Religious Liberty Rally Draws a Thousand and Change in Chicago Today

The Yellow and Black Balloons are part of a Rosary chain built by the students from St. Cantius Catholic Church for the Religious Liberty Rally in Federal Plaza today.

With a complete media blackout and absolutely zero pre-event announcement whatsoever, more than a thousand citizens (I estimated the crowd in Federal Plaza at between one thousand and twelve hundred)stood in the rain to stand up against the HHS Obama Mandate.

Speakers included United States Congressmen Democrat Dan Lipinski (3rd) and Republican Joe Walsh (8th)as well as the head of B'nai 'Brith Chicago Joe Morris -President and General Counsel of The Lincoln Legal Foundation.

This was a respectful and polite throng of very angry people. The anger is palpable, because the respect is purely one-sided. President Obama has made it clearly evident that his will be done and religious people can keep their mouths closed, much as he and his script writers told the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

Here are some photos of this afternoon's rally, which had its power shut off by the Federal Building, only to have power restored by the US Post Office, in Federal Plaza at Dearborn and Adams from Noon - 1 PM today.

What's Lacking? Any Sense of Transcendence

Here's a fabulous Lord Elton and his catamite at some huge event.

This morning, I heard that Elton John proclaims that Jesus is Gay. Last year Jesus was a Community Activist. Before that, Jesus was an Anti-Semite.

"I think Jesus was a compassionate, super-intelligent gay man who understood human problems. On the cross, he forgave the people who crucified him. Jesus wanted us to be loving and forgiving. I don't know what makes people so cruel. Try being a gay woman in the Middle East -- you're as good as dead."

Faaaaaabbbulous! and just in time for Oscar Buzz, Lord Elton!

I always thought He ( Joshua Bar Joseph - The Christ) was a Jewish Carpenter's Apprentice . . .Well Goodbye Yellowbrick Road!
For talk radio I listen to WLS AM/NPR ( for laughs)/Relevant Radio - for news, weather and information. Relevant Radio is Catholic Radio - ( 950 AM) until about 6PM when it becomes Avenue 950 ( Home to the wonderful Skinny and Houli Show which gave Chicago its voice back) with great jazz - Classic Cool!

Don and Roma punctuate every syllable with Healthy Trinity. NPR low-talks news about mistreated Muslims in London who wanted to fight police torture with fertilizer and blasting caps - diversity rocks the Casbah! Relevant Radio presents the news and more - we get great aphorisms beyond Ridley Scott's Gladiator!

What we do in life echoes in eternity. Awesome, Maximus.

On Relevant Radio at drive-time is Father Larry Richards, a stiff collar out of Pittsburgh, PA. He has a great sense of humor. On one show I heard a guest talk about how Pro Lifers are making impacts on young people because they address not only the immediate fears and anxieties of an unwed teen mother-to-be ( school, career hopes, friends, family expectations) as well as the transcendent implications of killing a child. Great stuff.

Lord Elton and his catamite have more substantial porgies in the hot oil.

American Media took the Death of God in 1960's seriously and nailed the Old Guy's Cultural Coffin shut tight. The transcendent - that which reminds us that we are not alone and responsible for what we do every moment is what is lacking in what passes for American culture - this want in our spiritual diet gave us Hope and Change over Courage and Commitment; Graphic Novels (Comic Books) over The Great Books; Jersey Shore over Death of Salesman; Avatar over Best Years of Our Lives; SEIU over American Labor Movement; Abortion and Gay Marriage over the American Family; Carbon Footprint Policing over Mankind.

The Alternative Lifestyle is the norm. Jimmy Kimmell is Alastair Cooke. John Stewart is Walter Cronkite. Keith Olbermann is Oil Can Harry and Rachel Maddow is Ward Bond. Our Media and our public education system and our university group thought have taken the Hegelianism of dopey John Dewey closed the door on Yaweh, Allah, or God. No one told them to shut up, read something or do some hard work.

Relevant Radio is one way to get some transcendence back into our diets. It is Catholic Radio and catholic means universal. I listen to Klezmer music, read Issac B. Singer and still put Mayo on a Bacon Sandwich - give it a try.


Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89).

Pied Beauty 1918.

GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough; 5
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: 10
Praise him.

Chicago's Relevant Radio - A Catholic Voice in a Secular Desert

Ready for your next test of Faith? Naw, I had plenty this week. The tests are coming anyway.

1,500 City Workers are set to get laid off. Urban violence can set your watches - but who wears one anymore? North Korea and Iran are pushing nuclear confrontation with the World. Mother McAuley tuition is due on July 1st. You snap to attention every time the sump pump kicks on - well, I do anyway. Our UN Analog Television has 800 channels pumping out Celebrity News, re-runs of House/Law and Order: The Apocalypse Squad/Fat Programming/Cable Shout Downs.

Radio is not much better.

Yet, Relevant Radio offers a sea-change. Here in Chicago, Cardinal George has sparked an initiative to offer Catholics a road back to their roots and part of the initiative is Relevant Radio.

Chicago is blessed with some priests who really manage to really get it right - Father Eddie Pelrine, Bishop Joe Gorman, Bishop Joseph Perry, Father Frank Philipps, Father Marty O'Donovan, Father Canary, Father Tony Brankin and especially Cardinal George.

Catholic lay people, especially those who push to the forefront as spokespersons, can be real pains-in-the-ass as well, as the lazier Cupcake brand of Stiff Collar.

Yet, there are lay voices with genuine understanding of the Gospel who try to live Christian lives and are not starchy Pharisees, or PC Nit-wits.

Cardinal George seems to be giving these folks, genuine Catholic working people, a forum. Relevant Radio AM -950.


Relevant comes from the Latin relevare - to raise up. It now means offering evidence of proof to an argument or means of understanding a situation. Stiff Collars and Sky Pilots can too often toss out platitudes or snatches from Holy Writ that have absolutely nothing to do with the loss of a job, confusion, disappointment or fear in lay persons. Some of the gents can not get it right.

Take last night,

Your goofy correspondent here, went to the Institute of Christ the King in order to pick up his lady love, the beautiful and elegant Ms. Terry Sullivan, who attended a concert of Sacred Music, in the still being restored former St. Gelasius Catholic Church at 6414 S. Woodlawn.

I missed the Sacred Music concert, because I had to drop off Clare at yet another in the summer-long string of graduation parties for St. Cajetan's Parish and I had been topped off on Sacred Music at St. John Cantius these last two weeks from the Pentecost through last Sunday.

I am a dutiful; son of the Church, but more like the son with a messy, smelly room and sleeps until 2PM and asks,"What's for Breakfast?" Familiar, Brother Catholics?

Allow me to digress further . . . I get to the Institute at about 7PM, park and wander into the beautiful Church - empty. There is a woman standing out on the steps with a brochure in her hands. " Are you a Chicagoan?," she asks. Yes'm.

I learn that this lady had travelled from Kansas City for this concert and had been informed by some Father I-AM-Vere-Bisee, that she and her friend would not need a car as Chicago is an Olympic Class Urban Village of Delightful Souls AND that she could stay at the Ramada Inn in convenient HAMMOND, Indiana!

Father Cupcake evidently does not ever, need to try and find a Taxi! The woman and her friend got soaked by some cottage-industry moss-back with a car and a chauffer's license, discovered in the Hammond, Indiana phone-book. Try and find a Taxi in Hammond, much less in the neighborhood around 6414 S, Woodlawn - just around the corner from the site of Jeff Fort's Former Fortress of Stone Peace!

Now, I have about 7,836 years in Purgatory to cancel out and those are only ones I managed to build up between 1967 and 1982. The subsequent Years of Triumph I will not even get into; it definitely seemed like Corporal Work of Mercy Time!

After informing the two women that I would offer to drive them back to their rooms at The Ramada Inn on Calumet Ave., along with the gracious and sexy Ms. Sullivan, certainment, and having secured the requisite bona fides, from Chicago Daily Observer Editor and Chicago philanthropist John 'Shorty' Powers, that I do not (nor have I ever had) have a family of four in my basement freezer, I drove the women back to Hammond.

Pointing out the various sights and sites south on Stony Island - the former Greek Orthodox Church and now Nation of Islam Mosque; Moo and Oinks ( must stop shopping for high quality meats - I usually go the one at 85th & Racine); Chicago's Toll Booth and 1st City Asset Sold Off; CVS - Home of Dick Butkus; The Big Bridge; Chicago's Harbor; Pat Carroll's Cro Bar on 106th off Indianapolis & etc.!

All of this Clerical error could have been avoided had an actual 'in-the-game' Catholic person been allowed to give these travellers from Kansas the straight dope.

My favorite priest, Francis Cardinal George, is a Chicagoan. He knows that Taxi Cabs are limited to the nicer neighborhoods and that Hammond is not in Chicago. Cardinal George has promoted an outlet for Catholics, weary travellers in this burgeoning Vale of Tears, to get the Real Dope, the Skinny, and the Real Deal.

That is Radio 950 - Relevant Radio. Listen to the Catholic Voice of Chicago.

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Relevant Radio exists to assist the Church in the New Evangelization by providing relevant programming through a media platform to help people bridge the gap between faith and everyday life.

Assisting the Church
In fidelity to God, Relevant Radio creates, promotes and endorses programming that follows the post-Vatican II teachings of the Roman Catholic Magisterium. Relevant Radio is the first and only radio network to be approved by the USCCB as a national media outlet and through a strategic collaboration with bishops and their dioceses, Relevant Radio is able to serve the Church by providing programming that is adapted to the needs of the listening audience.

The New Evangelization
The late Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, encouraged American Catholics to seize the means and methods of modern communication to inspire the faithful with a deeper understanding and commitment to Christ and His Church. This he called the New Evangelization. Pope Benedict XVI agrees that “the possibilities opened up for us by modern means of social communications are indeed marvelous and extraordinary.”

Relevant Programming
Relevant Radio programming plays a crucial role in helping people integrate a Catholic perspective into their daily lives and guides them in asking the fundamental questions about the meaning of life. Through listener-interactive programs that focus on current issues and events, Relevant Radio seeks to incorporate Catholic beliefs into these discussions to contribute to the maturation of faith through evangelization, affirmation, and catechesis.

We believe it is possible to present fundamental elements of the Catholic faith in a manner that can satisfy committed Catholics, nominal Catholics, non-Catholic Christians, and all who sincerely seek the truth that makes life meaningful.