Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Seriously, Cardinal George, What Does it Take?

From Chicago comes news that after his latest tirade at Trinity United Church, Father Michael "Snuffy" Pfleger is being ordered to leave St. Sabina's church "temporarily." Gee. Temporarily. Aren't the afraid they're being a little harsh with the poor tyke?

No, seriously, I'd like the chance to ask Cardinal George what it would take before a priest got removed permanently. Theoretically, is there an act Pfleger could commit that would shame the Catholic church and the archdiocese of Chicago enough that they'd decide to cut him loose?

  • We know injecting the church into elections, thus at least theoretically jeopardizing their tax-exempt status in any just world, isn't enough.
  • We know that praising bigots like Louis Farrakhan from the pulpit isn't enough.
  • We know that publicly lying repeatedly in his official capacity as a priest isn't enough.
  • We know that threatening to "snuff out" John Riggio wasn't enough.
So, just for my own idle curiosity, what would it take? Does he actually have to start assaulting people physicall--or would that be tolerated, too?

H/T to Armed and Safe whose article suggests the reassignment may be permanent. I'll believe that when I see it.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Are you kidding?

They're treating him more severely than they do child rapist priests.

Rape a child, get moved to another diocese.

Say something in public that causes bad PR, get "temporarily suspended".

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

H/T to Armed and Safe whose article suggests the reassignment may be permanent. I'll believe that when I see it.

You know me--just a cock-eyed optimist ;-).

Don said...

Curt has a good point. The difference, clearly, is the number of people who already know about the offense by the time the church gets around to acting on it.

Vanecko should be a safe choice; my guess is he understands Democratic machine politics well enough to know how not to step on the wrong toes. I don't know much about him, but he's Da Mayor's brother-in-law and his brother is apparently really, really good at getting lucrative city contracts. Google "Robert Vanecko Daley" and read through a few stories.

It's all the in the family, apparently. But I don't know the relationship among the in-laws here. Obviously, Robert Vanecko is in tight with the Daleys, since they're making him rich over and over. Personally, I think it's likely that Vanecko (the priest) was brought in to make the Democrats feel like the Daley family will now have some control over St. Sabina's.

Kurt '45superman' Hofmann said...

H/T to Armed and Safe whose article suggests the reassignment may be permanent. I'll believe that when I see it.

Remind me not to bet against you.

Don said...

I would have let you have that one. Can't say I'm surprised, though. All you have to know is that the standard term for a priest in that archdioces is 6 years with the same church, and Pfleger's been at St. Sabina since 1981. Clearly they're terrified to remove him and he's not leaving until he decides it's time.
Well, whatever. They weren't going to hide him in a monastery whatever happens, so he'll preach there or he'll preach somewhere else.
The best part of that article is Pfleger's apology, where he says he knows people think it was mockery, but that was "not my intent and not in my heart." Um, OK.

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