Bishop Bernard James Sheil the Victim of Co-Opting Clowns and Cardinal Cody

There ain't no clout, when your clout is dead. That is a Chicago Commandment. Shakman Decree killed clout in Chicago - "hey, can you help me? - " Not a chance;Tell me about it, walking. Shakman, Dude! No Bosses. Hit the door."

There is no Shakman anywhere else, but Chicago, Cook County and the dumber parts of Illinois. Shakman helped Michael Shakman amass millions of dollars and soulless people get elected, prevents any possible human contact in government and is destroying public service. Shakman like abortion is what passes for progressive thought.

Clout means assistance from someone at a personal level. Clout is a good thing. Goo-goos hate Clout. I have yet to experience a Progressive who ever took an active empirical interest in another carbon life-form. I have been told that they are out there, but, Dog My Cats, I have yet to meet, learn by word-of-mouth, read-about, or tripped over a Progressive (a devout disciple of John Dewey/Hegel/Jane Addams/Roger Baldwin/Margaret Sanger)who would ever dig-in past the pocket lint and fugitive Breath-Savers and claw up a nickel for another human being. I get out a lot too.

Good Works are not Programs. Programs are bureaucracies run by managers with staffs and salaries. Programs are tax-generated by cash. Cash can not do good works; metaphysical impossibility.

Progressives rail against good works, especially good works by public persons. Public Persons who do good works are called Bosses. Bosses are targets of Federal, State and local investigations by Blue Ribbon Goo-goo panels comprised of academics and political outsiders. Political outsiders are people who never do anything for anyone but themselves and call that civic virtue. Rather, Goo-goos badger their enthralled editorial boards, community activists and political suits into legislating programs that cost tax-payers but create armies of dependants. No saloon-keeper alderman can match a loudmouth with a microphone, TV time and politicians who already rented out their souls and principles.

Today, I am reacting to a reaction to my post on Bishop Sheil. Bishop Sheil is out of the general public collective memory. Shiel was co-opted to death, by the Church and the Progressives. As I noted in my previous post, Bishop Sheil was ecumenical long before Vatican II.

Born in a mixed black-white, Catholic-Jewish, Irish-Polish neighborhood on Chicago's West Side, Sheil was lace-curtain Irish. His grandfather had been an alderman, his father was Democratic leader of the 14th Ward. Entering St. Viator's College in Bourbonnais (a later pupil: Fulton J. Sheen), Sheil was ordained in 1910 and assigned to a middle-class parish. He caught Cardinal Mundelein's eye, however, and began to receive promising assignments. He served as chaplain at the Cook County jail, as an assistant at Holy Name Cathedral and was named chancellor of the archdiocese in 1923. A year later, on his first visit to Rome, he was received by Pius XI, and in 1928 he was consecrated bishop.

I got an interesting e-mail from of pal, Elias Crim, who forwarded me a note from a gent who reacted to my recent offering of Bishop Bernard James Sheil. This person noted that a Jewish branch of B'Nai B'rith had established programs similar the CYO ten years before Bishop Shiel put his ideas into action.

This was the Old Testament preceding the New Testament.

The B'nai B'rith Youth Organization began in Omaha in 1924 and spread rapidly, reaching Chicago within a year. Very quickly BBYO became organized in Jewish neighborhoods throughout Chicago, with prominent basketball and boxing programs, in particular.

There were (and are) a boys' arm, called Aleph Zadik Aleph (a/k/a "AZA", using Hebrew letters in Greek fraternity style), and a girls' arm, B'nai B'rith Girls (BBG). Heavy on sports, after-school programs, service projects, and dances, with a typical American emphasis on self-government (teens conducting business meetings with parliamentary procedure, electing officers, publishing newspapers, sending delegates to regional, national, and, by the 1940s, international conventions, etc.)

Bishop Sheil liked that model a lot.

Sheil knew what he was doing, it seems because he had some great roots dug out of the Nebraska soil and brought to Chicago, where Catholics and Jews crowded together around Halsted Street. The athletic/social activity element founded in Faith must have had an impact upon Sheil to be sure.

Catholic Social programs were well established before the arrival of George Cardinal Mundelein, but it was by Mundeleins fiat that talented underlings like Bernard Sheil and Msgr. Hoban were directed to actively improve direct Catholic Action.

The origin of the CYO in 1930 was certainly the most impressive and most dangerous to Progressives. Action was a reflection of Faith and not taxes - bureaucratic programs would sanitize Action of Faith.

The Catholic Church, no stranger to politics, had ambitious clergy who were willing to advance themselves over the bones of good people.

I offer two pieces taken from Time Magazine that are the post mortems of the CYO and Bishop Shiel.

One is from 1954:

Christmas in Chicago used to include one famed celebration. Among as many as 800 children, ecstatic before a mountain of toys and candy-crammed paper bags, workers of the Catholic Youth Organization would labor happily to distribute presents and keep order. And in the middle of the maelstrom would move the founder and father of C.Y.O., The Most Rev. Bernard J. Sheil—a firm-faced Friar Tuck kneeling nimbly beside the toddlers, leading other children by the hand, talking to twelve-year-olds with the dignity becoming their years. To Bishop Sheil, the C.Y.O. Christmas Party was a symbol of his life and work—cheerful, practical action among the big-city poor.

But this Christmas there will be no party. The toys people have offered so far have been rejected or sent to some other charity. The second-hand paper bags C.Y.O. staffers saved all year to fill with candy were thrown away unused. The staff itself was decimated and depressed; Bishop Sheil of Chicago never goes to the C.Y.O. offices any more.

"The Thing You Desire." The Christmas party is only one of many good things that began to vanish from the archdiocese after Shell's dramatic resignation as C.Y.O. director-general last fall (TIME, Sept. 13). He never told why he resigned, nor did his superior, Samuel Cardinal Stritch, but the reason is becoming as plain as the old Water Works on Michigan Avenue. Bishop Sheil, a generous and sometimes over-generous man, had undertaken a great number of ambitious projects and had spread his resources thin. His long-standing liberalism and impatience with reverse-collar bureaucracy had brought him enemies. By the time Bishop Sheil made his well-aimed attack on Joe McCarthy (TIME, April 19), which earned him considerable dislike in some places among the Roman Catholic clergy and laity, the reaction of a few big financial contributors was enough to cause serious trouble. When money sources on which he relied to meet the bulk of the C.Y.O.'s million-dollar budget began to dry up, the cardinal's office began to move in on the C.Y.O., and Sheil quit.

"The C.Y.O. will continue to benefit from your counsel," said Cardinal Stritch to Bishop Sheil publicly, "and will become the thing you desire." But today the C.Y.O. and much of the "empire" of do-good organizations he created are being whittled away.

The Casualties. Of 27 major activities related to C.Y.O., twelve are dead or have been served with a death warrant, four have been transferred to other agencies, two have been cut down and turned over to Catholic Charities, four have their fate in doubt. Among the casualties: If Sheil Institute, a commercial college. Attended mostly by young adults with daytime jobs, it required all students (15% Negro, 30% non-Catholic) to take a course in business ethics along with their other work. It will close in January. ¶ The Sheil School of Social Studies, set up to provide adult education in the liberal arts and philosophy. It has been attended by some 20,000 in its eleven years, was at its record enrollment of 700 when it closed last fortnight. ¶ The Sheil Social Service, which collected food and clothing for poor children, closed in September. ¶FM station WFJL, which promoted religion along with its boxing matches, closing December 31.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,821045,00.html#ixzz1MnOCx96M

The political clout of Bishop Sheil died along with the mortal husk of George Cardinal Mundelein in 1939. Cardinal Stritch began to undo many of the direct actions for social justice established by Bishop Sheil. Following WWII, the boys who had boxed at CYO came home, established the greatest standard of living the world has ever seen and no longer needed a leg up in life. They had the G.I.Bill, the Taft Hartley Act and the most robust labor movement on earth. The CYO?

Well, another Prince of the Church followed Cardinal Stritchs successor Albert Cardinal Meyer - the ecclesiastical mirror of the political Governor Pat Quinn or Senator Dick Durbin. John Cardinal Cody was akin to Mayor Rahm Emanuel -change came hard, fast and impersonally.

When he moved to Chicago last year from New Orleans, the Most Rev. John Patrick Cody brought along a well-founded reputation as a tough clerical administrator who likes to cut out deadwood. Last week Roman Catholic Cody lived up to his no-nonsense fame by firing one of the patron saints of Chicago-style liberalism: Auxiliary Archbishop Bernard J. Sheil, pastor of St. Andrew's parish and founder of the vast Catholic Youth Organization.

A fire-eater who publicly denounced the "phony antiCommunism" of Joe McCarthy in 1954, Sheil is now 78 and subject to ailments (most recently a broken ankle) that have kept him from performing pastoral duties. Cody visited Sheil with the suggestion that he let a younger man take over financial administration of the parish. Sheil at first consented, but then told a newsman: "I didn't retire. This is a removal." Cody expressed his regret that the matter had been made public—and coolly named a new pastor of the parish.

Since Cody had already replaced 35 other overage pastors, many Catholics agreed that he could hardly fail to seek Sheil's retirement as well. Nonetheless, there were plenty of complaints about the abrupt manner of the dismissal from priests and laymen who felt more comfortable under the free-and-easy regime of the late Albert Cardinal Meyer.

Chicago's Catholics freely credit Cody with a number of notable reforms: he has modernized the archdiocesan seminary, raised the salaries of lay teachers in parochial schools, let assistant pastors elect two representatives to Chicago's influential board of priest consultors (previously all members had been appointed by the archbishop). By the same token, Cody is something of an authoritarian; both his priests and his parishioners complain that his communications, far from being two-way, consist of his sending the word on down. Last month an ad hoc committee organized three meetings attended by 400 Chicago clerics, recommended that priests have a greater share in formation of archdiocesan policy and that assignment procedures be revised. In effect, the committee formed the closest thing yet to a union of priests.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,835601,00.html#ixzz1MnYkQLjt

Clout is direct action to do good. When your clout is dead, and nothing is deader than dead clout, the game is over.

The Church and Government chose programs over personal acts of good.

Clout is as dead as the CYO.

Before PC Killed History, There Was Fighting Bishop Bernard Sheil

"You should know, that I wasn't ordained a Catholic priest in order to become an archbishop." Bernard Sheil to a banker who tried to threaten Sheil for speaking out on American Labor

Bishop Sheil was instrumental in the development of Leo High School in 1921. He was Cardinal Mundelein's eyes on the street. The Cardinal's tough guy athlete got things done by doing. He brought people into the ring with him to mix it up for a better world and the school dedicated to the Pope of the Working Man -Pope Leo XIII was his baby.

Yesterday, three college football coaches visited Leo - Yale, North Dakota and Eastern Michigan - in order to recruit some of our guys. The coach from Eastern Michigan was a huge young guy who played for the Phoenix Cardinals and now coached. Three fourths of his time is spent finding the righ student athletes for his program. All three coaches visited Mount Carmel, St. Rita, Loyola and Fenwick because young men from Catholic schools bring more to the table - they belong.

Athletes and Scholars are very similar in their drive and commitment. Catholic grammar schools and high schools, more than any other visible aspect of the Roman Catholic Church in America, reflect what is most enduring - that sense of belonging. It is wonderful to watch thirty fifth graders parade from Kennedy Park in their St. Cajetan Warrior jerseys. You do not join a team; you belong to it. You do not attend a school; you belong to the Lions, The Mustangs, the Caravan and the Meteors.

I had an interesting talk with the coach from Eastern Michigan* - no longer the Hurons - the Eagles. PC killed the sense of belonging to a school situated on the Huron River in Michigan. So, since 1991, history has been buried. Catholics bury important links to history as well. We had better quit doing that. Bishop Sheil would want us to keep our memories sharp - keep the guard up.

Bishop Sheil was an athlete who pitched a no-hitter for St. Viator College, a Roman Catholic Seminary in Bourbonnais, Illinois ( alma mater of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen), which is now Olivet Nazarene University. Shiel pitched a no-hitter against the University of Illinois and later sparred with capitalists and Communists to achieve a just wage and human working conditions.

The Catholic Church gave up St. Viator's to a small Protestant dnomination from Texas. The Nazarene Church flourished and their college in Bourbonnais is that denomination's Notre Dame. Bernard Shiel became a Catholic priest, when being a Catholic meant putting own's money where one's mouth was. I grew up at the end of that era - post Vatican II. The Mass went from universal Latin to English and lost the beauty, majesty and mystery that should be fundamental to the Sacrament of the Eucharist. Liturgy was now vernacular - conducted in English, Spanish, Polish, Croatian and even Tagalog. Priests faced the congregation and Consecration of the Eucharist took a backseat to Father's lecture on Social Justice.

Social Justice had been taught in Catholic Schools and it was hands-on - CISCA -Catholic Intra Student Catholic Action. Catholic Action meant getting involved in the Faith. Helping the poor, the orphaned, the widowed, the imprisoned, the sick, the disabled and the disenfranchised.

Officially founded in 1930, the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO) built upon previously initiated Holy Name Societies in parishes throughout the Chicago Archdiocese. Centralized in a downtown office and led by the legendary and controversial Bishop Bernard J. Sheil, the CYO sought to combat delinquency, Americanize ethnic Catholics, and bridge social divisions during the Great Depression. Whereas previous Americanization efforts of Cardinal George Mundelein had met with meager success, the CYO fostered widespread Catholic unity even as it furthered the Church's inclusion in the mainstream culture. The CYO offered a wide-ranging system of social services, community centers, and vacation schools; but its greatest publicity resulted from an extensive and comprehensive sports program that claimed the world's largest basketball league (430 teams) and an international boxing team. Such CYO ventures included American Indians, African Americans, Asians, and Jews, which catapulted Bishop Sheil to national prominence as a social activist and labor leader.

Gerald R. Gems

From grammar school through parenthood, Catholics belonged to the Church - they did not only attend Mass on Sunday. Whether it was a sport, a fine arts initiative, a novena, or a dance, Chicago Catholics belonged in and to every aspect of community life. Little guys and girls who played on CYO teams also joined devotional sodalities and later brought that commitment to their studies and careers.

Like St. Viator College, that sense of belonging seems to have been the price of new relevancies of Vatican II. Words not Deeds trumped everything.

The CYO became irrelevant to universal social change. CYO like too much of the Catholic Church in America was co-opted.

Social Justice was youth oriented and found outlets in athletics that brought blacks and white, better-off and destitute kids together for boxing, football, basketball, swimming and track and field. This was the CYO the Catholic Youth Organization developed by Father and later Bishop Bernard Sheil, who pitched a no-hitter against University of Illinois for St. Viator College.

Bernard James Sheil is almost forgotten today. History has burned in the Orwellian memory-hole over the last thirty years. America is seriously dumbed down. Bishop Sheil's Wikipedia passage is such thin gruel it is not worth a glance. Bishop Sheil's life is in the dusty covers of old books and the files of the Archdiocese of Chicago Archieves.

Sheil was ecumenical and catholic long before Pope John XXIII called all of the red hats and mitres to Rome. He was a priest in tradition of stockyard pastors like Monsignor Dorney who walked up and down Halsted and physically threatened pimps and saloon keepers, as well as read them off from the pulpit. Sheil, like Father Dorney who was called the King of the Stockyards, respected and obeyed by labor leaders, packing house owners and parishioners of St. Gabriel Parish, took the Gospel outdoors. Not only that, Sheil made things happen. He worked both sides of the ideological street, while working with Saul Alinskey he balanced things with Joe Meegan of the Back of the Yards Council. While fighting for social justice, Bishop Sheil confounded Communism for the snake oil that its is. The Lefties hated Sheil and they helped bury his deeds during the triumph of political correctness.

For a Progressive there is no forgive and forget. There is only forget and damned such that everyone forgets what happened ten minutes ago.

Sheil was so effective that Franklin Delano Roosevelt kept in touch with Bishop Sheil all through his Presidencies.

Most of all, unlike later day priest-prophets, Sheil used the media and did not become its tool. Sheil dug into his cassock pockets and showed up early to set-up chairs.

With his (Sheil's) own inheritance from his father and $10,000 from Utility Man Budd, Sheil set out to lure off the streets young potential gangsters—white and Negro, Protestant, Catholic and Jew—with a social and athletic program that kept moralizing to a minimum. Boxing was the major attraction. When some high-minded people clucked at the stress on boxing, Bishop Sheil's reply was: "Show me how you can inspire boys away from the brothels and saloons with a checker tournament and I'll put on the biggest checker tournament you ever saw."

Today the bishop has a staff of 500 to help him run the C.Y.O.. which spent $1,500,000 last year in Chicago alone on such projects as two large community centers in Italian and Negro neighborhoods, medical, psychiatric, child-guidance and remedial-reading clinics, a radio station, and an orientation program for Puerto Ricans. There are hundreds of other C.Y.O. centers throughout the U.S. and abroad. . . .
Bishop Sheil made himself just as unpopular with fringers on the right as with those on the left. At one forum on Christian-Jewish relations he was viciously heckled by a delegation of Christian Fronters, and a virago pushed her way towards him as he was leaving. "I'm a Catholic!" she screamed. "You're not a Catholic—you're a nigger-lover and a Jew-lover. You call yourself a bishop. You're not a bishop, you're a rabbi." And she spat in his face.

Bishop Sheil did not move a muscle. "I thank you. madam, for the compliment of your action and your words." he said calmly. "Rabbi? That is what they called our Lord."

Time Magazine 1953.

Words matter to ninnies. Action and Deeds mark a human being's impact.

Bishop Sheil took action. He was an athlete who understood balance - the Gospel must be accepted and put into action in the same way that a boxer mixes the doctrine of assault and defemse in its proper prroportion. There are no Bishop Sheil's in the ring these days. However, there are three Catholic priests who act like Bishop Sheil - Father Dan Mallette, Father George Clements and Father John Smyth - like Sheil they are too real to get promoted.


*The controversy over the nickname continues to this day, as many former students and faculty were angered that a unique name like Hurons was replaced by a common name like Eagles, especially for reasons of political correctness. Some alumni have even refused to donate money to the school until the name Hurons is restored. An official chapter of the EMU Alumni Association, the Huron Restoration Chapter, seeks to bring back the name and claims to have the support of Chief Leaford Bearskin of the Wyandot Tribe of Oklahoma and former Grand Chief Max Gros-Louis of the Huron-Wendat Nation of Quebec.[6]


http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/220.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=xdV_JV1fbZMC&pg=PA94&lpg=PA94&dq=bishop+sheil+and+the+cyo&source=bl&ots=fhBqBZbpLG&sig=mGcbd8ww4X4LE83tWMa3OaN8NUo&hl=en&ei=61nSTefRMobk0QHowIzECw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CDoQ6AEwBjgK#v=onepage&q=bishop%20sheil%20and%20the%20cyo&f=false

Ash Wednesday -'Time's Up! Let's Go, Fat Boy!'

In omnibus operibus tuis memorare novissima tua, et in aeternum non peccabis - In all that you do, remember this Bud's for you!

'No, I'm sorry . . . In all of your works be aware of your last end and you will never sin.'

Who the hell this guy from the Book of Ecclesiasticus was talking to is beyond me.

Me and every human child above the age of six is aware of Death* - others and our own - and we sin up a storm. Hence, Lent.

Lent brings us to a place each year when we can actually make an effort to abstain from the inclinations and vanities that creep into our lives each day.

Lent is a good thing - it is Faith in Action. Faith in Action is what distinguishes Catholics from our Calvinist and Lutheran co-religionists.

We as Catholics got embarrassed by our Militant Catholicism ( Faith in Action) and apologized or hid it away for the last fifty years. Remember Bishop Shiel? Saul Alinsky stole most of his programs and ideas.

This Lent let's get back in the game.

We have over 7,000 Catholic white men committed to Leo High School and they support poor black - mostly non-Catholic young men - in getting a quality Catholic Education.

We have Catholics leading the Police Athletic League of the Chicago Crime Commission taking steps to get kids off the streets and into a gym and a boxing program.

Catholics are the most generous demographic in Chicago.

Practice Faith in Action - Good Works - and don't worry about the Final Visitor.


* By the time the two of you read this, I will be attending the funeral in Kankakee of a former student, a splendid young man, devoted husband, and father of two - a Notre Dame grad and banker. He is doing just fine right now, as his life was Faith in Action.