Chicago Values vs. Catholic's of Catholic Chicago

Ride the Dan Ryan into the Loop.  Look in either direction and notice the spires of scores of Catholic churches.  Take a trip up Milwaukee Avenue from Ogden on and you notice the store front hip dwarfed by the magnificence of the Polish Churches built with the pennies  of the real dreamers during the 20th Century.  Chicago is a Catholic city.  A Jewish billionaire and prominent civic minded philanthropist told me, "without the Catholic Church, Chicago would be a one-horse town and a blight on the lake."  I returned the compliment. Without large hearted Jewish givers, many Catholic schools would have closed long ago.

You would never know that to look at either Chicago newspaper. Both editorial boards detested the late Francis Cardinal George, because he stood with iron will for his faith.  Both boards seem to have adopted Blase Cardinal Cupich as a nodding media pet.

Today, neither paper on-line offers any coverage of the March on Washington by Pro Life Americans.

Yesterday, after morning Mass, I noticed bus loads of kids loading up at St. John Fisher Parish.  I know Mother McAuley has a tradition of young women marching in January for the Unborn.

Bruce Dold busies his little self slamming Trump, excoriating Chicago cops, and offering tips for LGBTQ parents -scores of them. No mention of the legion of Chicago Catholics, Lutherans, Evangelicals, Jews and Muslims marching for the unborn.

The Sun Times slams Trump, excoriates cops and continues its mission to get Chief Keef lit up.

Chicago Values are for some real creeps.

Well, off to Providence High School of some Catholic League wrestling.

Leo H. S. Retires # 91 Football Jersey Don Flynn and Neighborhood Says Goodbye to a Landmark

Leo 58, St. Ignatius 54 was the final score of the varsity basketball game last night in Leo's iconic Brother Finch Gym (3rd Floor).

The St. Ignatius Freshman and Sophomore teams soundly beat our Leo Lions by 9 points apiece, but the gents of the varsity saved Leo from a an Iggy Sweep.

They had help from the spirit of # 91 Donald F. Flynn, Class of 1957. Don Flynn went home to Christ in October after decades of powerful support to his teammate Bob Foster and Leo High School. Don Flynn was a self-made mega-millionaire, who never forgot that he was a poor kid from St. Kilian's Parish.

On the football fields of Shewbridge and those defended by Mount Carmel, St. George, St. Rita, Fenwick, Mendel, and before a crowd of tens of thousands of fans in Soldier Field, Don Flynn scared the livers out of scores of Catholic and public school football players.

With Don Flynn's passing, Leo marked the passing of great heart and meaty set of hands always ready to give more and more. Therefore, before the start of the varsity game, Leo President Dan McGrath paid tribute to Don's brother Bob, his son Kevin and his wife Susan and his four grandchildren, and Don's faithful and long-time secretary and friend Yvonne Sperandeo, as well as thirty plus friends and family members and permanently retired Leo football jersey number 91.

Having bested the Lions at the lower levels, St. Ignatius gave the varsity a contest Don Flynn would be proud of - taking an early lead in the double digits. By the start of third quarter, the Lions methodically chipped away at those numbers and gave Leo and the Flynn family a well-earned victory.

East of Leo, the old Walgreens Building on the south east corner of 79th & Halsted collapsed onto Halsted. Four people were injured, but no loss of life, thanks be to God. The men and women of the Chicago Police Department's 6th District are keeping people safe as they always do.

79th Street has changed since the early 1900's when that beautiful terra cotta bedecked building dominated the corner - Franks Department store was torn down years ago. Leo helped the city of Chicago take down a bock of abandoned buildings between Sangamon and Morgan Streets. St. Leo Parish was closed and a treatment center for veterans stands under the Lombardy bell tower of the church. The Chapel of St. Leo in Leo High School that once hosted the over-flow crowd of Catholic worshippers is now the cafeteria for Leo students who dine under a crystal chandelier that once loomed above the altar with the north wall allowing light through stained glass windows dedicated to Our Lady.

The mission remains the same. Leo students, like Don Flynn, have the opportunity to rise above circumstances and challenges.

Things disappear and sometimes collapse. The spirit of Catholic values are here to stay.

Rahm, Chicago Needs Catholic Schools - Vouchers Would Be a Great Help

As much as the Gentry Class* ( affluent, professional, college-diploma Progressives) hate to recognize it, Chicago is a Catholic city. Catholics tend to vote Democratic even though Catholics are about as welcome in the Progressively controlled Democratic Party as a Lesbian Methodist Minister at a Taliban goat-roast after Ramadan.

Catholics belong to a Faith that remains committed to the sacrament of marriage and defends life from conception to the Hospice. Ethnic Catholics tend to go into the military, take careers in Law Enforcement, become home-owners and tax-payers. Catholics are saddled with a Church hierarchy that until only recently took its eye off the ball where children are concerned and almost universally kissed the botox-ed fannies of Planned Parenthood and its Democratic Party minions;too many in the Catholic clergy tried to become Unitarian ministers with better perks, tax-loop holes, residences and cover from accountability.

Nevertheless, the pews remain full in Catholic neighborhoods and the children go to Catholic schools that out-perform public schools across the board.

Charter Schools fit nicely in the Progressive pattern of John Dewey education, but aped the veneer of the hall-marks of Catholic schools: selective enrollment, uniforms, uniform discipline codes, Mission Statements, teacher accountability, and do more in the classroom with few dollars. Charter Schools, even the very best ones like the Noble Street models, are not Catholic Schools.

Charter Schools get tax-dollars and Catholic Schools do not.

Because Charter Schools get State tax-dollars, Public Service unions directed by SEIU pushed teacher unions to agitate for unionization in Charter Schools. The door to that was kicked wide open in 2009. Charter Schools are public schools and over the years to come will be dominated by the teachers unions who helped create the mess that is public education.

Catholic Schools and the fewer Lutheran, Dutch Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Independent Schools operate on tuition and money from fund raising. Catholic cops, firemen, streets and sanitation workers, skilled trades union members, nurses and public school teachers in tax-targeted middle class neighborhoods send their children to Catholic Schools - because their kids will receive faith-rooted moral instruction, discipline, accountability, feed-back, and self-esteem.

Empirically speaking, I see thousand of teens wearing Mount Carmel, St. Rita, Marist, Notre Dame, St. Gregory, Gordon Tech, Leo, Maria, and Our Lady of Tepeyac sports wear.

N.B. I must give a shout out to the Green and Gold of St. Patrick High School on the north side in celebration of its Centenial and a Half of service to Chicago!

I have yet to experience the sight of young people sporting Simeon, Dunbar, Hubbard, or Whitney Young caps, hoodies, or t-shirts.

Kids represent. When they are proud of the association with their school's history, record of achievement and street cred they brand themselves, Mom and Dad, Grannie and Gramps and the extended family and neighbors with Maroon and Orange of Brother Rice, Brown and Vanilla Mount Carmel, the Blue and White of Maria, Red, White and Gold of Mother McAuley, Blue and Crimson of St. Rita, the Orange and Grey of Gordon Tech and of course the Orange and Black of Leo.

Today in a very cogent and practically articulated article John Kass of Chicago Tribune offers a sound bit of advice to Mayor Rahm Emanuel - get behind School Choice Vouchers and now. Here is the impact point - Chicago's tax-base send their kids to Catholic schools -middle class families black, white and Hispanic - with great personal sacrifice: they pay tuition twice, because they are required to live within the City limits:

. . . And under the restrictive — and selectively interpreted — residency laws, Chicago schools have a captive middle class. Cops and firefighters and city workers and teachers must live in the city to keep their jobs.

They can't leave town and raise their kids in the suburbs, even if they keep a house address in Chicago. The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that a presidential chief of staff, living in Washington, with kids in Washington, can be considered a resident of Chicago. But don't be naive enough to think this standard would apply to others.

So if students can't be squeezed into top magnet high schools, the parents are compelled to fork over more than they can afford for parochial education. Or leave the city.

This sets up an unequal, two-tiered system, with limited resources. And in a city so historically corrupt, the dispensing of limited resources has predictable and cynical outcomes.

In March 2010, for example, the Tribune reported on the VIP list maintained by Chicago Public Schools. A nephew of former Mayor Richard Daley's lobbied to get a political supporter's two daughters into an elite high school. And there were other reports that Chicago politicians — including a so-called reform alderman — tried to clout their own children into select schools.

Those who win a spot in the excellent magnet schools sing the system's praises and lavish the politicians with praise and votes. And those who don't are abandoned to fate.

Certainly Rahm knows this. And, I'd like to think, it's what truly angers him.

jskass@tribune.com

John Kass is a public school guy, but John Kass is not a member of the Gentry Class. He is a blue-collar ink-slinger.

The Gentry Class control the Media. The Gentry Class controls Democratic Party and very sizeable number of GOP elected officials. The Progressive agendas present a steady diet of empty rhetorical memes - a Buffet of Bullshit.

Most people take a pass on the offerings under these sneeze guards, but their elected officials for whom they continue to vote wolf the offerings down.

Rahm Emanuel needs to serve up Vouchers, Chicago needs Catholic schools and their non-Catholic cousins: Lutheran, Dutch Christian, Hebrew, Muslim and Independent schools.

Chicago is still a Catholic city and Chicago Catholics have had enough from the Gentry Class Progressive Buffet.

* from Joel Kotkin:

Gentry liberalism combines four basic elements: faith in postindustrial "creative" financial capitalism, cultural liberalism, Gore-ite environmentalism and the backing of the nation's arguably best-organized political force, public employee unions. Obama rose to power on the back of all these forces and, until now, has governed as their tribune.

Obama's problems stem primarily from gentry liberalism's class contradictions. Focused on ultra-affluent greens, the media, Wall Street and the public sector, gentry liberalism generally gives short shrift to upward mobility, the basic aspiration of the middle class.

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/dec/02/opinion/op-kotkin2

Col. James A. Mulligan - A Heroic Figure from Chicago's Buried History

I re-read a 1921 edition of Catholic Church in Chicago 1675 - 1871 by Gilbert J. Garraghan, S. J. no doubt one of Father Damen's later disciples.

This history chronicles the growth of Catholic Chicago from Father Marquette's original Mass for the voyagers on the sand dunes near the mouth of the Chicago River to the Great Chicago Fire.

The first Catholic Church built in Chicago was Father St. Cyr's St. Mary's located on the south side of Lake Street near State in 1833 with a mere 200 ( mostly French) worshipers.

By 1857 and flood of thousands of Irish immigrants, the still magnificent Holy Family Church towered above 12th Street ( Roosevelt Road; a Catholic College was in place at St. Mary of the Lake and Catholic Institute (later the Chicago Lyceum) -Literary and Debating society flourished.

One of the chief members of the Catholic Institute was recent graduate of St. Mary of the Lake College - James Adelbert Mulligan.

Col. Mulligan organized the three Catholic Military societies ( the Shields, the Emmett and the Montgomery Guards) into the Chicago Irish Brigade, which was the 1st militia from Illinois recognized for the Federal Army in the American Civil War. This body became the Illinois 23rd Regiment.

Col. Mulligan led the Illinois 23rd ( 3,500 tough Micks) to Missouri where it faced Confederate General Sterling Price's force of 12,500 Rebs in what must have been the wildest battle of the Civil War - The Battle of Lexington also known as the battle of the Hemp Bales.

Hemp is dope. Mulligan's force was outnumbered and surrounded on the campus of Masonic College. Sterling Price bombarded Mulligans troops from September 18th through the 20th. On the 20th of September, Price soaked hundreds hemp bales in the Mississippi River and used them as breastworks - constantly closing a grip around the throats of the 23rd Illinois.

General Price probably should have lit them bales on fire and smoked the Micks into submission. Too stoned to fight?

Nevertheless, the soaked bales did the job and Mulligan and the 23rd were captured and later paroled in a prisoner exchange - not uncommon in the old rules of war.

Mulligan became the commandant of Camp Douglas but was removed for treating the Confederate Prisoners with dignity and food. Progressive minded radical Republicans wanted the Camp to be a punitive exercise - starve and freeze the Rebs.

Col. Mulligan returned to combat leading the Chicago Irish Brigade in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley against Confederate General Jubal Early at Leestown and later Second Kernstown ( n.b. Illinois Irishman James J. Shields defeated Stonewall Jackson at the 1st Battle of Kernstown in 1862 and was the only Union General to best Jackson) where Rearguard Action expert Col. Mulligan fought a fighting retreat and was killed by a Confederate sniper.

We read way too much mythology about Jane Addams and Lyman Trumbull types and most of it is inflated nonsense.

James A.Mulligan was quite a historic figure. We only read about great Americans like Beaubien, Brownson, Shields and Mulligan in books that were close to history and not re-invented redactions of history.


James A. Mulligan (1830-1864)
James Adelbert Mulligan was a brevet brigadier general of volunteers in the Union Army. An Irish politician in Chicago, he raised the "Irish Brigade" (23rd Illinois). He was wounded at Winchester and as his men were carrying him from the field he ordered them to save the flag rather than to save him. He was captured and died three days later.