It’s Time For Cardinal George to Go

Chicago’s Catholic Archbishop, Francis Cardinal George, is a curious man. He’s a Chicago native, a White Sox fan, yet he came to the bishop’s residence on North State Parkway in 1997 a stranger, and a stranger he’s remained.

Cardinal George, a conservative Catholic to say the least, replaced Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, one of the most beloved Chicagoans in recent history. In fact, Cardinal Bernardin easily was the most beloved Chicagoan to have died during my lifetime, and that includes towering personalities like Richard J. Daley -- the Mayor Daley; Chicago Daily News and later Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko; White Sox and Cubs broadcaster Harry Caray; Chicago Bears running back Walter Payton; blues great Muddy Waters, and, more recently, Bo Didley. None of those men, giants all, had a funeral procession like Cardinal Bernardin’s, which shut down the City of Chicago and a good portion of the western suburbs, from Holy Name Cathedral on the near north side to Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois, a good twenty miles away. I’ve never seen anything like it in my 46 years in Chicago.

So filling Bernardin’s shoes was a tall order, especially for a conservative like George, who, before becoming Chicago’s top prelate, spent much of his time in Rome hobnobbing with the likes of then-Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI) and in America aligning himself with social and religious conservatives like Boston’s Bernard Cardinal Law.

Cardinal George, I suspect, could have cared less whether Chicago’s Catholics -- many of whom are liberals in the mold of Cardinal Bernardin, and all of whom seemed to adore Bernardin regardless of theological bent -- cottoned to George’s particular brand of Catholic orthodoxy. He seemed to treat the rest of us with the disdain White Sox fans hold for Cubs fans.

And I’m a Cubs fan.

But I digress. Coming here in 1997 to run the archdiocese, Cardinal George was not about to mimic the more liberal Cardinal Bernardin; and though Chicago Catholics have come to accept, and generally to like, Cardinal George, he has none of the star quality of his predecessor. George has taken considerable flak for his handling, or failure to handle, the priest sex abuse scandal in Chicago; and, honestly, I don’t know whether that’s fair. He inherited an extraordinarily difficult situation complicated by decades of covering up at the highest levels of the Church, both here in America and in Rome.

But whether or not that criticism is deserved, George has done plenty to aggravate liberal Catholics during his tenure in Chicago -- and by “liberal,” I mean Catholics who take that whole Sermon on the Mount/Beatitudes thing seriously. Like, you know, the Church should give a damn about the poor and the powerless; should fight racism and injustice; should condemn unjustified wars; should demand we that take care of the planet, it being, um “God’s creation” and all.

All that liberal stuff.

Cardinal George, though, has had little time for those things -- things that seem to me to be at the very core of the Church’s mission -- preferring instead to frustrate liberal Catholics at every opportunity. Take, for instance, the Cardinal’s nearly apoplectic reaction to a small number of congregants who attended mass at Holy Name Cathedral wearing rainbow-colored sashes, a tacit protest of the Church’s opposition to gay and lesbian civil rights. The Cardinal, citing what authority I’m not sure, refused to allow those congregants to take communion.

Now that may seem like a minor matter to other people; but it’s deeply insulting to Catholics who are abiding by all the rules, whose objective is to work within the Church itself to express their disapproval in a quiet, respectful, but effective way. Communion is important to devout Catholics; and the Cardinal’s denial of a basic sacrament to devout Catholics who simply disagree with his and the Church’s position on gay rights was unnecessarily divisive and, quite honestly, mean spirited.

Not a very Christian thing to do, if one believes in that sort of thing. And, given the fact that the Church is dead wrong on gay rights, George’s desire to punish his fellow Catholics for being right represents the height of arrogance.

Then, too, there is the matter of Father Michael Pfleger, the pastor of St. Sabina’s Church, a predominantly African American parish on Chicago’s south side. By now, Father Pfleger’s latest indiscretion is widely known: He had the audacity to appear at Barack Obama’s (now former) church, Trinity United Church of Christ, and deliver a sermon in which he mocked Hillary Clinton. Granted, Pfleger acted like a fool that morning, and he was rightly criticized for it.

But Pfleger’s not a bad man, even if he is prone to making outrageous statements on occasion. He is an activist priest who works harder towards the ends of social justice than any other Catholic priest in Chicago.

In other words, he actually takes his role as a religious leader seriously.

Writing at the Huffington Post yesterday, Chicago Sun-Times religion columnist Cathleen Falsani described Father Pfleger this way:

I’ve been writing about Pfleger for almost as long as I’ve been writing about anything in Chicago. He’s a perennial source for theologically intriguing, often controversial, sometimes plainly outlandish stories on the religion beat. Pfleger, 59 years-old and a priest for 33 of those years -- nearly all of them served at St. Sabina in the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood -- has never met a cardinal-archbishop of Chicago he didn’t aggravate. During his tenure, the activist priest has had throwdowns with all three of the “men in the red dresses,” as we call them, who have run the Catholic Church in this town.

Pfleger is always in trouble over something, with someone.

And he’s always in trouble because he always speaks out. Whenever Father Pfleger sees injustice, he raises his voice ... and I always thought that’s what a priest is supposed to do.

Clearly, Pfleger went too far mocking Hillary Clinton from the pulpit at Trinity U.C.C., and Cardinal George was right to contact Pfleger to express his dismay and to order Pfleger to tone down his political rhetoric. As Pfleger acknowledged to Cathleen Falsani, as a Catholic priest he “always serv[es] at the discretion of the cardinal”; and so the Cardinal was within his rights to rein Pfleger in.

For his part, though, Pfleger has done everything he can to make amends for the entire fiasco: He agreed not to comment directly on any of the presidential candidates for the duration of the election, and he resigned his position with an organization called “Catholics for Obama.” He publicly apologized for his criticism of Hillary Clinton, and he called her campaign to apologize in person.

This past Sunday, speaking at his own church, Pfleger made a more explicit apology:

[D]uring a mass Sunday at St. Sabina, the priest struck an unusually contrite and cautious tone when appealing to his congregation for forgiveness. Pfleger said the last week had been the most painful of his life, even more so than the shooting death of his foster son Jarvis in 1998. Because he had received more than 3,000 e-mails of “hate, threats and name-calling,” he said, the security guards who often flank Pfleger even kept parishioners at a distance as an extra show of caution.

“I apologize for the words that I chose. I apologize for my dramatization that was, for many people who do not know me, simply typical dramatics I often use in sermons,” said Pfleger, reading from a statement as nearly two dozen church leaders surrounded him. “I apologize for anyone who was offended and who thought it to be mockery, that was neither my intent, nor my heart.”

So Pfleger made a mistake, owned up to it, apologized for it, and explicitly agreed to stay out of politics for the duration. Which should have been enough.

But Cardinal George must have smelled blood in the water. He must have seen this latest controversy -- one of many in Father Pfleger’s tenure -- as the perfect opportunity to rid himself of this meddlesome priest. Because even after Pfleger did everything he could to atone, “George asked Pfleger to take leave from pastoral duties at St. Sabina Church in order to ‘reflect on his recent statements and actions in the light of the church’s regulations for all Catholic priests,’ according to a statement Tuesday from the Archdiocese of Chicago.”

Granted, Cardinal George only asked Father Pfleger to take a “temporary leave,” but as Pfleger told Cathleen Falsani the other day, he and George have been in negotiations for Pfleger to leave St. Sabina’s within the next few years, Pfleger having served there longer than a pastor is typically allowed to serve a particular parish. So it seems to me that the Cardinal is looking for ways to accelerate that transition.

The Cardinal, of course, has the power to ax Father Pfleger should he so choose, but I find it odd that the real reason George wants to get rid of Pfleger is that Pfleger has the unfortunate habit of acting on his beliefs. Let’s not kid ourselves here; it’s not that Pfleger has caused any genuine harm to his parish or to the archdiocese. He hasn’t. He’s just aggravated Cardinal George because Cardinal George doesn’t like a trouble maker.

Makes you wonder what Cardinal George would have said about Jesus back in the day, doesn’t it?

Which is my point. If Pfleger is overly political, Cardinal George is guilty of the opposite, and, in my view, far worse transgression: He’s not sufficiently political. Because when politics and morality collide, a religious leader is obligated to speak out. When the President of the United States commences a war that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has described -- on at least three separate occasions -- as unjust, all Catholic priests are obligated to speak out. When the United States of America engages in torture and wholesale violations of international law, all Catholic priests are obligated to speak out.

This isn’t an option. It’s not a matter of convenience or personal comfort. For Christ’s sake -- and I mean that quite literally -- priests don’t get to sit on the sidelines and say or do nothing when our country goes to war without just cause, engages in torture, undermines the Geneva Conventions, disregards the basic civil rights of “detainees” held in places like Guantánamo Bay, and otherwise destroys our core moral values. To do or say nothing is to violate the priest’s most important obligation.

Think I’m wrong? Well, tell that to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, which issued a statement on November 14, 2007, indicating that all Catholics, including priests and bishops, are obligated to advocate for political and social justice:

[In the November 2007 statement,] [t]he bishops affirm their legitimate role in public life. “The obligation to teach about moral values that should shape our lives, including our public lives, is central to [our] mission,” they state. “Our nation’s tradition of pluralism is enhanced, not threatened, when religious groups and people of faith bring their convictions and concerns into public life.”

... The statement explains the necessity of opposing actions that are intrinsically wrong .... It also affirms the obligation to promote the common good by combating such threats to human life and dignity as hunger, poverty, racism, unjust immigration policies, and unjust war. “Both opposing evil and doing good are essential obligations.”

So, aside from doing all he can to undermine Father Pfleger, who seems to take the foregoing injunction seriously, what, exactly, has Cardinal George done to live up to his obligation to “combat such threats to human life and dignity as ... unjust war”?

To my knowledge, precisely nothing.

I’ve yet to hear Cardinal George speak out against the war in Iraq; against the unnecessary civilian deaths there and the destruction of that country without just cause; against torture, waterboarding, sleep deprivation and all the other cruel, inhumane and illegal interrogation tactics we’ve used; against the illegal and unending detention of individuals at Guantánamo Bay, or in secret prisons in Eastern Europe, without charges, without trials, and without basic due process. I have yet to hear Cardinal George speak out against any immoral act committed by the current administration, period.

So, if you ask me, I’d say it’s time for Cardinal George to live up to his obligations as the leader of Chicago’s Catholic community, or step aside if he is unwilling or unable to do so.

As Father Pfleger says, “This is a dangerous time in America, the freest country in the world, ... where you have to whisper your thoughts.”

Yes, and it’s all the more dangerous when our so-called moral leaders refuse even to whisper theirs.


UPDATE:

Memo to Cardinal George -- This is what moral authority looks like.


© 2008 David P. von Ebers. All rights reserved.