Posted on 06/08/2008 12:16:59 PM PDT by TornadoAlley3
CHICAGO (CBS) Father Michael Pfleger will return to the pulpit at St. Sabina Catholic Church on June 16, after Francis Cardinal George forced him to take a leave of absence over controversial comments about U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Pfleger created an uproar last month when he delivered a sermon at Trinity United Church Of Christ and mocked Clinton's tears on the campaign trail.
George forced Pfleger to temporarily step down this week to reflect on those comments.
"I have asked Father Michael Pfleger, Pastor of St. Sabina's Parish, to step back from his obligations there," the cardinal said in a statement on Tuesday, "and take leave for a couple of weeks from his pastoral duties."
Parishioners said Sunday morning that they have been told Pfleger will return to the church on June 16 on the grounds that he can not discuss politics.
The Cardinal met with parishoners of St. Sabina on Thursday to discuss the suspension, but neither the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago nor the congregation discussed that meeting until Sunday morning.
The church was demanding Pfleger's reinstatement, arguing all the good he was doing at Saint Sabina far outweighed what he said one Sunday at Trinity United Church of Christ.
They wanted him back to preside over graduations and weddings. His absence, they said, would punish them as much as it would him.
Pfleger has been pastor of the predominantly African-American St. Sabina parish, at 1210 W. 78th St., since 1981. He has gained notoriety for his political activism on behalf of gun control, racial and social equality, and intervention against youth violence.
On May 25, Pfleger was a guest preacher at the Trinity United Church of Christ, of which Sen. Obama was a member for two decades. In his sermon, he mocked Clinton and the emotion she showed before the New Hampshire primary.
"I really don't believe it was put on. I always thought she felt 'This is mine. I'm Bill's wife. I'm white. And this is mine. I just got to get up and step into the plate,'" he said. "And then out of nowhere came, 'Hey, I'm Barack Obama.' And she said, 'Oh damn, where did you come from? I'm white. I'm entitled. There's a black man stealing my show.'"
Pfleger then pretended to cry in a dramatization that included a handkerchief.
"She wasn't the only one crying. There was a whole lot of white people crying," he said.
Pfleger later apologized for his comments. "I apologize for anyone who was offended and thought it to be mockery. that was neither my intent nor was it my heart."
But the controversy prompted U.S. Sen. Barack Obama to cut ties with Trinity, where he had been a member for more than 20 years.
Previously, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the former longtime pastor at Trinity, drew fire for controversial remarks which infuriated Obama.
Wright has said the U.S. government may have developed the AIDS virus to infect blacks and that the U.S. invited the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Obama has denounced the remarks.
CBS 2's Mike Puccinelli will have more on Pfleger's return to St. Sabina tonight at 5:30 p.m.
Pfleger will merely make sure that no one is recording what he is saying.
Show of hands, who wants a nationally known bigot to perform their wedding?
How can he ensure that?
He’s on a leash-one he’s bound to snap.
Gosh, I know teenagers who get grounded for longer than Fr. Pfleger for a whole lot less. If he’s back the 16th, then I think Cardinal George gave him a leave of absence more to shut up the rest of us, than to shut up Fr. Pfleger.
They should have taken this opportunity to wholly defrock the man permanently. He is a racist, marxist ideolog masquerading in a priest’s robe.
Give the guy a reward for being a jerk. That’s one reason why this society is going downhill.
I confess, FR Pfleger, that I think you are an asshat.
He should be fired permanently.
I would hope that Father Pfleger would spend his time off attending a series of diversity and racial sensitivity training seminars. He seems to have a serious problem in that area.
Bullsh*t.
I hope someone busts that jerk another time. The Cardinal is a weakling!
It appears the Catholic church is spiraling down the same toilet as the Republic.
To permit this “priest” to return, is a travesty.
By all means, their non-political tax avoidance should be ended and all taxpayer funding should cease.
Seems to have the effect of dumbing down the Catholic church, and reducing everything to the lowest common denominator...
Silly me -- I thought the role and goal of the church was to RAISE folks up to higher standards...
This velvet glove treatment — could be the result of Pfleger having photos of the Cardinal in bed with a young boy or a dead woman.
I wonder where this ‘bipartisan’ group is while this is going on?! /s
As a non-sectarian, non-partisan organization
“Americans United was founded 60 years ago by journalists and...”
Americans United (for seperation of church & state) is an independent organization with no ties to any larger group or political movement. We are a true grassroots organization.
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Barry W. Lynn is the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a tax-exempt organization dedicated to preserving church-state separation. He is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, an attorney, and author of Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom.
Reverend Barry W. Lynn (born 1948 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) has been the Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State since 1992.[1] He is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, and a prominent leader of the American religious left.
After law school, he continued to work with the United Church of Christ in their mission to gain amnesty for young men protesting the draft. Before accepting the post at Americans United, Lynn held a variety of positions related to religious liberty concerns. From 1984 to 1991 he was legislative counsel for the Washington office of the American Civil Liberties Union, where he frequently worked on church-state issues.
In an argument to the Internal Revenue Service, Lynn argued that Focus on the Family’s efforts to bring up moral issues in the 2004 election represented “a blatant effort by Dobson to build a partisan political machine based in churches . . . He has made it abundantly clear that electing Republicans is an integral part of his agenda and he doesn’t mind risking the tax-exemption of churches in the process.”
Americans United filed suit against the Interchange Freedom Initiative (IFI), a program of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
IFI was allowed to recommence their Iowa prison program, and they were not required to repay some 1.5 million dollars of expenses to the state.
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Americans United was founded 60 years ago by journalists and by leaders of the American religious community out of a fear, at that time, that in particular the power of the Roman Catholic Church was becoming so great that it was able to censor books, keep things from even being brought into the country, films and books, and that it was actually working to take over public education.
About 17 years ago, when I had just started here at Americans United, I was spending about half of my time here and moving from New England. One day over coffee my wife happened to see a copy of USA Today, on the back of which was an ad that said, “Christian Beware.” It was an ad taken out by a very small church in Upstate New York. Bill Clinton was running for his first term. “Don’t vote for Bill Clinton because Bill Clinton is a sinner,” and then it had little Bible verses to prove that he was based on his beliefs. Then it said, “If you vote for a sinner, you’ll be a sinner, too.” There were a couple Bible texts to prove that. She handed that to me and said, “You interested in this?” I just about spilled the coffee. Of course I said, “We have to do something.”
From that moment, we set up something called Project Fair Play. We complained to the Internal Revenue Service about the conduct of this small church, which happened, as it turned out, to be the church that Randall Terry, the founder of the anti-choice group Operation Rescue was a member of. We insisted that they be investigated. It turned out that that was the first church in history to lose its tax exemption solely on the basis of its electoral politicking. It was a small church. It went out business and then reformed, as it had the right to do, with a different name. The message was clear, that this kind of over-partisan politicking had no place within the confines of the tax code.
In many ways, the problem is just getting different. It used to be that people would throw out these highly-biased voter guides where you literally, in the case of the Christian Coalition Voter Guides, they always made the Republican look like a sainthood candidate and the Democrat look like somebody whose image ought to be in the House of Horrors Wax Museum in Wildwood, New Jersey. It was unmistakable who you were supposed to vote for. These were distributed by the hundreds of thousands right before elections, usually the Sunday before a Tuesday election.
Most churches, now, are very reticent to do that. They no longer feel that’s appropriate. What we have found is that people are trying to find cleverer ways to achieve the same goals. They might have videos playing or slides being shown and say things like, “Some candidates want to fight terrorists,” and then they might have a picture — this is a real case from Arkansas — a picture of President Bush, an official White House photograph. Then they say, “Other candidates probably think we should sue the terrorists.” Then there was a rather unflattering picture of John Kerry.
It does upset these churches. Whether they do this because they didn’t pay enough attention to the rules or because they just deliberately want to violate the rules, it’s still a bad thing to happen. It’s a good thing that there are not-for-profit organizations, I think. I think it’s a good thing that they are barred from partisan political activity. I don’t want to bar them from talking about issues, even if I don’t like where they come down on the issues. What I don’t want them to do is to cross that line. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out where the line is in about 98 percent of the cases.
THESE HYPOCRITES MUST BE HIDING!!!
Good thing Pflegel didn’t say Mass in Latin. There are good priests still under censure for having done that.
Barry Lynn:
A long-time activist in the civil liberties field, Lynn has an impressive background in church-state issues and is currently the Executive Director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a position he has held since October 1992.
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Barry Lynn: Too Much Discussion about God
The Rev. Barry Lynn, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, says there has been too much talk about God on the presidential campaign trail, and voters don’t really learn much of significance when they ask candidates about their faith.
“No one,” he continued, “disputes that pastors may speak out on social, political and moral issues. What federal tax law does not allow is electioneering for candidates by churches and other tax-exempt organizations.”
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Barry Lynn, president of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, has declared war on the National Day of Prayer because it has been taken over by the “Religious Right.”
Lynn’s biggest complaint with the National Day of Prayer is not that he thinks it violates the constitution, but that “Religious Right forces are using the National Day of Prayer as a vehicle to promote a controversial religious and political agenda.”
Frustrated with the fact that the bulk of people involved in the National Day of Prayer actually believe in God, Lynn and his Left-wing atheist/secularist/ecumenist allies are holding their own counter-events this year. It’s a fascinating new strategy: secularists are arguing that it is wrong for government to sponsor prayer to the God of the Religious Right, but public prayer is okay when it is organized by the Religious Left.
The Chicago archdiocese has been a hotbed of corruption for decades. The late Cardinal Bernadin was the ringleader of the AmChurch mafia. Any scenario is possible.
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