This Important Little Man Gets It! So Does The Pope.

We enjoyed a visit from Cardinal George on Monday here at Leo.Cardinal George stayed way past his appointed schedule talking and joking with students, the parents and the Leo Alumni. Chicago's Archbishop gets it.

Mayor James Sexton - Little Flower HS 1970/ Loyola University 1974

Evergreen Park Mayor and my old classmate  and pal Jimmy Sexton dropped by the blessing and stuffed a huge check in support of the bus program into my coat pocket, offered his best to the Cardinal and beat it without fanfare. Jimmy Sexton gets it.

Some years ago the guy coaching Notre Dame football at the time told a bunch of 7,8,9 and 10 year boxers from Celtic Boxing Club, who traveled to South Bend in a Blizzard in order to fight exhibition matches that would benefit the coach's daughter's charity that he was far to busy to autograph pieces of paper, let alone sit for a picture and talk to them.  I'm sorry that is not true.  The coach sent his body guard, an off duty South Bend cop, to tell me and the kids that the Coach was far too Big and Busy a Man to concern himself with kids drawing in money for his daughter.  Yeah, that is accurate. The Coach was not, or course Faust, Devine, Holtz, Willingham, or coach Kelly.  The coach was let go.  He just does not get it.

Most people get it.  Little kids arrive with it and best of us keep it.

This below makes much more clear than I could ever hope to do, or say.







http://www.buzzfeed.com/ellievhall/boy-wanders-onto-stage-to-hang-out-with-pope-francis

These guys get it.

Cardinal George and Pope Francis Say Exactly the Same Thing - Love Gays; Oppose Redefinition of Marriage

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee, and I detest all mysins because of Thy just punishments, but most of all because they offendThee, my God, Who art all-good and deserving of all my love. I firmlyresolve, with the help of Thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the nearoccasions of sin. Act of Contrition

“We cannot insist only on issues related to abortion, gay marriage and the use of contraceptive methods. This is not possible. I have not spoken much about these things, and I was reprimanded for that. But when we speak about these issues, we have to talk about them in a context. The teaching of the church, for that matter, is clear and I am a son of the church, but it is not necessary to talk about these issues all the time. " Pope Francis I

"Everybody is welcome,"but not everything we do can be acceptable. Not everything I do, and not everything anybody else does." Francis Cardinal George

I missed the part in the Pope Francis interview where he advocates homosexual marriage, a redefinition of marriage, a nod to abortion, or plea for free contraceptives.  However, deep thinkers like Pulitzer Prize winner Mary Schmich and the almost invisible Neil Steinberg are doing hand-stands and hugs over the latest cut and paste job by the social engineers.   

I oppose the idiotic and intellectually insulting Religious Freedom and Marriage Equality bully bill that has gone about as far as the Book of Mormon in making Illinois more like Lincoln and less like Joseph Smith, or Bishop Shiel, but wish all and sundry happiness.  The Civil Union bill was the advent of new dawn in civil and social living until Pat Quinn's ink dried on that legislation; at which point Stonewall became Selma and Illinois just could not wait. 

The Pope said nothing new in the article for the Jesuits run here in the States by America and nothing that Francis Cardinal George has not said at every turn in the twisted road to Illinois homosexual marriage and the necessary redefinition of marriage.  Sex outside of marriage is a sin- gay, straight, or solo.   Sex outside of marriage is not a crime, generally speaking.  The only persons that concern me with regard to sex are my kids and of course old Dad himself . . .as if.

Like I said above, Francis Cardinal George has never once uttered a calumny against any sinner.  Nor, has he ever issued a Catholic  Fatwah upon the heads of LGBTQs ever, or of any sort.  Pope Francis called the priesthood to task about their role as pastors ( read the damn article) and he especially mentioned homosexual sex and abortion within the context of the sacrament of Confession -

"We must always consider the person. Here we enter into the mystery of the human being. In life, God accompanies persons, and we must accompany them, starting from their situation. It is necessary to accompany them with mercy. When that happens, the Holy Spirit inspires the priest to say the right thing.“This is also the great benefit of confession as a sacrament: evaluating case by case and discerning what is the best thing to do for a person who seeks God and grace. The confessional is not a torture chamber, but the place in which the Lord’s mercy motivates us to do better. I also consider the situation of a woman with a failed marriage in her past and who also had an abortion. Then this woman remarries, and she is now happy and has five children. That abortion in her past weighs heavily on her conscience and she sincerely regrets it. She would like to move forward in her Christian life. What is the confessor to do?

Cardinal George explained "I think it's a good examination of conscience," George said outside Holy Name Cathedral, where he had just celebrated a Mass honoring couples married for 50 years. "I also think that he's coming from the viewpoint of a pastor who is close to the Lord and close to the people."

Then we get a Medill treatement of the Cardinal Archbishop's remarks, But George, a vocal opponent of gay marriage, warned that some had gone too far in seeing Pope Francis' interview as a move away from long-held church teachings on homosexuality, abortion and contraception"

Yep, a vocal opponent of gay marriage, just like Pope Francis.

"Everybody is welcome," George said, "but not everything we do can be acceptable. Not everything I do, and not everything anybody else does."

 Hell, I am welcome, even though my thoughts words and deeds can be unacceptable. . .wildly unacceptable. My beliefs are unacceptable to people who demand that I accept the notion that marriage can and must be not restricted to one man and one woman.  Now, what would those Mormons ridiculed in that boffo play think about that?   One man . . .two wives . . . three?  Does Greg Harris' religious freedom bill include Mormon polygamists?  Or, would that cast the LGBTQ community in the role of hot-headed and hysterical bigot?  Must a wife be human?  Some folks worship chicks and ducks and geese what better scurry!  How about a Dutch Wife? Oh, who cares about wives and WHo cares a fig about the Dutch?

Why sailors and members of the news media.

My most desperately wild 'dirty' thoughts are of Matt Helm movie variety; yet, I am thoroughly ashamed of their distracting imposition upon my better angels.  'And I detest all my  sins' including all of the fun ones.

Read the comments in the article concerning this matter in today's Tribune and tell me again  which side spews the real hate.

The Varginha Dialogues - Words That Really Matter Avoid Body Parts

I was told by a woman sometime after the death of my wife in 1998, that one sure cure for my blues was buying a ticket to see the Vagina Monologues: ' Eve Ensler is a genius.'

I'm not all that bright. I failed to see the connection between a play that celebrates a woman's gear and my sense of loss, grief, anger, confusion and loneliness.  Maybe, I should have taken her advise, because I self-medicated by gambling like and idiot out of Tolstoy for too long.  Well, I am a male. I find it odd that the very people who gab about female castration are the first to condemn Israel and demand abortion 24/7 on my dime. Me, I don't chat body parts.

Notice above that I refused to use the V aside from it place in the Ensler text.  I am no prude, but I refuse to go all second wave feminist.  Words have meaning, context and most certainly place. Am I uncomfortable talking about a woman's gizmo?  Certainly not.  I do not refer to my own coital apparatii by the latinate and stick to the language of the sixth grade male awakening ( Glory Be to God!).

The Old Avenger has no place in public.

Due to my proclivity for ignoring articles, plays, poems, or chit-chat featuring the Female Johnson, I very nearly missed a delightful AP report on Pope Francis' visit to Rio Slums  -Despite heavy security and a cold rain, Francis waded into the cheering crowds and hugged and kissed residents young and old before blessing the altar at the shoebox of a church that serves the community. He prayed before a replica of Brazil's patron saint, the Virgin of Aparecida, and met with a family in their squat yellow home.
"He gave each of us a rosary, he took photos with everyone and embraced each one," said Diego Rodrigues, a 26-year-old friend of the da Penha family who received the papal visit. "I think everyone but the pope was speechless!"
Francis brought a message of hope, following in the footsteps of Pope John Paul II who visited two such favelas during a 1980 trip to Brazil and Mother Teresa who visited Varginha itself in 1972. Her Missionaries of Charity order have kept a presence in the shantytown ever since.
Like Mother Teresa, Francis brought his own personal history to the visit: As archbishop of Buenos Aires, then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio frequently preached in the poverty-wracked slums of his native city, putting into action his belief that the Catholic Church must go to the farthest peripheries to preach and not sit back and wait for the most marginalized to come to Sunday Mass.
In remarks to a crowd of several thousand Varghina residents, who slushed through a muddy soccer field to welcome him, Francis acknowledged that young people in particular have a sensitivity toward injustice.
"You are often disappointed by facts that speak of corruption on the part of people who put their own interests before the common good," Francis told the crowd. "To you and all, I repeat: Never yield to discouragement, do not lose trust, do not allow your hope to be extinguished. Situations can change, people can change."
It was a clear reference to the violent protests that paralyzed parts of the country in recent weeks as Brazilians furious over rampant corruption and inefficiency within the country's political class took to the streets.
Francis blasted what he said was a "culture of selfishness and individualism" that permeates society today, demanding that those with money and power share their wealth and resources to fight hunger and poverty.
"No amount of peace-building will be able to last, nor will harmony and happiness be attained in a society that ignores, pushes to the margins or excludes a part of itself," Francis said.

Rather than a shower of reports and round-tables on the Pope's dialogues with the poor, Americans are bombarded with news accounts, interviews and press conferences dedicated to Anthony Weiner's Tamale Textings and the effect that is having on his odious wife. That sin of omission is because the Pope and Catholics are dead set against abortion and defend the marriage between man and woman. 

Like Trampas in Owen Wister's novel The Virginian, America's corporate media sponsored by the Progressive Democratic National Party use language to deconstruct our common spirit.  The Virginian, like Pope Francis employs the gift of words to bring people together.

"Events like this, with the pope and all the local media, get everyone so excited," said Antonieta de Souza Costa, a 56-year-old vendor and resident of Varginha. "I think this visit is going to bring people back to the Catholic Church."
In the last two decades, the church has lost legions of faithful in the country, most of them poorer Brazilians who have switched to Pentecostal evangelical congregations with a huge presence in Varginha and most other slums.
The Varginha slum butts up against what until about six months back was the largest "cracolandia" — crackland — in Brazil, where hundreds of crack cocaine users gathered under a train overpass and used the drug openly night and day. Crumbling brittle shacks still give the area a bombed-out feel.

The Pope dialogues and the American media monologues endlessly.

I'd attend any Varginha Dialogue and will continue to the . . . . other Monlogue a huge pass.