Leo High School Welcomes Francis Cardinal George!

Today, at 9:30 A.M. Chicago Archbishop Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I. will arrive at Leo High School. Cardinal George is the first Chicago Archbishop to visit Leo High School since 1926, when George Cardinal Mundelien dedicated this great school.

The Leo Students, Leo Alumni, Parents, Board Members, Benfactors, Staff and Chicago Police and Fire Department heroes and our neighbors will greet His Eminence and celebrate this school's dedication and commitment to Catholic Education and Chicago culture.  Five Leo students will escort His Eminence into the school and the Leo Board Room to meet the school leadership.

Cardinal George will bless this school and all of the people who have contributed to its vitality, growth and service to young men.

Thank you, Your Eminence, for your leadership and commitment to the Faith and Families of Chicago and especially for your visit here today.

Elvis and the Prioress - What Are You Giving Up for Lent?

The first woman to kiss Elvis on the big screen was Mother Prioress Dolores Hart







Skinny Sheahan asked, " Hickey, have you read the article about Dolores Hart? Read it."

Skinny suggests and this dude abides. Read it, Mr. Skinny. Thought about what I had read, too. Here it is.

What will I give up for Lent? Whatever it will be by the end of today, Ash Wednesday, will be as nothing compared to what Dolores Hart gave up decades ago.

Dolores Hart was a movie star who played in films with Anthony Quinn and Elvis. Dolores Hart is now Mother Prioress Dolores of Regina Laudis Abbey in in New England. She is a contemplative Roman Catholic nun.

Let's see, Hollywood, Stardom, Riches given up for a life of prayer,silence, contemplation and service.

Dolores Hart set the bar pretty high. I will no doubt give up something like oatmeal cookies from the Leo Cafeteria, third helpings of pierogi, or blaspheming every time I see that CTA photo of Forrest Claypool looking for the L in the wrong direction.

Mother Dolores, as she is now known, is the subject this year of an Oscar-nominated documentary short, "God Is the Bigger Elvis," which airs April 5 on HBO. The documentary chronicles her life as a nun after a Hollywood career that saw her costar with Elvis Presley ("Loving You" in 1957 and "King Creole" in 1958), Anthony Quinn ("Wild Is the Wind," 1957) and George Hamilton ("Where the Boys Are," 1960). Her favorite is "Lisa," from 1962, in which she played a Jewish refugee after World War II. Before the documentary, she last appeared on the big screen in 1963's "Come Fly With Me," a comedy about flight attendants looking for love.

Not only does "God Is the Bigger Elvis" explore Mother Dolores' life in Hollywood and at the monastery, but it also chronicles the day-to-day life of the nuns at the abbey, which is also a working farm. Like Mother Dolores, a lot of the nuns had previous occupations, including the law and science, before they changed vocations.

Imagine MSNBC's Chris Matthews -Trappist Monk. "HA!!!."

Better yet, Pat Hickey IVI-IPO Goo-goo. Now, that would be one Hell of a Cross to bear anywhere. . . . and I don't have a hair-shirt.


http://www.feelnumb.com/2010/11/04/elvis-presley-co-star-love-interest-dolores-hart-became-a-nun/

Americans Welcome Challenges; Not Mandates

The day LBJ died the American Holocaust was born.

The tweedy old maids and dowager crabs who are and have been Progressive America can only have their will forced down peoples' throats. They never do well at the ballot box.

Academic cheerleaders and spin doctors give heft to the ACLU in its challenges to federal judges, when elections fail to do the will of the tweedy old maids and dowager crabs. They load the debate with historical evidence that sex between two gents is the moral and legal equivalent of a black child getting an education from a Jim Crow public school.

If these same academic sophists trotted out the true history of Progressive America it would begin with Radical Reconstruction of the South after the Civil War and not with Osawatomie John Brown.

Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner ignored Lincoln's Malice toward None foundation to southern reconstruction and mandated a punitive military occupation and reorganization to southern states. The balance of the 19th Century and most of the early 20th Century was a disaster for blacks and whites.

Reconstruction of the South is Progressive America's starting point and the next Progressive victory was Prohibition.

We live in the shadow of the ultimate Progressive Mandate -Roe v. Wade - the victory of eugenics over core human values.

Americans accept challenges and when that challenge is taken up very good things happen.

When Soviet Russia put Sputnik up above the stratosphere, a Jewish U.S. Navy submariner, Adm. Hyman Rickover challenged America to do a better job as parents, teachers and school administrators to shore up our lousy public schools in handling science and math. Good idea! No Mandate, a challenge.

America went to Space.

JFK worried about tubby kids and sent Pierre Salinger and his little brother Bobby, as well as Army and Marine recruits on 50 Mile Hikes.

Good idea! No Mandate, a challenge.

We did more sit-ups, pull-ups, sprints and push-ups in Gym and out of school.

When the dowager feminists of Planned Parenthood demanded to go beyond birth control to abortion they went went shopping for Federal Judges all the way up too the U.S. Supreme Court. Worst idea ever! A Mandate, and a huge challenge to the American soul.

We have a Mandate President obligated to dowagers and old maids.

John Kass, in the Chicago Tribune makes a great study of the HHS Choice Mandate requiring Catholic institutions to violate the tenets of faith.

Do Americans want access to contraceptives, and do some want abortion-inducing drugs? Of course, some do, and arguments have been made in support of such policy.

But should Catholic hospitals be forced by the federal government to provide such abortion-inducing drugs and other birth control in violation of faith?

Most Americans cringe at such a prospect. We see abusive federal power battering the church and we wonder, rightfully: What's next?

Naturally, Republicans will try to take advantage of this, but the problem is bigger than partisan politics. And the feeding of the federal leviathan isn't particular to Obama, as President George W. Bush and the No Child Left Behind Act proved to educators.

With great will and personal charm, Obama pushed through government-run health care. The problem was never with giving care to the needy. The problem was that this policy increased federal power. And now Americans are learning a terrible fact about what happens to freedom as federal authority grows. A line in a Wall Street Journal editorial makes this clear.

"When politics determines who can or should receive what benefits, and who pays what for it, government will use its force to dictate the outcomes that it wants — either for reasons of cost, or to promote its values, which in this case means that 'women's health' trumps religious conscience."

(emphasis my own - The Queen of the tweedy Old Maids his own bad self -John "Outcomes" Dewey!)

Americans are challenged, Catholics and non-Catholics. Living is not a Mandate it is a God's gift.

If Only . . .Agonistes

Design'd for great exploits; if I must dye
Betray'd, Captiv'd, and both my Eyes put out,
Made of my Enemies the scorn and gaze;
To grind in Brazen Fetters under task [ 35 ]
With this Heav'n-gifted strength? O glorious strength
Put to the labour of a Beast, debas't
Lower then bondslave! Promise was that I
Should Israel from Philistian yoke deliver;
Ask for this great Deliverer now, and find him [ 40 ]
Eyeless in Gaza at the Mill with slaves,
Himself in bonds under Philistian yoke;
Yet stay, let me not rashly call in doubt
Divine Prediction; what if all foretold
Had been fulfill'd but through mine own default, [ 45 ]
Whom have I to complain of but my self?

Milton -Samson Agonistes

Those lines always reminded me of the great people in public life, who struggle to do good for people. Some even end up in a Federal Prison.

One very good guy I know is sitting out the last of his semesters in Terra Haute, in no small part due to a very good man himself - several good men actually.


I just got off the phone with a genuine Chicago voice in print. He writes for one of the the two big Chicago Dailies.

We shot the breeze about a mutual friend who is having a particularly tough time - that friend is also in the cold and impersonal world of modern journalism.

Our conversation turned to things political -

"Hey, what's up with your Republicans?"

My Republicans?

"Yeah. You went all McCain."

Illinois Republicans blow their toes off - not unlike up-state New York Republicans. I like Dan Proft.

"Jesus, he has about twenty seven Cicero contracts and stuff hanging on him. Why can't you get clean once in a while . . .like with that Polish Kid Andy Andrecscxzjhykczxcszch? "

I work at Leo 'cause it's easy to spell.

We went back and forth on reform and the usual Who's-Who litany of rogues, cretins, feebs, dummies, crooks and phonies.

We landed back at good people. People who actually do something for other people -who will do anything without a Press Conference or naming of a Blue Ribbon Commission, or any one really ever knowing about it.

In Poetry things are neat; in prose, things are messy. Politics is Prosaic. It is un-Romantic. The Romantics in Politics - the Goo-goos; the Boiled Beets Progressives; the Dopes Who Believe EVERYTHING is like a Julia Roberts Movie; the Raving Lunatics Left/Center/Right - are the very people who screw things up. Romantic Politics makes more taxes and more corruption. It is a Hegelian thing.

It is the same thing in my Church - Romantic Goofballs like the dippy Nun escorting victims to an abortion - the poetic romantic channel surfers screw things up. Sister! Be a Unitarian Nun! They ARE WAY COOL!

We, Catholics, have had a very, very Gay Friendly Church Hierarchy and Clergy( Well, Who's to Say?) for well over forty years and then we find ourselves shocked when Father Daffodil is taking seven altar boys to Wisconsin with a video camera. Hey, spare me the 'Pedophile's Have Nothing to Do With Homosexuality' dodge - yeah, and pipe dope has nothing to do with plumbing.

If Only more attention could be focused on the people in public life who actually make a difference - no, not The Honorable Dorothy Brown - maybe, then, politics could start to work for people again.

St. Monica - August 27th is Her Feast Day!

St. Augustine - 'Jesus, Ma! That Hurt! You hit me in the Throat!

St. Monica - 'Watch your language, Austin! Now, say you're sorry.'

St. Augustine - 'Sorry.'

St. Monica - 'You want a fresh one, boy? Like you mean it! Now!'

Tomorrow is the Feast of St. Monica!

St. Monica was a girl from Roman Tagaste, North Africa. She was a Christian, but her parents married her off to a Pagan by the name of Patricius ( Paddy Boy) and from all accounts was a gold plated jerk in many ways - he teased his wife about her charity works and her piety. Paddy Boy had a lousy temper to go with his dissolute life style - " I'll be home in an hour -What? Two Beers for Crissakes -What . . .I can't hear you. It's about work. Kiss the kids."

Monica bore this mope three children and one of them was Honors student and Dad wannabe Augustine (Austey).

The old man took a dirt nap for keeps when Austey was 17 and Monica did all she knew how to drag the kids up right and in the Faith. The Old Man had not been a great help and now Austey was off to school in Milan and found himself - he became a Manichean -kind of like the Scientologists of 6th Century Rome in Decline.
Austey was like many of our contemporary soul-patched Arabica youths who believe -nay know - that they are absolutely correct on all matters -not unlike President 'It's Distraction' Obama:

I still thought that it is not we who sin but some other nature that sins within us. It flattered my pride to think that I incurred no guilt and, when I did wrong, not to confess it... I preferred to excuse myself and blame this unknown thing which was in me but was not part of me. The truth, of course, was that it was all my own self, and my own impiety had divided me against myself. My sin was all the more incurable because I did not think myself a sinner. (Confessions, Book V, Section 10)

Monica was no harpy, but prayed for the wee lad to snap out of it.

He did. Along with his teacher of rhetoric and mentor Ambrose, Monica brought the smart-ass around to where he began - in faith. His sins are his own and life is obligated to others. When Austey woke up, he went to work with a will.

St. Monica endured a crumb of a husband and know-it-all- jerk of a son. She did so out of love for both men and in communion with her Faith in God. We have several Monicas in the ever expansive Hickey Family and they all tend to be gems.

We have more than a few Pats/Paddys/Patricks/Padgrigs and some of us (including yours truly) seem not unlike the guy St. Monica got saddled with - no Augustines - yet.

Perhaps, St. Monica might interceded and send us an Austin/Augustine/Gus; but if not, more Monicas will do very nicely.