Pray, Live and Act Solid and Solidarity Happens

Many Americans are fired up in a bad way about Trump getting elected, and the Revolutionary Communist Party, aka RevCom, founded in 1975 by UC Berkeley grad and party chairman Bob Avakian, are particularly vocal about it. A stroll by Revolution Books, in the alleyway just west of Telegraph, between Durant Avenue and Channing Way, will tell you as much. Outside the store sits a signboard with a large poster of Trump in a KKK cap, complete with Hitler-stache—an image made all the more sinister by the gloom of the dark, rainy skies that have been drowning the Bay in the wake of the election. “MEIN TRUMPF,” it reads below his scowling pumpkin-colored face, “A Thoroughly American Fascist Pig.” Below that, a flyer states: “WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT A FACIST AMERICA.” Cal Alumni Association

The Revolutionary Communist Party are the printers for the Solidarity crowd. Instead of the old Union Printers Bug One is more likely to see this at the bottom of every Solidarity march in the rainbow.

In November such signs were brought into my neighborhood to provoke and stir up outrage after a an idiot was shot and killed for pulling a loaded gun on people on 111th Street at three in the afternoon.

The Chicago Media (especially DNAinfo Chicago) never cited the Revolutionary Communists. They never will. The oligarchs need the divisive to rule the complacent.  It works swell in Chicago.

As to the November provocations, cool heads prevailed, in spite of a daily dose bad, incomplete and false information from the Chicago media, a street hustling priest, and Chicago's Episco-politician prelate.

The calls for Solidarity by agents of change are more like cattle calls for unoriginal thinkers, casting calls for self-absorbed people and opportunities to vent frustrations by most people who march, chant, moon and go home to HBO, than heroic phalanxes of determined patriots facing tanks, coiled Spetsnaz killers and fifty years of totalitarian rule.  Andy Thayer and Ja'mal Green ain't Lech Walensa.

I am teaching Social Justice to juniors at a Chicago single gender (make) Catholic High School.  The textbook for the class is very skewed toward PC Socialism, rather than Catholic Social Justice - Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, Bishop Bernard Shiel, Francis Cabrini, or Bishop Dagger John Hughes.

Rather, it is propaganda for street activists and big dominant and wildly highlighted  word is Solidarity.  The book insists that Wealth is an evil as opposed to a pile of cash, much in the same way that the Left has made an anthropomorphic villain of a firearm.  Guns kill People!  Yes, in the same manner that pencils fail exams.

Thomas Aquinas would have the strap out for the editors.

I point out the more glaring falsities and less than subtle propaganda. High school students believe a text is true because it is 'on the test.'  My aunt believed Liberace was a catch for some nice girl. The USCCB approved the text as, -OK!

The book is bad and I'll leave it at that.  I voiced my opinion to the gents and they seem to agree.

Jesus was not a community organizer.  Jesus liked people.  Jesus did not like phonies and thieves. Jesus chided zealots.

In fact, St. Simon called the Zealot, is a confusing character to most scholars. Blockheads who saw and absorbed Jesus Christ Superstar insist that Simon influenced Jesus go all Che Guevara on the Romans.

Jesus said exactly what He and His Pa expect of us - said so this past Sunday:

"You have heard that it was said,
You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.
But I say to you, love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you,
that you may be children of your heavenly Father,
for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good,
and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have?
Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only,
what is unusual about that?
Do not the pagans do the same?
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect." MT 5:38-48

Fr. Thomas Jackson, O.P. gave a delightful and poignant homily on this core text of Catholic Social Justice.  Father Jackson, an African American fullback of a man, begged us to pray for him.  Pray that he and all of us might turn down Bill O'Reilly, or Bill Maher and get real with our lives.  He mentioned that he still has trouble 'turning the other cheek' when confronted with real evil.  He said our grandfathers fought real evil and their sons and grandsons continue to do so in Iraq and on the streets of ChiRaq.  We all must confront real evil - not pretend evil - but there are those of us , like Knights Templar of old, who must and should wield the sword.  We who do confront evil as soldiers and police officers, should work for peace.  No salary, just do the right thing and treat people with respect.  Paid Peacemakers tend to be creeps who take the easy and the low road that never seems to be thick with consequences.

Professional Peacemakers never seem go to North Korea, or chant 'Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho,/Boko Haram must let the girls go!' - now, why is that?  Well, because Kim would use them for mortar practice and Boko Haram would rape and butcher them.  Peace advocates never call for Solidarity against ISIS(l).  No they spit at, abuse, threaten and advocate the killing of police officers, Trump voters, or Milo.

It is tough to love everyone.  That is why sainthood is not for cupcakes. I am as yellow as a duck's foot and as crabby as Charlie Sheen after a long weekend.   Like Father Jackson, I need prayer.  I need courage. I need grace. The only source of those comes from Christ.


I will not obtain the grace to love my fellow man, even the creeps on AARP commercials, by marching in Solidarity with cherry-picked identity victims.

Solidarity requires that one hate the haters.  Someone else picks the haters. Standing in Solidarity places you against of your neighbors.   Pretty soon, rounding them up seems like a great idea.

Pray, live and act like a solid person.  You will find yourself in great company.

 

Progressive Hack and Armchair Theologian Pat Quinn Firmly Believes in Jane Addams Mother Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth

 

“That Christianity has to be revealed and embodied in the line of social progress is a corollary to the simple proposition, that man’s action is found in his social relationships in the way in which he connects with his fellows; that his motives for action are the zeal and affection with which he regards his fellows” Jane Addams

“I believe in taxes being based on ability to pay,” Quinn said. “I think that’s a principle as old as the bible. I think what we have to do in Illinois is have a fair system that also promotes economic growth.” Gov. Pat Quinn

 Governor Quinn firmly believes that decision about a woman's body should be made by her and her doctor. He supports a woman's right to privacy and choice without restriction as embodied in Roe v. Wade.
In accordance with his beliefs that healthcare should not be predicated on income, Governor Quinn supports legislation restoring abortion coverage under the state Medicaid plan. In addition, he supports legislation to repeal Illinois' 1995 Parental Notice of Abortion Law.
Source: 2010 Gubernatorial website quinnforillinois.com, "Issues" , Nov 2, 2010

Pat Quinn goes to church and it happens to be a Catholic Church.  However, it his thoughts words and deeds are pure 19th Century First Church of the Darwinian House of Jane Addams - Secular Progressive Reformed. There are many of my coreligionists who chew swallow the bloody wafers, Girl Scout cookies and walking-around money from Planned Parenthood and the abortion industry without even a chaser, because they feel for women.  Feelings and intentions trump everything else; after all, the zeal and affection with which he regards his fellows” is all that is important.

Jane Addams really carried the ball over the goal-line for people who believe that Catholics are not zealous, nor affectionate toward their fellow man in the abstract and the particular. In fact, Jane Addams  is held in greater esteem by secularists, politicians of both parties who want to be considered Progressive, most academics and journalists and people who brand themselves independent thinkers, than canonized saints, Catholic bishops and theologians and people of simple faith.

Governor Pat Quinn cut and pasted Paul's letter to the Corinthians in order to fluff up the bunting over the redefinition of marriage in Illinois, rather than support St. Paul's doctrines.  St. Paul is the enemy of Jane Addams and her adopted spiritual children. Jane was a follower of Auguste Comte - the father of sociology and the religion of humanity.  The Social Gospel preached by Miss Settlement House and The Reverend Mr Quinn is all about science as the grease of government and government the salvific Eucharist itself.   As Brandon Harnish wrote in his brilliant essay Jane Addams's Social Gospel Synthesis and the Catholic Response, "in Addams's view Christianity is like putty, its greatest attribute being its ability to change shape." - to evolve.

The Progressive Movement grabbed Darwin by the forelocks and swung him in every direction -war & peace, sickness and in health, birth and death, sex and marriage have been formed and re-formed more than Late Night television. Jane Addams's Social Gospel was the religious component of the Progressive Movement, but it was her dabbling in politics that really paid off and proved the whetstone for the progressive dagger.  Jane Addams bullied her way into an appointment as 19th Ward sanitary officer and the rest was history.  Hull House was as much political headquarters as Alderman Johnny De Pow's grocery and saloon.  From Hull House, Addams preached her Social Gospel and waged holy war on the Democratic Party that not only bowed to, but canonized this Dowager a century later.

The Social Gospel has no room for a pew full of Catholics, so long as they remain Catholic.

As Jane Addams's Social Gospel was putty, the Catholic view of Christianity is stone ( remember the Rock of Peter?) 'used for foundation and construction alike.  The Catholic Church in Chicago was decades ahead of the Progressive in care for the poor, the elderly, the indigent, the unwanted and the ignorant.  The Social Gospel preachers evangelized politicians, journalists, professors and the comfortable.  Government replaced good works with policy.

Policy is Pat Quinn.  How's things going? One way.