Leo High School is Lourdes? No, but it will do: The Miles Turner Miracle

Miles Turner, Leo 2013 went to prom last night.

 

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Miles Turner's heroic battle against five bullets is nothing short of miraculous.  Miracles are scoffed at, just as they were in secularist France in the mid-18th Century when a peasant girl brought miraculous water to millions of physically afflicted people at Lourdes.

Cardinal George is in Lourdes.  Cardinal George is a very significant presence at Leo High School in the Gresham neighborhood.

It always seems that whenever Cardinal George is out of Chicago on the business of the three million Catholics of this city, the moral and political pygmies take the opportunity to insult, offend, or disrupt the work of the Archbishop of Chicago.  Once Francis Cardinal George boarded the plane for the sacred shrine in France, the Tribune's pencil-necked Progressive sucker-puncher Eric Zorn rolled out a series of insulting, flawed and cowardly screeds leveled at the Cardinal's objection to Mayor Rahm's punitive tax on church institutional water.   At the same time before the City Club of Chicago, Emanuel's City Council Floor Leader Alderman Pat O'Connor went all Vidkun Quisling on the Faith of His Fathers.

Mayor's floor leader blasts Catholic Church over water squabble
5/3/2013 7:30:00 PM
By FRAN SPIELMAN -Chicago Sun Times
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's City Council floor leader lashed out at the Catholic Church on Wednesday for rejecting the mayor's compromise offer on water fees for nonprofits even after, the alderman claimed, failing to clean its own house on the priest sex abuse scandal."They're clearly not owning up to the fact that there are people out there damaged by the church and they're talking about free water. Really?" said Ald. Pat O'Connor (40th).
Describing himself as "a Catholic, not a happy one these days," O'Connor said, "The church has so many internal problems, they ought to satisfy their own problems and they ought to address the things that are in the paper every day and stop talking about free water. Quit saying that they handled things right in the past or . . . or, even worse, saying mistakes were made in the past, but they're not correcting those mistakes."
Earlier this week, Cardinal Francis George jumped into the controversy caused by Emanuel's decision to cut off the free water spigot to struggling churches and nonprofits that provide a safety net of social services to needy Chicagoans.
The cardinal appeared at a news conference called by an "inter-faith coalition" of religious leaders to reject the mayor's offer to restore the free water perk to groups with assets under $1 million.
The cardinal called the lake a "gift from God" and said maybe "we should start charging the city for water" - not the other way around.

Water - a source of revenue for spendthrift city.  Water - a sign of the miraculous.

It all depends on which side of history, one takes the vantage point to see something.

Miles is afflicted with bullets from a gang-bangers gun; Cardinal George is afflicted not only with the intrusion of cancer, but a cultural and political class of  bigots who hide behind the same altar of science as secular inquistors who challenged the faith of the French peasant girl Bernadette's faith and blocked the miraculous waters of Lourdes . . .for a time, anyway.

 A Medical Bureau was established in 1882 to test the authenticity of the cures. The doctors include unbelievers as well as believers and any doctor is welcome to take part in the examination of the alleged cures. As many as 500 medical men of all faiths or no faith have taken advantage of the invitation each year. Many books and movies tell the story of Lourdes. Even Hollywood made a movie of this remarkable event in the 1940's entitled "The Song of Bernadette" which won six academy awards.

Today, Hollywood gives religion and the Catholic faith in particular very short shrift. Miracles are now called health policy by the secular Believe Nothings. Miles Turner stood again because his family believe.

Miles Turner was prayed for not only by his wonderful parents and family, but also the Cardinal and the extended Leo High School family.  Alumni called about Miles everyday and asked how they might help the family.  Most importantly, Miles was lifted out of his many recovery beds by skilled physicians, technicians, therapists, teachers and Dan McGrath, President of Leo High School and football coach and surrogate father of hundreds Mike Holmes.

Dan and Mike stood with Miles and his family nearly everyday from the time the young man was shot. I have never been more proud of human beings.

Dan and Mike joined the Turner family is moistening Miles' lips and throat with ice and later water.  Miles could not take liquids for months.  Christ's words from the cross, "I thirst!" were remembered. Miles was slaked with words of comfort and encouragement from the lips of Leo teachers Kristine Meany, Katy Hyland, Aurora Latifi and Bob Schablaske who tutored Miles when his strength returned.  Water and wisdom were not denied.

Cardinal George is in Lourdes, Miles went to prom and will graduate with his class.  The newspapers and TV stations that feature the Miles Turner miracle, will also mock the Cardinal and the very faith that is core of Leo High School.  It is good that those media outlets are awed by this story of personal
struggle, but is also sad that they will not consider the waters of miraculous faith that make the struggle worth the while.

The water tax is merely a punitive measure to force people of faith to go against their beliefs and become out-spoken critics, like Alderman Pat O'Connor, of the religion, the schools, the associations and institutions that made his 'personal struggle' a vacuum-packed biography and a lucrative life.

If Cardinal George had only been compelled to agree that abortion is health care and gay marriage religious liberty, churches could have all the water they could want -untaxed.

Had Miles Turner indicated with his suffering eyes the words "I Thirst" to Rahm Emanuel, or his City Council Floor Leader Pat O'Connor, his lips would have remained mighty dry.

As it is, Leo is not Lourdes, but it sure as hell will do.

Waterboy Eric Zorn Tries to Tweak Cardinal George - Spitballs Tossed at the USS Missouri

"You'll thank me for this years from now, Eric . . .or not. Yeah, probably not"

The Chicago Tribune's Waterboy, Eric Zorn, whom the Tower Editorial Board would to prop up to be The Man over a real newsman John Kass,  once again does his Nerd-Gone-Gangsta routine with today's attempt to tweak Chicago's Archbishop Francis Cardinal George over Rahm Emanuel's callow water tax levy on churches.

The claim that the public should pay water bills for organizations that do good things for the community at large is flimsy -- what, should we pay their electric bills, too? How about their property insurance? -- but at least arguable.
But the claim that the public should pay church water bills because religion itself is such a good thing -- a "glue" -- that everyone should chip in to pay for it is constitutionally (and otherwise) offensive.

Alas, The Kids in the Tower are up against EZ's gifts and public tastes. John Kass speaks with the heart and soul of a neighborhood Chicagoan and therefore remains the vox populi.  Eric 'EZ' Zorn ? This poor goof must have had a very sad childhood, indeed.

Many of the self-proclaimed 'smartest kids in class' had horrific experiences in school, due to their sense of opinion, free speech and downright loud proclamations of their whiz-bang logic.  While teachers might patiently smile at young Eric's penchant for entering the lists of any and every argument, cadres of contemporaries waited as patiently for recess, or lunch time opportunities for activist rebuttal in the form of pantsing the young Rousseau and tossing his Dad 'N Lads up on the nearest available utility lines.

The salubrious effect pantsing had on many a young Danton from my halcyon days was profound.  Young Hegels avoided becoming public ninnies and embraced common sense. Yousee, pantsing was a much more direct and emphatic manner of saying, " My dear chap, have you thought through what you have just said?  Allow me and your boonchums here to demonstrate the folly and willfully bad manners your comments make . . .grab the snotty little prique, Alphonse!"

Eric Zorn, sadly, missed out on this opportunity to remove his schnozzola from his belly-button for life because his words and inclinations were protected by educators unschooled in group play, but learned in group think.  The young fellow was few years behind the Golden Learning Curve. The result - EZ would be as welcome among most Chicagoans, as Kermit Gosnell at The Babysitter's Club.

Francis Cardinal George is more of my cultural contemporary than Eric Zorn.   We got smacked when got snotty with our elders and betters and Eric Zorn was taught by 'Who's To Say-ers.'  Wrong Side of History?  Perhaps. Wrong Side of the Brain-pan?  For sure.

Let's get to pantsing.

EZ objects to Cardinal George's protestations over a tax levied by Mayor Rahm on churches as a warning shot fired over bow.  Had Cardinal George gone all Seamless Garment on Gay Marriage, everything would be jake.

Instead, the historical exemption for churches was nixed.

Rahm Emanuel causes men of faith like Alderman Pat O'Connor to soil his Haines at the thought defending his church and common sense:

Story by 89 WLS Reporter Bill Cameron(CHICAGO) At City Hall, Mayor Rahm Emanuel's City Council Floor Leader Alderman Pat O'Connor says he's upset about the joke Cardinal Francis George made yesterday in a bid to restore free city water for churches.
O’Connor is not amused by the cardinal joking that maybe it’s time for the church to charge the city for water because Lake Michigan is God’s gift to us.
When asked, the alderman said the cardinal should stick to praying and saving souls.
“The silliest things can be said and people latch onto it.” O’Connor said. “For chrissake, we sell everybody water!  And now all of a sudden because we’re a church, we’re not supposed to sell them water?  At some point, i think what’s gonna happen is someone’s go– and here he alluded to pedophile priests - and stop talking about free water.  H/T Dan Kelley

That a boy, Pat!  Roll over.  Sic 'em with that abuse canard.  The white haired burgher really gave us a look at the gummy worm he has for a backbone.

Aldermen are scared $hitless of Rahm. All of them.  Why?  Plum evades me. Money, or the future lack of it thereof, I reckon.

Back to EZ - Eric Zorn hasa veritable  written of Pentateuch  of Rahm Happy propaganda ever since the diminuitive danse tyran took over the Fifth Floor from Richard II : Garbage Grid/ School Reform/Ceasefire Giveaways/Make underutilized and empty real estate an opportunity for the Hyde Park Mafia ( Miner/Davis/Jarret/Rogers et al)/Cop Bash and Mayor Water Tax-ey.

The water tax not only pumps up the Mayor with the Raccoon Eyes, but has the added tang of slapping the Catholic Church. Thus, more EZ logic.

The claim that the public should pay water bills for organizations that do good things for the community at large is flimsy -- what, should we pay their electric bills, too? How about their property insurance? -- but at least arguable

The Lake provides water, water.  The Unevolved, unlike the pains-in-the-ass, understand that the Great Lakes were part of God's Bounty.  That Bounty went untaxed for churches and other do-gooding non-governmental clingers to religion . . .until the Evolved showed up.

Insurance is, like usury, an unnatural man crafted construct.  Electricity comes from God's Bounty, but it takes ComEd, not City Hall, to harness the sparks after getting the coal burners a' cooking.

Apples and lug nuts,there,  Eric.

Now, to call of of the most respected scholars and original thinkers in a hard collar - a flimsy logician?

Well, that is like tossing spitballs at a battleship.

The water tax is a punitive measure to make the churches roll over on legislation that is dangerous and silly.

Every bill pumped into Springfield with Planned Parenthood dollars, or Fred Eychaner's moolah will be opposed by Cardinal George and the next the bishop of Chicago and the churches that avoid appearing like a Bill Moyers special on PBS.

Catholic aldermen will back Rahm.  Eric Zorn will carry water for Rahm.  Some kids are still in dire need of good pantsing.

Nice Try, Mr. Zorn, but Kermit Gosnell is Abortion in America.

 Eric Zorn - If You are evolved, you gotta go along with him . . .or else.

Gosnell, 72, is charged with running what amounted to a squalid abattoir where he performed late-term abortions and severed the spines or otherwise killed outside the womb fetuses who showed signs of being able to survive.
He’s charged with first-degree murder in four such alleged incidents and with third-degree murder in the death of a patient who allegedly received a fatal overdose of anesthesia from Gosnell’s poorly trained staff.
I don’t mean to minimize the disturbing nature of these incidents and other stories out of Gosnell’s clinic that are not part of the remaining charges against him.But Gosnell is not the face of abortion in America, as opponents of abortion rights are suggesting. He is the face of illegal abortion in America. Eric Zorn, Planned Parenthood Shill and Chicago Tribune Vox de Abortus

The Chicago Tribune is and has been in bed with the abortion industry for quite some time.  Abortion is the litmus test for the evolved - Sexual revolutionaries,  Feminist hair-splitters, PETA hand wringers, Environmentalist Earth Firsters,  Marijuana activists, Gaza activists, Anti-America Exceptionalists, Public Education Bolivarists (Klonsky et al), Marriage Deconstructionist and Government apologists.

If one is okay with abortion, one is evolved and all the other non-sense doctrines make perfect sense.

People who lose sleep over the bugs that, might, just might, be depressed by the Keystone Pipeline are perfectly at home with Dr. Kermit Gosnell's butcher shop and only upset that the monster outed abortion for what it is - wholesale murder of the innocent for profit.

Eric Zorn is fully evolved and today let fly his dart of affection for the nature of Dr. Gosnell's labors, but not his methods.  He says that Dr. Kermit Gosnell is a face of illegal abortion.

Abortion is perfectly legal, Eric, wholesome, well funded, politically le plus approprié.  Dr. Gosnell operated, not in the shadowy alleys, but in the full light of day on the corner.

I imagine that Illinois Personal PAC's Boss Terry Cosgrove has been packing the e-mail and twitter accounts of Change of Subject and perhaps proferred a noon snack at one of Chicago's Clubs, or A-list eateries to discuss the impact of Gosnell on contributions and the political effect his knife work might have on the Gay Marriage vote.  Gay Marriage and Abortion are twin civil rights memes demanding the evolved to get in line and the unevolved punished.

Yep, Personal PAC invested in new Senators and State Reps. in Illinois on the condition that they vote for Gay Marriage.  My Senator, from a district that is not exactly Boystown (19th Ward & Worth Township in largely traditional Catholic and breeders) voted the Greg Harris Anti-Marriage Law up the chute.

My Representative, Fran Hurley, has take Personal PAC's coin and will obey Boss Cosgrove, just as Gov. Pat Quinn has made a career of doing so.  Personal PAC funds Greg Harris, as well as the usual plastic Evolutionaries like Barbara Flynn Currie, and so many other people in government who created Our Illinois.
Abortion funds the Progressive.

Abortion is murder for profit, Eric. You can call abortion Womans' Reproductive Choice Health Care, or a swell 5lb Whitman's Sampler for Dowagers, but euphemisms do nothing to sponge up the blood children, much less a selfish and thoughtless side of history that would make Stalin and Hitler blush with envy.

Eric Zorn Cheers for a Pelvic Papacy

Teaching is tough.  It requires patience, good listening skills and most of all should, anyway, require that the teacher knows something about his subject.  There can be, and should be, some diversity of opinion, but that usually is rooted in an individual teacher's preferences and predilections with regard to focus of study - in the teaching of English, let's say, one might prefer Thoreau, over Henry James. or Alice Walker over Margaret Mitchell.

A history teacher might suggest to his students that Truman's decision to drop the atomic bombs on Japan was not based on a desire to save hundreds of thousand of Japanese lives should an invasion of home islands be necessary. but rather one based on the cynical desire to keep Progressive former Vice President Henry Wallace from ever posing a threat to the burgeoning military industrial complex.

That teacher would be an opinionated ninny parroting what he recently watched on Showtime's moronic revision of American history with Oliver Stone. Stone teaches that his vision is no theory, but history.  It is not anywhere close to history. It is a Stalinist fabrication.

You see, with the passing of the greatest generation, hypocritical louses are free to re-write the history written in blood by the vanishing old guys who lost all of their buddies at Saipan, Guam, Iwo Jima and Okinawa and would have joined those said buddies, had President Harry not give the go-ahead to drop the bombs that ended Japan's world genocide. 

Those few 87,88,89 and God Bless 90 year old heroes die at a rate of 1,500 men a day.  Ten years ago they would collectively kicked Oliver's ass. Safe now, Oliver Stone goes full Chomsky.

In matters theological, I know very little.  I know more than Eric Zorn, who knows only what he cares to hear from lisping lordlings like Chris Hayes of MSNBC.  Chicago's own nitwit and hack Andy Shaw's son-in-law, (Boy, talk about the nepotism in journalism), Chris Hayes hissed the Catholic Church by digging up the comments of a disgraced professor of ethics Daniel C. Maguire.

Maguire, like Noam Chomsky,  is a political player noted for his pamphleteer-ing in favor of abortion, sexual permissiveness and gay lifetstyle everything being meanly smashed upon the Rock of St. Peter.  Maguire worked with DNC in parsing Geraldine Ferraro's position on 'choice.'

In 2007, just in time for the 2008 Presidential Election, Professor Maguire mailed out some of his pamphlets to 200 plus American bishops.  Daniel went into the lions den wearing a pork chop suit.

The theologian, Daniel C. Maguire, teaches religious ethics at Marquette University, a Jesuit institution in Milwaukee. He is a 75-year-old former priest and a prolific writer, educated at the prestigious Gregorian University in Rome, who has been challenging Catholic teaching on sexuality for years.
Last summer, Mr. Maguire mailed two of his pamphlets, “The Moderate Roman Catholic Position on Contraception and Abortion” and “A Catholic Defense of Same-Sex Marriage” to 270 Catholic bishops. In them, he argued that the Catholic position on these issues was “pluralistic,” and that Catholic theologians through history had taken a variety of acceptable stances on these issues.
The bishops’ Committee on Doctrine denounced the pamphlets as “irresponsible.” The bishops said that it was a “serious error” to claim “that the teaching of the pope and the bishops represents merely one voice among many legitimate voices within the Catholic Church.”

The Catholic Church is unyielding on abortion and marriage.  Professor Maguire, is an ex-priest who happens to have a job at a Catholic University and under sanctuary of academic freedom micturates out of the protective tent. Even after the bishops said that he was full of . . .pith, Daniel Maguire could not howling in the desert - 

“They’re simply uninformed,” Mr. Maguire said of the bishops. “There is no one Catholic view on contraception, abortion or same-sex marriage. There’s a diversity of views. And it’s not just Dan Maguire versus the bishops. There’s a large school of thought that agrees with everything I’ve said in these pamphlets.”

Listen to me!!!!!!!!!!  You mitre'd bullies and Bush Bishops!!!!!!!!!  I am a tenured Professor!!!!!!!  Thank gods for Chris Hayes and Eric Zorn!

Professor Maguire wrote a couple of books that challenged the Vatican; the Vatican took up the challenge.  Professor Maguire was not teaching Catholic doctrine, though he argued that he was.  This is a progressive flaw similar to the fat boy who tells the  Illinois DMV Maiden that his weight is 190 lbs, when in fact that morning he registered 265 lbs.  With an arched eye-brow, the DMV Maid good-natured-ly records, " Five feet; 5" and . . .One hundred and Ninety pounds? You go, Playah!"  

Last week, the Illinois State Senate overwhelming approved the Heather Steans Religious Freedom and Gay Marriage legislation 31-24-2; now, the impetus to stuff this legislation down the throats of Illini is going full bore.

To that end, journalism water boys like Eric Zorn and the editorial boards of most papers will lobby the Illinois House of Representatives in the newspapers, which will be handed off to iconic yaps of Carol Marin's WTTW cheerleaders.  Not only is Gay Marriage a Civil Rights-Social Justice Crisis Issue That Can't Wait, but great way to say I LOVE EVERYONE! and tea-bag the Bishops and Catholic.

"What Right Wing Catholics piously desire is a Pelvic Zone Papacy, one that will rail against contraception, abortion and same-sex marriage, and, would you believe it, even masturbation, will leave the greedy to their grasping ways. They studiously ignore a whole tradition of left-wing Catholic social doctrine, espoused by popes and general councils of the church which is well-grounded in the Bible. They run from all that just as they ran from “Blessed” Pope John Paul II when he presciently sent a cardinal to tell George W. Bush that an invasion of Iraq would be a “defeat for humanity.” Daniel Maguire

Kind of excited there, huh, Prof? 

You see, Maguire's latest bacchatur stultus littera, contorts an economic statement by the Vatican into a collating of Catholics are the Tea Party  in need of Pelvic Papacy's Purge.

Read it, it is joyful noise!

Teaching is tough. The Greek word ethics translates to mean " ought" - what ought to be.  Theology and ethics are lug-nuts and oranges.  What "ought" does not translate to "want." that would erasthai, which means intense desire.  I have an intense desire to see better journalism before I die.  As if.

That intense desire is not sexual.  That would be erotikos - all that sex stuff.  Heterosexual males are said to erotic thoughts once every 4. 275 seconds.  There is no way that my erotic thoughts will include Eric Zorn, epistemologically speaking.

I just can't bat from that side of the plate.

Eric Zorn calls the Papacy Dysfunctional Institution

In less time than it usually takes for Eric Zorn to say something really stupid, quicker than a Forrest Claypool job- hop and faster than a Tony Preckwinkle denunciation of some dead white man from Western Culture, EZ beat the Las Vegas Odds Makers with his latest Anti-Catholic musing on the occasion of the Pope's retirement announcement:

I was shocked to learn that he's the first to resign rather than to die in office (is office the right word?) since 1415. And I would think that Catholics would be glad, at least in general terms, at the violation of this dysfunctional tradition. Not only does it seem to increase the likelihood that the Pope will rule with clarity and vigor, but also the likelihood that the transitions will be smoother.

I am not shocked to learn that Eric Zorn is shocked. Eric strikes me an opinionated opinion-slinger whose sum total understanding of history and culture is gleaned from PBS premium gift discs of Ken Burns and Bill Moyers lectures, rounded out with solid HBO viewing.

Not having had the pre-packaged melange of intellectual stuffing gobbled up by the Chicago Tribune's editorial cabal and its house mice (EZ & Scmich), another person with a robust appetite for learning might counter with this -" well Eric, I mean Mr. Zorn, you may be interested to learn that while the Pope is bishop of Rome, he is also the Head of State and the last Pope to call it quits did so to end the Avignon Schism. That was a dispute with real political repercussions like war and stuff.  Gregory X!! resigned and the Council of Constance ( a place not a girl) selected Martin V over the three contestants Gregory Benedict and John. There was Teutonic issues and Hussite heresy as well as the vote for Marty.

Subsequent Popes, likewise had all of this historical stuff too - alliances with Austria ( Holy Roman Empire) against Italian States, and Norman Naples and Spain and Reformation Protestants and Enlightenment goofballs like Rousseau who begat Italian secularists of the 19th Century who attacked and sacked Rome, and later Bismark who hated Catholics like a Medill and more sieges and riots and then the Nazis and Joe Stalin kind of kept Popes busy.  Too busy to think about retirement.


Manya Brachear The Seeker is an adept at hooting off her anti-Catholic bazoo only seconds after she chips the china along with "journalists" of her gender in the Cardinal's parlor.

The dysfunctional tradition????  You mean like the Supreme Court, or being Andy Shaw?

Naw, Popes stay on the job because they have quite a bit to do. The Popes I knew Pius XII, John XXIII ( for real one; not the anti-Pope of Council of Constance), Paul VI, Pope John Paul and Pope John Paul II  all displayed remarkable wit, charm and intelligence all the way to the end. Benedict XVI resigned a step or two ahead of "the Final Call."  None displayed the ravages of senility so evident in Congressman Jan Schakowsky, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, or Richard Roeper.


To mime Eric, "Dude, Popes don't have an Illinois Pension."

Your Illinois Gay Marriage Barometer - Make Some Calls

IL Sen.Heather Steans, the trust-fund baby who became an Illinois State Senator, did not have the votes yesterday.

Gay Marriage or the Religious Freedom and Marriage Fairness Act, the Selma is Stonewall Procrustean rack, touted as the THE most important piece of legislation to come down the pike since the movie Lincoln *premiered last month, had been attached to a Car Rental Bill and then in 24 hours when 5655 stubbed it's toe in Committee stapled to Nursing Home legislation.

Whatever!

5655 moves to the Lame Duck, Part Deux, I guess, or awaits the new Senators (Y) to replace the Vanishing Senators (Y) in your neighborhood.  Some House Reps will become State Senators.


The always laughable Eric Zorn does another bit of Stretch Armstrong cover with an absolutly hilarious attempt to link ILHB 5655 to the 13th Amendment (link Lincoln above) and opines the necessity to 5655 villains to adopt pseudonyms for an expected film based upon Illinois Gay Marriage Agonistes - How about Illinois Senator Selma Stonewall as cover for Sen. Heather (Trust Fund)Steans?

The Babe Leaped In Her Womb - Older Children of Men Get It

“People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given to them by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being,” he said. “They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.” Pope Benedict XVI

We had a very nice Mass this morning.  Babies and toddlers were sporting their Christmas togs and jabbering all through the service, which to my old hairy ears is what going to Mass is all about. They do not, as some of my more devout friends and neighbors hold, distract from the sanctity of the Mass, but adorn it.

I am a baby sap from a very long line of Hickey males, who delight in the innocent and encourage the cacophony.  My Grandfather, father and many uncles were like minded "children of men."  Little guys of three were tapped on the shoulders by an Uncle Bud, Mike, Pat, Jack Bart, Sy, or Donnie during Mass with nod to celebrant in all of his liturgical splendor and asked, ' Hey, Pad'jeen. . . How about that guy's dress up there?  What gives with that?  Thinks he's Milton Berle?'

There followed a flow of questions from the targeted cherub concerning the guy up on the altar getting all the attention -" Fa'r Garrady got a dress on, Mom!  Why he got dress, Mom?  Mom, He wear'nah dress!"  There followed good-womanly remonstrances to 'Hush, Clam up, Let it Alone, Pay Attention!'

It is good to go to Mass.  Kids fiddle with Golden books, grab toys from siblings, reach for whatever the hell they see and want but have yet to verbally identify, punch, shove, hug, nap and eat dry Cheerios like they were truffles.  These babies will soon conform into devout little ladies and gents of the pew -midget Moms and Dads and will also Hush, Knock It Off and quiet the human voice and heart at its best.

Suffer the older Squares and and Biddies, but  revel in the reason for God's Being -babies.  God's Will, as understood in Paradise Lost is the promise of Life and that is tied to love between a guy and girl that allows babies to join us in adoring Him.

After Mass, I read the papers.  No joy there.  One goof in the Tribune decided to mock Pope Benedict's Christmas message. That is because the Pope refuses to roll over on what constitutes a marriage - a man marries a woman and go half's on babies.  The goof in the Tribune is as doctrinaire as we Catholics, but his faith is grounded not on rock but on paper - Dewey's thoughts, Windy City Times, Boss Cosgrove's e-mails and Eychaner's currency.

Today's gospel which I had absolutely no trouble hearing above the jabber of many babies and toddlers, is very clear in its language - Mary is expecting a child.  A Babe is leaping in Mary's womb, just like all three of my babies, aged 17-26 in 2012, battered and bumped and treated my wife Mary's innards like an inflatable play zone for the better part of her 'confinement.'

Christmas would not be much with this Immaculate Conception.

Luke 1: 39 - 45 39 In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah, 40 and she entered the house of Zechari'ah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and she exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! 43 And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? 44 For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."

"

Eric Zorn Ignores the UN Declaration of Human Rights

Gay Marriage is serious about Illinois - Is Illinois Serious?

Eric Zorn carries more water than Gunga Din - he carried buckets for Rahm's Garbage Grid and has strenuously liquefied the parched tongues of Civil Union advocates, abortion on demanders and now for immediate Gay Marriage in Illinois. Today, close on the heels of Rahm Emanuel's latest nod to his money base and the Progressive zeitgeist tagging Gay Marriage as Priority Three, EZ barrels the basic human right meme:

 All Illinois can do now is hop on the train of history. The trend lines show it's about to roll over the obstinate states where legislators refuse to recognize the inevitability, if not the wisdom and justice, of same-sex couples getting the same rights to formalize their relationships that are enjoyed by opposite-sex couples.

The same rights?  Even the United Nations does not view gay marriage as a human right, much less a requirement to equate Stonewall with Selma, or recalibrate homophobia to school-yard bullying. That is for the journalists and academic procrustean bullies to pound away at once the funding comes through from the usual sources.

The United Nations lays out basic humam rights and specifically sites marriage -

United Nations Declaration of Human Rights

Article 16.

• (1) Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
• (2) Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
• (3) The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.

The Civil Union Act, fogged as a Religious Freedom dodge by Greg Harris and company in the Illinois Legislature, immediately attacked Catholic Charities.  Catholic Charities was bullied out of its service to children without families.  Civil Unions just could not wait. Illinois got on the gay side of history and went to war on millions of Catholics.  How about that?

No Catholic ever said outlaw homosexuals (LGBTQ) or gay culture.  The opposite can not be said to be public knowlege.

Eric Zorn works the meme that Homosexual Marriage is a Basic Human Right.  Marriage is and has been a social contract between men and women for as long as Homo Erectus put two syllables together, Will and Grace, Glee, Modern Family and Ellen DeGeneres notwithstanding.

Illinois is bankrupt, to paint with as broad a brush as Zorn the Scrivener, families and businesses are doing the Exodus from this  Land of Progressive Pharaoh, school choice is unavailable to inner city and struggling rural families and our media do the bidding of Progressive PACS, academic eunuchs, and fiscal star gazers. Go Down, Moses!

Greg Harris armed with the fortunes of Henry Van Amerigen and Fred Eychaner, who wholly own a handsome portion of the Illinois legislators and the media in Illinois artfully bulled through the wildly misleading and divisive Religious Freedom and Civil Union Act, set the table for the Religious Freedom and Marriage Freedom Act, which was tucked away due to the Illinois fiscal collapse and the looming re- election of President Obama. He might be the 1st Gay President, but Barack wanted no rocks and hard places on his path.

The media and the elected officials who take the coin of the Pink Pharaohs argue the basic human right of sexual preference that can only be satisfied by the immediate recalibration of  the meaning of Marriage.

One may argue one's position, but do so with at least a wink to honesty. Gay Marriage will no doubt take effect in Illinois very soon, but let's not pretend that it will not be the result of vast piles of cash paid out in bribe money to clueless at best and spineless at most politicians.


UPDATE - I guess I hurt Eric's feelings:

ZORN REPLY -- Let me cut you off there, Beth. That's just Pat Hickey. More people would read his screeds if he wrote them with a Sharpie on a bathroom wall, which is where they belong. I'm not going to enable him by posting the link, though, as his arguments are ignorant, bitter and small. We don't need that here, now, do we?

Ignorant, bitter and small arguments.  Man I could be a Columnist!

No Fear Here - Americans v. Journalists. Scaroin? Really?

Initium sapientiæ est timor Domini Proverbs 9:10/Pslams 111:10/Acts of the Apostles 17:11

Well, four years ago you’d never heard of hopium, either. Then my colleague John Kass identified it as the drug being peddled by then Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama — a mellowing narcotic named for Obama’s relentless though unoriginal invocations of hope; a powerful political sedative that obliterated cynicism and left voters blissfully optimistic about the power of one man to transform and unite our nation. . . . Scaroin has nearly the opposite effect.

It’s not smoked, snorted, inhaled or injected. Rather it’s transmitted via stump speeches of Republican presidential candidates, notably the passages in which they attempt to scare voters with dystopian visions of the crumbling fascist nation that will be the United States of America if Obama is re-elected.

Eric Zorn

Fear is a now a political trope for the motivation to oppose goofy policy. Goofy is a very subjective adjective, don't you think? However, what adjective is not?

According to too many columnists and far too many 'reporters' subjectivity is the order of the day. Instead of considering the facts, they play at being little John Deweys in the Global Lab.

The template today is fear. One is fearful, timorous, vicious, superstitious, and foolish if one believes that it is murder to kill an unborn child, that sex, procreation and the ultimate expression of love is merely a lifestyle, that success is predetermined by race, inherited wealth, and never by achievement. One is timorous and quaking with rattles of terror unless one is a Progressive Secularist.

Well, Call me scared stiff!

BTW - Hopium was a hit because it is a true, accurate, and a very witty reflection of an original thought concerning a very hollow man in public life - President Obama. Nice suit; nothing inside.

Scaroin? It is to laugh, Eric. A lame racehorse ain't a Triple Crown contender.That said, I am afraid that I need to get to the barbershop. Could stand a trim.

Medill's Chicago Tribune Uses Penn State to Pile on Catholics

"There are not over a hundred people in the United States who hate the Catholic Church. There are millions, however, who hate what they wrongly believe to be the Catholic Church—which is, of course, quite a different thing." Bishop Fulton J. Sheen


We do not really need a religion that is right where we are right. What we need is a religion that is right where we are wrong. G.K. Chesterton

Eric Zorn hates Catholics like a school-yard sneak hates getting caught -"We just playing. It was goofing around. What about them?"

It is a sign of one's Progressive street-cred to vilify a Catholic's beliefs, Catholic leadership, Catholic history, and above all Catholic Institutional failings, while protesting in a soft, silky, humming NPR tone that 'well its is all true. Is it not?'

Eric Zorn cuts to the core of the problem at Penn State by touting a Nast-like cartoon from the in-house paper hanger Stantis -Scott Stantis. I do not believe that there is a Roman Catholic bishop on the Board of Directors at Penn State. While Joe P is a practicing Catholic . . .that must be it! Scott Stantis, who couldn't carry Jack Higgins' jockstrap, evidently needs to draw that connection for the brie-eaters and they love it! Eric Zorn squeals -Stantis Brings It!

Random Bishops! Dude!

Scott Stantis is widely ignored (I was unaware of his body of work) and requires a pedestal. Eric Zorn (EZ), The Water Boy, a columnist and Progressive mouthpiece has a good sized readership. I read him for laughs.

The above cartoon deflects the problem at Penn State, a public school, onto the American Catholic Strawmen - Bishops. Bishops are the patriarchal, liver spotted, cassock-ed, mitre'd, people who are blamed for the NAMBLA* crises that has yet to be seriously addressed.

N.B. Odd. . .NAMBLA is cool with Progressives. Obama appointed a NAMBLA devotee to Arne Duncan's Dept. of Education.

The bishops deserve criticism and must wear the jacket for the priest abuse scandals for many more years.

It is easy to hate the Catholic Church. It is easy to hate. It is very hard work to be merely a good guy. It requires that we do things that we might not find easy to do, like teaching your children that respecting the differences found in some people does not require that you ignore the rules of Nature and moral truth. There have been homosexuals on or planet, since Sodom, Sparta, Boetia, and Christopher Street. The only homosexuals who had children were those on the 'down-low' like Oscar Wilde. Homosexuals married women. Oscar and Lord Alfred Douglas had no children. Impulse and desire do not make for normalcy.

Likewise, it is very difficult to teach my daughters as a widow-man, that the great gift of sex belongs only in the sacrament, because marriage between a man and woman is as much as protective womb as the one possessed by my two girls - young women. They have witnessed the mountain of problems a single parent has in trying to bring children up alone. Children need a mother and a father. My son learned early in life that gentleness and respect for a woman is the greatest body cologne in the world and it is far more attractive to a woman than a gallon of AXE.

The hardest thing to try and teach them is the fact that while we posses our bodies, they are not ours to keep. We can not choose to do what we want and when we want - we can not liberate ourselves when mood strikes. We can, but that is not different than being like Barney the Golden Lab who must dry-hump me on sight. Who's to say this is not Love?

Joseph Medill lovingly hated Catholics and the Chicago Tribune has kept that impulse alive and change.

Abortion and Gay Marriage are two huge Progressive agendas - they must be preserved and instituted. The Catholic Church is the only institution that stands in its way.

President Obama is making war on Catholic hospitals that do not push abortion and colleges that do not celebrate the Rainbow flag. Catholic politicians are okay with that.

Catholic Bishops are finally beginning to show some backbone. Archbishop Dolan of New York is the new Dagger John Hughes - who fought off anti-Catholic bigots through the mid 19th Century. Cardinal George has predicted that he will die in his bed, his successor in prison and that bishop's successor will be martyred for the Faith.

Eric Zorn and the third-rate Scott Stantis are doing all that they can do help make that come true. I hope that our next Cardinal is made of the stuff of martyrs. I like martyrs who give as well as get. I'd love to see someone with the youth and intelligence of Archbishop J.P. Sartain, formerly of Joliet and now Archbishop of Seattle step into Cardinal George's moccasins.

Catholics understand Progressives. We know that the wet-stuff running down the back of our legs is not the Showers of May.


*

The North American Man/Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) is a pedophile and pederasty advocacy organization in the United States that works to abolish age of consent laws criminalizing adult sexual involvement with minors, and for the release of all men who have been jailed for sexual contacts with minors that did not involve coercion.Some reports state that the group no longer has regular national meetings, and that as of the late 1990s to avoid local police infiltration, the organization discouraged the formation of local chapters. An undercover detective around 1995 discovered that there were 1,100 people on the rolls. As of 2005 a newspaper report stated that NAMBLA was based in New York and San Francisco, and that it held an annual gathering in New York City and monthly meetings around the country.
NAMBLA has been defended by poet and rights advocate Allen Ginsberg[6][7] and gay rights activist Harry Hay.

Rahm's Residency Rules -You Stay As Long as There's a Nickel To Be Squeezed Out of You Helots; Only Then You May Go

Inspector General Joe Ferguson, in a report issued this week, said the city's residency requirement makes no exceptions.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has received criticism for allowing the chief administrative officer of the Chicago Public Schools to live in Winnetka for the next two years because of his reluctance to pull his adopted daughter out of her school.

Joe -Well, maybe this one time for an appointee -after all the kid goes to school in Winnetka - he's not a cop, teacher or fireman for Crissakes.

Rahm - Let's Change the Subject! Call the Water Boy! Tell Eric I need three or four residency shout-outs!


The Garbage Grid is the tip of the spear and the upcoming raised water rates is merely the dagger to the short ribs. When you can't breathe, you can't fight back.

Chicago and Cook County has turned the keys over to the progressives.

The Middle Class Tax Base must stay, for immediate future, because it must pay for planned Urban Center Chicago - the playground for the elites. If you own a home, have kids, attend church services, cut your own grass, rake your lawn, keep an eye on your neighbors' kids, call-in crimes, take food to suffering and wonder how long you can keep up with the mounting expenses and the glaciers of bullshit from politicians and the news media, you are not an elite.

Cops, Firemen, Streets and Sanitation Workers, Skilled Tradesmen, Clerks, Accountants, and necessary worker bees for the City of Chicago must reside within the City Limits . . .for now.

Progressive Career ASSholes*, like Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle will call her media pals and publicly humiliate and lay off hundreds of County janitors and then purchase more land for CC Forest Preserves. She'll call her media pals again and publicly humiliate and fire a family man from his County job, because he did not vote for Joy Cunningham's desire to be an Illinois Supreme Court Justice. Make sense?

Career A$$holes, like Forrest Claypool, will cut bathroom breaks and then whine about union rules for bus drivers and CTA train drivers, as if those decades-old benefits sprouted up like some magic Carbondale mushrooms and then continue to build his own pension cash mountains by dint of insider appointments, because the chinless jerk can't get himself elected.

Give me an honest, hard-working thief any day, over these Career A$$holes.

Huge lay-offs are coming and soon. The County and the City of Chicago will lay off the last of the Helots in the coming months and years.

What happens to the Shakman Empire when that happens? Mike gonna strike tents?

That's all down the road. There's more to do!

The Aldermen of the City Council will have gelded themselves, the Wards will be Smart-sized and the population of the City will continue its diaspora to Will, Du page, and Lake Counties. The poor are Section 8'd to the collar suburbs and the middle class will follow shortly, once every possible nickel can be squeezed out the pockets of people in the neighborhoods.

That's the plan, Stan! In a few years, Joe Ferguson, or his clone, will announce that it is just ducky for City employees to hit the trail.

The Progressive Triumph of Will shall be celebrated in the Green, Childless Chicago Urban Center. Garbage and Water, Kids.

* Progressive Career A$$holes can be identified as a person or persons whom breathless idiots term "Ain't He/She Great?" There is never a scintilla proof on the claim, however; thus "Forrest Claypool did a great job with the Chicago Parks District." How and What? Explain, please. "Well, he just did. He's an outsider and a Reformer. What are you some Right Wing Nut? He's Great! Great I tells You!"

The Career A$$hole makes broad and frequent use of Chicago's Iconic Columnists and The Career A$$holes Media Organ -Channel 11 WTTW & WBEZ ( Count the Times a Non Career A$$hole is the featured focus, or a guest - unless being targeted for take-down or abuse. WTTW will invariably do a Progressive Policy Pile -On the target for today, like last week's Eddie Arruza and Forrest Claypool shout-down of CTA Union President Bob Kelly.

http://discussions.chicagotribune.com/20/chinews/chi-cook-county-forest-preserve-looking-to-buy-land-20111026/10