pro-Communist Lee Harvey Oswald and Robert Kennedy by Palestinian revolutionary Sirhan Sirhan—with assassination attempts on Gerald Ford by Lynette (Squeaky) Fromm, a disciple of mass-murderer Charles Manson and ultra-lefty Sara Jane Moore, but what do historical facts mean to fiction-writer Greeley?).

Now, what of the Democratic rank-and-file “buyer’s remorse” which I have promised to report?



It can easily be seen in the Democratic primary tallies, known to the national media as well but which they refuse to publicize. Thus it has been left to dogged election statistical researcher Paul Lukasiak to catalog with irrefutable analysis and multi-colored charts contained in the blog by Taylor Marsh at www.taylormarsh.comarchives made available by the indispensable Instapundit, an Internet compendium of the best analyses available. Taylor Marsh, incidentally, is no dreamy conservative theorist. She advertises herself as a ready antidote to conservative radio talk show hosts and bloggers and in Lukasiak she has a dogged, emotion-free numbers cruncher.

These are the Lukasiak’s unassailable facts which I have double-checked on my own.

o In almost every demographic category since last February 19, the percentages of Clinton’s support have risen and Obama’s fallen. And this includes Obama’s supposedly impregnable demographic categories such as college-degreed voters, voters with post-graduate degrees and voters whose income is above the national average as drawn from exit polls.

o While John McCain became the inevitable Republican nominee following Super Tuesday he was not the choice of a majority of Republicans but despite doing no hard campaigning at all has won more than 50% in every other primary contest subsequent. But this has been far from the case in Democratic contests even after a media serenade of Obama as the “inevitable” candidate. Clinton not only picked up support Obama lost but the support that before February had gone to other withdrawn Democratic candidates.

Thus as Lukasiak writes which he illustrates with carefully constructed charts—“Once [Democratic] voters realized that Obama would be the nominee [between the February and March to May primaries] his support within most demographic categories declined and declined significantly in most cases. Obama’s support declined overall by 2.3%”. The breakdown: Obama’s support among men declined by 2%; among women declined by 1.2%; among whites declined by 4.8%; among Hispanic-Latinos declined by 3.2%; among white males declined by 6.7%; and among white females declined by 3.6%.

In contrast, in that same time period while Obama’s ultimate nomination victory was being heralded by the “mainstream media,” Clinton’s overall support among Democrats increased by 4.7%. That is almost unduplicated in U. S. political history. Among males her support increased by 6%, among females by 3.1%, among whites by 6.2%, among Hispanic-Latino voters by 2.6%, among white males by 10.8%, among white females by 6%. Writes Lukasiak “Clinton’s support not merely increased on all these categories between February and March-May but she attracted considerable support from voters who had supported other candidates in February” i.e. she gained an extra 2.2% over and above Obama’s loss of support, gained an extra 3.4% of males more than Obama lost, gained an extra 3.4% of white voters and gained an extra 4.1% with white males that Obama lost.

Obama did increase his support among African Americans by 5.4%, among black men by 6.7%, black women by 9.6%. Lukasiak summarizes: “But when that data is weighed in terms of the overall electorate, the impact of those changes is small. Thus Obama’s net increase in support among African American voters represents only 1.8% of the Democratic electorate while Clinton’s net increase in support from white voters represents 8.4% of the Democratic electorate. Clinton’s overall net increase of 6.7% of the primary electorate is a clear sign that `buyer’s remorse’ has set in.”

What happened to spur this buyer’s remorse? Assuredly the Michelle Obama episode where she trumpeted that for the first time in her slightly more than 40 years she could be “proud of America,” because a good number of voters were supporting her husband. Another: Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s vicious race hatred of whitey which Obama first tried to separate from while saying that he could no more disown Wright than he could his white grandma, a position from which he had to speedily dissociate himself as Wright continued to shout that the U.S. government tried to inoculate black children with the AIDS virus to cut down the African American population. A third: Obama’s smug assertion in the confines of a wealthy mega-millionaire’s San Francisco home that whites in West Virginia, in despair over lost jobs and income, “cling” to such bromides as religion, gun owners’ rights and malevolent hatred of those unlike them.

Lukasiak: “Perhaps the group that has shown the most `buyer’s remorse’ is white male Democrats who not only rallied to Clinton after Obama was declared the `inevitable nominee’ but deserted Obama in droves.” Not even Oregon…a state that is much like a well-cultivated, prosperous suburb…where Obama won the white male vote by 2 to 1 (66% to 33%) but won white women by only 2% (49% to 51%)…did he halt Clinton from tallying major gains among white males.” In the February primaries, Obama got a significant 4.6% lead from white males but white male attitudes changed completely in the March through May primaries giving Clinton a 12.9% lead.

Unless Obama can drop the trendy University of Chicago faculty lounge Marxism so popular with liberal elites and reach out to Joe Six-pack in the Democratic party, he will have trouble along the line. Again, there are many, many advantages he has with general voter dissatisfaction with the Bushes, the war, growing inflation and McCain’s not always consistent stands that anger Reagan conservatives. But the fact that the media do not even give a hint of these incontrovertible numbers tells much about the old-line liberal printing press metropolitan daily-network TV biases that are rapidly being overturned by alternate media choices.