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.

 

A History Lesson on Abortion:The Catholic Clownfish

 An Evangelical Theologian credits the American Catholic Church for taking the lead from the get-go over the monstrosity of ruling -Roe v. Wade, or the start of the decline in America's greatness.  This article from the Washington Post by R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary provides a historical perspective that is all too often lacking these days.

By the time Roe was handed down, Catholic leaders had developed sophisticated arguments and growing organizations to fight for the pro-life cause. In 1967, six years before Roe, Catholics had led in the creation of the National Right to Life Committee. The Catholic tradition, drawn largely from the natural law, became the foundational intellectual contribution to the development of a united front against abortion. Nevertheless, for evangelicals to join the movement in a decisive way, arguments drawn directly from Scripture had to be formed and then preached from the pulpits of evangelical churches.
Those arguments captured the conscience of the evangelical movement and produced a seismic shift within the movement and within the political life of the nation. From the 1980 U. S. presidential election until the present, the pro-life movement has been populated, funded, and directed, for the most part, by evangelical and Roman Catholic leaders. Beyond that, the emergence of crisis pregnancy centers and support systems for women considering abortion have come from the work of millions of pro-life Roman Catholics and evangelicals at the grassroots.
Does this represent a new ecumenism? The reality is actually quite counter-intuitive. The fact that Roman Catholics and evangelicals work together on the front lines of moral and cultural issues should not mislead. The cooperation is genuine and necessary, as we both understand. At the same time, the very Roman Catholics who remain stalwartly pro-life are those Roman Catholics who most closely adhere to the doctrinal teachings of their church. The same is true on the evangelical side, where moral conviction is most clear where doctrinal convictions have the greatest hold.

A devout Jew, who happens to be one of Illinois' most influential civic and business leaders, once told me about the reality of Chicago philanthropy - "It's a Catholic thing."  To paraphrase his words he explained,  without Catholic leadership in philanthropy, like most other public endeavors, Chicago would be one big smoking hole in the ground.  He suggested that I  look at the governing boards of all of the great charities, museums, art galleries, opera, symphony as well as hospitals and social services and you will them dominated by the same big Catholic money people.  To be sure there are Jewish names in abundance, but not any where near the number of Catholics.

My cynical self reflected on the political symbioses that must be considered - the Catholic as clownfish*?  Catholics do not have a tradition of tithing, because of its echo to British Penal Laws that required Irish Catholics to pay tithes in support of the Anglican Church.  The Micks set the table for the American Church for better and worse. Catholics bought pews, kneelers, glass and plumbing in order to build cathedrals.  Pennies made Billion$.  Philanthropy was tribal.  Germans built German national churches, Italians built Italian, French, the French and the Poles the most magnificent Catholic infrastructure in the city of Chicago.  The Irish were called, ironically enough American. That all changed with Cardinal Mundelein in 1916.  Chicago was going to be an America Catholic city.  It is, for better, or worse.

For Better - Mundelein adopted and rivaled the far-sighted Jewish United Fund of Chicago and pulled together a massive social contract with all Chicagoans -

• The CYO
• CISCA, or Catholic Action in all schools
• St. Vincent De Paul Society
• Catholic Charities
• Chicago Catholic Schools Office and hundreds of schools
• Catholic Labor
• St. Mary of Lake Seminary
• Mundelein, IL
• Leading Church voice voice against International Fascism and the "Paper Hanger" & American Communism in Labor and Progressive politics
• Demanded Catholic lay philanthopy

Cardinal Mundelein made the Chicago Catholic Church singularly and unashamedly American.  This is the 'worse' coming into play.

• Priests and nuns mistook the gospels for John Dewey social lab notes
• Some priests and far too many lay persons demanded that Ecumenism replace Catholicism until many parishes became indistinguishable from a Universalist-Unitarian meeting house
• Democracy is hard to parse in hierarchy
• Catholics wanted to become less Catholic and more spiritual - Jocists movement may have had too much to do with this
• Bishop Shiel is forgotten and Saul Alinsky is taught in Catholic schools ( DePaul most especially)
• Democratic politicians used their Catholic identity and helped undermine the faith and the faithful
• Turned Catholic institutions over to the State only to have those institutions gelded

Catholics are not as strong as they were in the 1920's and have far less clout e.g. The HHS Mandate, Government Definition of Marriage and the American Holocaust - Roe v. Wade.  Catholics still pump millions of dollars into Chicago charities and philanthropic ventures, but seem to have ignored the fundamental  reason for philanthropy in the first place - it's an obligation of faith.  Now, too many Catholics give to Planned Parenthood and Gay Marriage initiatives.

Cardinal Mundelein once said , "that not war, nor famine, nor pestilence have brought so much suffering and pain to the human race, as have hasty, ill-advised marriages, unions entered into without the knowledge, the preparation, the thought even an important commercial contract merits and receives. God made marriage an indissoluble contract, Christ made it a sacrament, the world today has made it a plaything of passion, an accompaniment of sex, a scrap of paper to be torn up at the whim of the participants." That was in 1935 and nothing on that truth has changed, except some Catholics and the people they are trying to please.  Cardinal George has said the very same thing for years.

A Clownfish is a good thing. A Catholic Clownfish does great things.  Catholic clowns have not anyone much good.

Baptists and devout Jews are keeping the Church honest about itself anyway.

* Clownfish live in a "symbiotic" relationship with certain anemones. This means they benefit from living with the sea anemone, and the sea anemone benefits from the presence of the clownfish. They are the only fish that are able to live in sea anemones and not get stung by their tentacles. Clownfish are very active fish and are extremely aggressive. Because they are quite active, the clownfish are thought to be "clowning around". They defend their territory and the sea anemone that they live in. Clownfish eat the leftovers from fish on the anemone and algae. The leftovers include copepods, isopods and zooplankton. 

Clownfish have a few ocean predators, but their greatest threat is humans. People who catch clownfish and keep them as pets in aquariums are making a mistake. There are only ten out of more than one thousand types of anemone that are able to host these fish. Many people put the fish in a tank with the wrong anemone. In captivity, the clownfish can live from 3 to 5 years. In the wild, they live 6 to 10 years.

A Church the World Hates Welcomes All- Father Tony Brankin

If I were not a Catholic, and were looking for the true Church in the world today, I would look for the one Church which did not get along well with the world; in other words, I would look for the Church which the world hates.

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen

The priest from El Paso . . .Illinois, who studied for Holy Orders at the old St. Viator's College ( Olivet University) in Bourbonnais, Illinois, and became the Bishop of Rochester, NY, as well as a television celebrity in the 1950's was a good one. Fulton J. Sheen, like the magnificent athlete/priest/bishop Bernard Sheil of Chicago is pretty much banished from popular imagination. Who they?

Well, they were no Bill Maher, or Simon Cowell, nor were they self-proclaimed community activists. Neither was Jesus. He was an apprentice Jewish carpenter and the Son of God.

Shiel and Sheen were energetic servants.

The world is beautiful. It is people who want to advertise for profit who throw up the hideously intrusive billboards along life's highway.

The TGIF Obama Presidency is the Mandate America Administration. Last Friday, always trot out bad news on Friday, mandates that "private insurance provide contraception and the abortion pill for ‘free’, which means insurance rates will go up and that all Americans will end up paying for it, no matter how disgusted you are by abortion."

Our popular culture comes not from building cathedrals as community, developing a synthesis of great thought from the ancients on of the Gospels, or Scripture. Rather, popular culture happens to be what is on an editorial page crafted by group think artisans, or what is available on cable. Oprah is Aquinas and Bill Maher is Chaucer.

Students are walked away from Western Civilization and begin the study of history at the end of the 19th Century. Truth is "a proposition is a plan of action and that it is only judged true when that plan of action has proven successful when put into action." Truth is a moveable feast.

Truth is tougher, it seems to me.

Last week in the Parish bulletin of St. Odilo's in Berwyn, IL, Father Tony Brankin, a Chicago Catholic priest, musician* and sculptor, offered this:

The people in charge of the culture—the newspapers and television—even the modern professors in the universities and seminaries—anyone who owned a microphone or stood in a pulpit or sat at a desk in a classroom told us that the
Catholic Church was no longer to be considered the One True Church. They told us that the Catholic Church did not have a special position in the mind of God nor in the hearts of the people. They persuaded us to believe that the Catholic Church—even though historically we knew that it was the one that Jesus Himself had founded—had no more authority than any other group or club or organization. They told us that every teacher—every speaker—everyone—all groups—all opinions—all teachings were equally capable of being right or wrong.

Oh, and it worked. We have all been damaged by this campaign against the uniqueness and authority of the Catholic Church. As moderns we have been made to think that possibly all religions are equal. How many times do we hear them say on television or in some movie or in some discussion on the radio that all faiths are paths to heaven—and that none is better than another? The problem is that if we hear this enough—we begin to believe it. We think that maybe they are right. It sounds so gentle and simple to say all religions will take us to God —Blah blah blah.

In fact, we have been brain-washed into thinking that we cannot even discover the Truth—either about God—or about His will for us—or about anything for that matter. The movers and shakers of our world, you know, the celebrities and politicians, as well as the ones who write the commercials and the scripts of all the shows we watch—the ones who teach us and our children what is important and what is not important—they want us to believe that we cannot find any kind of truth—because truth—they would say—does not even exist.

You say something long enough and loud enough and with enough of a crowd behind you and it becomes Truth, in the Dewey mold: Gay Marriage is same as Marriage, Choice is Woman's Reproductive Health, Promiscuity as no consequences, only treatments, and 1% is way too many.

Catholics are not homophobic, do not hate women, nor are they slaves to a Roman Master, of German parents, who wears a funny hat.

Father Brankin is not a priest that the media invites to share opinions on WLS, WTTW, or with the columnists and editorial boards of our surviving newspapers. Truth is a hard and answers are easy. You need an Progressively cached activist priest or nun, who fights for gay marriage, better and more abortions, and the ordination of women for easy answers to Dewey's agreeably verifiable conclusions to inquiry.

Father Brankin, like Bishops Sheil and Sheen, takes the tough road and beauty of living outshines the billboards, slogans and memes and he concludes with an invitation to all, not a mandate, a welcome to unity -

There are elements of truth in many faiths. If someone who is not Catholic believes that Jesus Christ is God and Man and the savior who died on the cross and rose from the dead—well, of course, that is correct, and that will help that person get to heaven. But if someone who is not Catholic denies things that Catholics believe, well, that might make it more difficult for that person to get to heaven. If, for example, a Muslim believes that God wants us to destroy our enemies and that a person
will go to heaven if he commits suicide and kills many people along with himself—how is that the same as saying that it is God’s will to love our enemies? In other words how does suicide and ritual murder help us get to heaven in the same way that loving our enemies gets us to heaven?

Again, suppose someone says that they don’t believe what the Catholic Church teaches about life and love. They believe, for example, that there is nothing wrong with artificial birth control. Well, they will have a very difficult time explaining to their children (or even to themselves) why pre-marital intimacy is wrong or why extra-marital intimacy is wrong—or even why abortion is wrong or why gay marriage is wrong. And if they do not believe what the Catholic Church teaches about life and love—basically that love is very much about having babies—then they will be forced by the logic of their unbelief to accept every other kind of immoral behavior—
unfaithfulness and promiscuity and a life of sin, homosexual behavior, pederasty, incest.

Not believing in Catholic truths necessarily makes it more difficult for non-believers to save their souls. I am talking about all this today because Wednesday we begin “Church Unity Octave week”. This is eight days in which
we are asked by the Church to pray as fervently as possible that those who are outside the Catholic Church may—to put it simply—become Catholic.

We pray that atheists may come to believe in God—that Pagans may learn of the true God. We hope that Jews will accept Jesus, and that Protestants (the so called “Christians”) would begin to understand the fullness of Revelation as
it is found in the One True Church, the Catholic Church. Most of the time—because of modern influences—we think that Catholics must relate to other religions by simply
celebrating our differences. But that is really not enough—nor is it honest.
People need to know—for their own sake— that there is such a thing as Truth—and that there is a true God and a true religion—and all of it will be found in the Catholic Church. If we love our brothers and sisters——then we should want them to get to heaven by belonging to the faith that will help them get to heaven.

We must do everything possible—prayer, example, and willingness to witness to the Truth of our religion—in order to bring them to the fullness of truth—in the One True Catholic faith. Because in that Oneness is Truth and in that Truth is salvation .

Life is beautiful without the billboards obscuring the view.

* edited update thanks to Leo Man Bob Hylard:
pat ..as you know fr.brankin is also a devotee of irish music as well his sculptoring..i'm happy to say my daughter lynn has one of his handmade irish harps.[ a beauty ]..my mother-in-law lived in st.thomas more and was totally dedicated to the man ..fr.brankin would sometimes borrow the harp to duplicate its' style for another would be harpo marx..lynn is quite good at the harp but it's too heavy to carry downtown for street music...


http://www.prolife.com/BIRTHCNT.html

Leo Lions Feed the Hungry - Saturday May 21 at Alumni Field

The Leo High School Football players and other student volunteers, along with this well-fed impulse grocery shopper and President for Institutional Advancement Dan McGrath, will distribute bags of organic fruit, vegetables, juice and heart healthy canned goods to our neighbors tomorrow morning between 11 AM and 1PM at Leo Alumni Field.


Alumni Field is located on the south side of 79th Street between Sangamon Street and Morgan.

While some Chicagoans might wait for the Rapture, the young Lions will be taking care of their neighbors.

Leo High School was named for the Pope of the Working Man -Leo XIII - and established by Cardinal Mundelein in 1926. Since then, thousands of Leo Men have served their God, country, families, and their neighbors as leaders and doers.

Our guys maintain that tradition. I have been writing about the great Bishop Bernard J. Sheil who founded the CYO and was a tireless voice for Catholic Action. Here is what Shiel was all about - doing for others.

These guys are doing alright for themselves as well. Here are some of the Leo Class of 2011 College Placements:

Below are the current list of students who have been accepted into colleges with proof of an acceptance letter:

Josiah Jones-University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northern Ill. and University of Ill. at Chicago.

Eder Cruz-Valparaiso University, Marquette University, Iowa State, St. Louis University, Bradley University, University of Alcorn, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Hope College.

Andre Cail-Illinois State and Northern Illinois.

Brendan Mahan-DePaul University

Rueben BlackWell- St. Norbert College, DePaul College, DePaul University, Alcorn State, Central State and University of Arkansas Pine Bluff.

Andre Patton-Iowa State, North Carolina Agricultural & Technical State University, University of Missouri, University of Memphis and Northern Illinois.

Edward Vaughn-Georgia Tech, Purdue University and University Of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Joshua Cooper-International Academy of Design and Technology.

Denzel Tucker-Ferris State University and Hamline University.

Lawrence Littlejohn-Utica College and Johnson & Wales University, Grand Canyon University, Columbia College, Nazareth College, Sage College of Alabama, College of St. Scholastica.

Anthony Morgan-Western Illinois and University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana.

Justin Douglas-Kentucky State.

Aundra Wright-University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana and Bradley University.

Fred Montgomery-Robert Morris University.

Derrius Hendrix-Bowling Green State University and Southern Illinois University Carbondale.

Delexis Jackson-Robert Morris University.

Joshua Gilbert-Tennessee State University.

Fact Non Verb, Gents!