Monday, January 02, 2012

Cardinal George, Gay Marriage, The Tribune and Critics

"Here's Your Hat. What's Your Hurry?"


Cardinal George was ambushed by Mike Flannery and Dane Placko on Fox Chicago's WFLD newscast just before Christmas. Since then gay activists have howled like King Lear.

The Chicago Tribune has a long history of anti-Catholic bias and holds firm*.

Last week the editorial board of the Tribune termed Cardinal George's analogy that some gay activists are like the KKK bizarre.

What is bizarre is the fact that those activities are very much like the Ku Klux Klan of the early decades of the last century.

Early this morning, I attempted to comment on this letter published in the Chicago Tribune under the heading Cardinal George's Poor Leadership -


4:03 p.m. CST, December 30, 2011
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While Cardinal Francis George is entitled to his opinion, opponents of his nasty rhetoric are entitled to respond, especially the very people he compares to the KKK.

To compare homosexuals (who have themselves been targets of the KKK) to that hate group is reprehensible. Such language coming from a man who purports to be the spiritual shepherd of his church is particularly troubling. For George to be insensitive to the pain inflicted by his comparison reveals much about his heart and mind.

The Catholic Church George leads is not a casual bystander in the struggle of gays and lesbians to achieve the same rights, protections and dignities extended to heterosexuals. Rather, George has mounted a grand campaign to thwart the extension of civil rights to gays and lesbians. He can't claim to be an innocent victim in a struggle in which he leads a charge to keep gays and lesbians marginalized in society.

What he says and does in the church is his business, but when he mounts a soapbox in the public square, he's fair game for criticism. George is a poor example of a spiritual leader.

-- Todd Arkenberg, Arlington Heights


No, Mr. Arkenberg, Cardinal George is a good example of a spiritual leader. Cardinal George is standing for principle over coercion ( financial, political and now thanks to the Illinois Religious liberty and Civil Union Law, legal).

Leadership often gets the leader isolated, imprisoned and executed.


My comments were deleted, blocked, scratched, aborted, or euthanized, by the Chicago Tribune. Several times.


Here is what I wished to post:


Todd Arkenberg, Arlington Heights is passionate in his defense of Gay Activists and their attempts to cloud sexual preference and desire as a basic Civil Right. More so, his attempt to paint Cardinal George as a some kind of bigot is nonsense.

The faux outrage following Mike Flannery and Dana Placko's gottcha moment was orchestrated and pre-packaged. The meme "unfortunate comments" were rolled out by Illinois Greg Harris and Sara Feigenholtz on cue and the petition drive by Truth Will Out funded by Henry Van Ameringen and George Soros's Change.org set the wheels in motion.

The Catholic Church will not allow adultery by heterosexuals, homosexuals, onanists, or any other unique expression of desire be considered anything but a sin. Catholics who commit adultery must be reconciled with the Church through the Sacrament of Penance.

That will not change, no matter what the human heart believes desirable.

Cardinal George's comments equating the activism of some homosexuals to the KKK of the early decades of the last century were spot on - the KKK was mainstream and enjoyed the support of Planned Parenthood's Margaret Sanger. Like Gay Activism today the KKK also enjoyed the support of mainstream Christian Churches and fully 2/3's of all Klan lecturers were Protestant ministers.


Thank God** for a free exchange of ideas in a free American Press.


*
By late 1853, it was frequently running xenophobic editorials that criticized foreigners and Roman Catholics.[7] About this time it also became a strong proponent of temperance.[8] However nativist its editorials may have been, it was not until February 10, 1855 that the Tribune formally affiliated itself with the nativist American or Know Nothing party, whose candidate Levi Boone was elected Mayor of Chicago the following month.[9]

By about 1854, part-owner Capt. J. D. Webster, later General Webster and chief of staff at the Battle of Shiloh, and Dr. Charles H. Ray of Galena, Illinois through Horace Greeley convinced Joseph Medill of Cleveland's Leader to become managing editor. Ray became editor-in-chief, Medill became the managing editor, and Alfred Cowles, Sr., brother of Edwin Cowles, initially was the bookkeeper. Each purchased one third of the Tribune.[10][11] Under their leadership the Tribune distanced itself from the Know Nothings and became the main Chicago organ of the Republican Party.[12] However, the paper continued to print anti-Catholic and anti-Irish editorials.
^ (Wendt 1979, pp. 23, 27–28)
^ (Cole 1948, p. 14)
^ (Keefe 1971, p. 131)
^ (Keefe 1975, pp. 233–4)
^ Rushton, Wyatt (1916). Joseph Medill and the Chicago Tribune (thesis). University of Wisconsin–Madison via Google Books full view. http://books.google.com/books?id=gcc7AAAAMAAJ&pg=PA7-IA2. Retrieved 2007-10-24. and White, James Terry (1895). The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography: Being the History of the United States. James T. White & Company, via New York Public Library via Google Books full view. http://books.google.com/books?id=Td0DAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA224. Retrieved 2007-10-24.
^ Robert Norton Smith (June 10, 1997). Chapter 1, The Colonel, The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick 1880-1955. Houghton Mifflin Co. via The New York Times Company. ISBN 0-3955-3379-1. http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/smith-colonel.html. Retrieved 2007-10-24.
^ (Wendt 1979, pp. 57–65)




** Obvious irony is sarcasm.

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